Clubhouse’s list of competitors is growing. LinkedIn has now confirmed it’s also testing a social audio experience in its app which would allow creators on its network to connect with their community. Unlike the Clubhouse rivals being built by Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn believes its audio networking feature will be differentiated because it will be connected with users’ professional identity, not just a social profile. In addition, the company has already built out a platform that serves the creator community, which today has access to tools like Stories, LinkedIn Live video broadcasting, newsletters and more.

And just today, LinkedIn formalized some of its efforts in this area with the launch a new “Creator” mode that lets anyone set their profile as one that can be followed for updates, like Stories and LinkedIn Live videos, for example.

This focus on creators puts LinkedIn on competitive footing in terms of expanding its own Clubhouse rival, compared with other efforts by Facebook, Twitter, Telegram, or Discord — all of which have their own audio-based networking features in various stages development at this time.

Though Twitter’s Clubhouse rival, Twitter Spaces, is already live in beta testing, its full set of creator tools have yet to arrive. In fact, it was only last month that Twitter announced its plans for a larger creator subscription platform via a new “Super Follow” feature, for instance. And it only this year entered the newsletter space via an acquisition. Facebook, meanwhile, has historically offered a number of creator-focused features, but has just recently gotten invested in tools like newsletters.

LinkedIn says its development of an audio-based networking feature came about because its members and creatives have been asking for more ways to communicate on its platform.

“We’re seeing nearly 50% growth in conversations on LinkedIn reflected in stories, video shares, and posts on the platform,” Suzi Owens, a spokesperson for LinkedIn, said when confirming its audio feature’s development. “We’re doing some early tests to create a unique audio experience connected to your professional identity. And, we’re looking at how we can bring audio to other parts of LinkedIn such as events and groups, to give our members even more ways to connect to their community,” she said.

As a result of creators’ interest in this space, the company moved quickly to develop its own Clubhouse-like feature, where there’s a stage showcasing the room’s speakers and a set of listeners below. There are also tools to join and leave the room, react to comments, and request to speak, according to screenshots of the interface first discovered in the LinkedIn Android app by reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi.

Note that Paluzzi populated the user interface with his own profile icon, shown in the image he tweeted. That is not part of the LinkedIn mockup. Instead, LinkedIn shared its own conceptual UX mockup of its in-room experiences with TechCrunch, which shows a more fleshed out example of how the feature may look at launch.

LinkedIn believes that because the audio experience will be connected with users’ professional identities, they’ll feel comfortable speaking, commenting and otherwise engaging with the content, the company told TechCrunch. It will also be able to leverage its existing investment in moderation tools built for other features — like LinkedIn Live — to help to address any concerns over inappropriate or harmful discussions, like those that have already plagued Clubhouse.

“Our priority is to build a trusted community where people feel safe and can be productive,” Owens noted. “Our members come to LinkedIn to have respectful and constructive conversations with real people and we’re focused on ensuring they have a safe environment to do just that,” she said.

Plus, LinkedIn says that audio networking makes for a natural extension of other areas, like Groups and Events — areas for networking that have continued to grow, and particularly during the pandemic.

In 2020, some 21 million people attended an event on LinkedIn, and overall LinkedIn sessions increased by 30% year-over-year. The company’s 740 million global members also last year built community, had conversations, and shared knowledge, with 4.8 billion connections made.

Like many companies which saw a pandemic boost, LinkedIn believes the pandemic only accelerated the natural progression towards online networking, remote work, and virtual events, which were already in place before lockdowns. For example, LinkedIn says that more than 60% of its members were working remotely by the end of 2020, versus 8% before the pandemic. LinkedIn believes the shift will stick, as more than half the world’s workforce is expected to continue working from home at least some of the time, even after the pandemic comes to an end.

That leaves room for new forms of online networking to grow, as well, including audio experiences.

LinkedIn doesn’t yet have an exact timeframe for its launch of the audio networking feature, but says it will begin beta testing soon.

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Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are trending hotter than pogs right now, and the number of articles published on the subject in the last few weeks has ballooned into the thousands. So a pardon must be begged at the outset here, but the overlooked potential of token economies is simply too important to let slip away.

