Late last year, Facebook lost the executive who had been tasked with cozying up to Chinese officials. “Wang-Li Moser, who as Facebook’s lead liaison with Beijing had become a symbol of its ambitions in the country, resigned in December,” The New York Times reports, citing sources. The Times calls the loss “a fresh setback for the social network as it seeks to get its products into China’s huge internet market.”

Twitter is disputing a report claiming that its employees regularly review users’ private direct messages. The reports includes undercover footage of Twitter engineers alleging the network has hundreds of employees reading “everything you post online,” BuzzFeed notes. “But according to Twitter, these claims are factually incorrect.”

Separate artificial intelligence programs developed by Alibaba and Microsoft have bested humans on a Stanford University reading comprehension test, reports CNN Tech. “The test was devised by artificial intelligence experts at Stanford to measure computers’ growing reading abilities,” CNN writes. “Alibaba’s software was the first to beat the human score.”

Facebook’s efforts to position itself as a platform for news have essentially failed, some ex-employees tell Buzzfeed. “They’re a tacit admission that the company’s great news experiment -- which made it one of the most successful publishers in the world -- failed,” it writes. Meanwhile, “There’s no guarantee that Facebook’s goal to increase meaningful interactions with people you know will solve the company’s fake news problem.”

SoftBank might list its Japanese wireless business, which could raise around $18 billion, Reuters reports. “A spin-off … would give the unit more autonomy and help investors value the business as well as its parent which has myriad holdings across the tech industry,” Reuters reasons. “SoftBank Group is aiming to sell about 30 percent of SoftBank Corp, Japan’s No. 3 wireless carrier.”

Apple’s iOS app sales will be worth more than the entire worldwide movie industry at some point this year, 9To5Mac reports, citing analysis from Asymco’s Horace Dediu. “While Apple tends to tout developer earnings, which hit $26.5B in 2017, Asymco looks at estimates of total spend -- taking into account Apple’s cut also,” it notes.

Wired chats with Adam Mosseri, Facebook’s vice-president in charge of newsfeed, about just-announced changes to the company’s newsfeed. “We’re talking about is a ranking change where we're trying to focus or trying to look at how we might help -- or use ranking to help people become closer together, connect people more,” Mosseri explains. “Newsfeed was founded … to connect people.”

Further expanding its Dash button strategy, Amazon just unveiled a Virtual Dash Button Service, Venture Beat writes. “The software development kit (SDK) … lets third parties put virtual dash buttons on connected devices with screens,” it writes. “The new virtual Dash button service is aimed at screened devices.”

Top tech executives are urging congress to protect DACA, The Hill reports. Across the industry, “More than a hundred prominent chief executives are urging Congress to pass legislation to protect young immigrants, calling the looming expiration of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program a ‘crisis,’” it writes.

Google recently bought Redux, a U.K. tech startup dedicated to turn phone displays and other surfaces into speakers, Bloomberg reports. “Redux developed technology that eliminates the need for small speakers in mobile phones, freeing up space for batteries or other components,” it writes. “The U.K. company had 178 granted patents.”