NFTs are but one small part of a much larger development in the world of finance capital. What leaves some scratching their heads and chuckling could, within a decade, completely transform the model of investment that has been in place since the rise of Silicon Valley.

Non-fungible what?

NFTs have had a strange first step into the spotlight, bringing wealth to a very small group of people and making most people simply perplexed. Before NFTs are written off as a flash in the pan, it might be worth considering that NFTs were never designed to be very useful in traditional investment frameworks.

An auction house selling a $69 million JPEG is akin to a horse-and-buggy driver strapping a small nuclear reactor to the top of the cab and declaring, “This is an atomic buggy!” as the horse continues to chug along, doing all the work. You’ll get the attention of bystanders, but nothing has fundamentally changed here.

Each of the headline-grabbing NFT sales seen recently are instances of exactly this kind of backward thinking. And the bystanders criticizing the buggy driver and saying, “nuclear reactors are hype,” are not really seeing the long-term implications, or they just don’t like horses.

Whales, dogs and unicorns

From early conceptions of investment as a way to fund transoceanic ship voyages, to the rise of venture capital as we know it today, the entire cosmos of finance capital has remained an elite sport. This is because the current model is based on big investors getting big wins.

Almost the entire world of finance capital is structured on big whales and unicorns, mythical creatures that mere mortals consider themselves lucky to have glimpsed. The word “structured” is chosen here carefully, as the “big-dog” theory of capital is literally built on powerful intermediaries that facilitate the will of these top investors.

The invention of bitcoin is an epochal event in the development of finance. Bitcoin itself has crystallized into merely another playground of power, but the technological tremors it left in its wake are starting to emerge as the real game-changers. Primarily, distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) — of which blockchain is but one instance — are a breakthrough on par with being able to send a message instantaneously to a person on the other side of the world.

DLTs mean that finance capital no longer has a need for powerful intermediaries — or intermediaries of any kind. Middlemen are currently very necessary in order for parties to establish trust in transactions, trades contracts or investments. Paying for the services of these middlemen can be written off as the cost of doing business for large companies and wealthy individuals, but these expenses remain prohibitive barriers for many.

DLTs break down these barriers because trust is established by and built into the very architecture of the network itself. With DLTs, anybody with an internet connection can do big-dog-style business deals at whatever level they can afford, and the way that these deals are transacted is through tokens.

Token economies will be transformative

DLT economies are going to be adopted by all of the major investment players in the next few years as the advantages of decentralizing investment are too numerous to ignore — lower friction for transactions due to automation, much quicker (real-time) results and analysis of market conditions, greater security through transparency, and a higher level of customization for financial products and services. The adoption of decentralized finance by major players will have a net-positive impact for everyone else.

Tokens are the lifeblood of this new system, and non-fungible tokens are just one type of token. In this emerging model, there are payment tokens that behave like money, security tokens that are comparable to stocks, utility tokens that provide functions like space or bandwidth and hybrid tokens that mix these tokens into new forms. If it sounds a bit confusing and exciting, that’s because it is.

The main takeaway to understand here is that tokens are going to replace not just stocks and other investment products but also the entire idea of having middlemen between you and your purchases, whether that middleman is an investment broker, a credit card company, a platform provider or a bank. The decentralized economy is going to be a much more open and direct kind of market.

The rubber hits the road like this

It can be hard to imagine how this might all play out, but we are already seeing the outlines of this new economy begin to poke through the dried-out skin of the old model. These protrusions are most apparent where economic reality doesn’t really make sense.

Think of the emerging gig economy, where nobody really seems to have a steady job anymore, where each of us is some kind of professional mercenary, moving from gig to gig. Think of the huge number of subscriptions that most of us carry like millstones around our necks. Think of the paradoxically frustrating relationship of musicians to streaming platforms, or artists to galleries. Think about the amount of crushing poverty that still remains on our planet.

These are all instances of models of living and working not really fitting into old containers. We can all sense that these aspects of our lives aren’t really functioning optimally, but we can’t quite say why and we certainly don’t know what the solution might look like. Decentralized, tokenized economies have the potential to erase all of these pain points, paradoxes and kludges and replace them with something much more intuitive and elegant.

This new reality is easy to imagine in some of its attributes: Instead of nine different subscriptions, you can just pay directly for the content that you want, when you want it. Instead of artists giving up half of their earnings to galleries or musicians giving, well, all of their earnings to streaming platforms, they now just take direct payment for their work through fluid networks built by and for this type of content. Instead of paying brokers to facilitate your investments, you can now just invest directly in the enterprises that interest you, including formerly out-of-reach sectors like real estate investment. Instead of crushing poverty and fiercely protected borders between classes, we break down barriers and give everyone access to value.

Many of the other developments in a token economy have yet to be imagined, and this is probably the most exciting aspect of all. When we distribute the economy globally, in a way that allows anyone with an internet connection the ability to interact and contribute in a meaningful way, we are unlocking the value of untapped assets that are worth literally trillions of dollars. So what is holding us back, and how do we get there as soon as possible?

The work ahead is very clear

The hardest part of unlocking this new economy has already been achieved — we have the technological understanding of how to distribute and decentralize a system of consensus that combines with a system of digitizing assets for trade and investment.

The remaining work that will actually bring this system online is fairly obvious — first and foremost, we need to take a look at the ecological impacts that this new system has had in its infancy. We should absolutely outlaw mining farms or set the strictest limits for how much of their energy comes from nonrenewables. If the backbone of this new economy is destroying the planet, we need to shut it down before it grows, full stop. The system needs to be ecologically sustainable.

The second most immediate concern is that there are currently no standards, no common network, that the multitude of different cryptocurrencies and tokens agree on. It’s astounding and absolutely frustrating that the various cryptos are hardly even talking about this.

It’s as if we have a bunch of different companies not only inventing the light bulb but also inventing their own light sockets and wiring protocols, and each one is insisting that they are the best and they will win out in the end. Light bulbs are great, but can we please agree on one socket? This beautiful new economy will never get off the ground unless we build a neutral, interoperable network, and this network needs to be feeless and scalable.

The last cause of immediate concern is regulation and legal frameworks. There are too many people still in crypto that have some kind of anarchist’s deathwish to just be completely left outside, and this is not serving the long-term goals of our communities.

I’m all for knocking intermediaries out of the value chain, but this doesn’t automatically entail the establishment of a never-never land that no regulatory agencies are invited to. Legal frameworks for decentralized economies go hand in hand with our ethos of open-source, community-building, transparent operations. We all need to be advocates for thorough and precise regulation of our nascent technology.

With ecology, interoperability and regulation as our watchwords, we can begin work on building the actual apps and other infrastructure that will allow users to leverage the power of a new economy. The uses are limitless, from selling excess electricity to your regional smart power grid, to investing in your favorite artists’ network, to accepting direct payment for your own labor, to — yes — buying NFTs, which will make a lot more sense in the new economy.

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Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020.

Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices alone. And in the U.S., app usage surged ahead of the time spent watching live TV. Currently, the average American watches 3.7 hours of live TV per day, but now spends four hours per day on their mobile devices.

Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re also a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus. In 2020, investors poured $73 billion in capital into mobile companies — a figure that’s up 27% year-over-year.

This week we’re looking at the case of the missing Arizona app store bill, the latest on the Dispo drama and Facebook’s new audio efforts, among other things.

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So…where did that App Store legislation go?

Arizona’s Senate was supposed to vote on a controversial bill, HB2005, that would make it the first state to regulate the Apple and Google app stores. But though the vote was listed first on the Senate’s livestream agenda on Wednesday, March 24th, the vote never came up.

Basecamp co-founder and Apple critic David Heinemeier Hansson, who submitted testimony in support of HB 2005, basically called the lobbying system corrupt.

It’s true that Apple and Google had hired lobbyists to combat the bill, which would have threatened the companies’ ability to continue collecting their 15% or 30% commissions by allowing app developers to use third-party payment processors for sales and in-app purchases.

Apple had its own lobbyist, Rod Diridon, working on the Arizona bill, and was said to have hired Kirk Adams, a former chief of staff to Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, to negotiate directly with the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Regina Cobb (R).

However, others countered the narrative being laid out by Hansson, saying that the bill’s existence in the first place was the result of lobbying from Epic Games and others, and many lawmakers didn’t even know what they were voting on. A similar bill was already voted down in North Dakota and HB2005 didn’t seem to have much support either, ahead of the would-be vote.

The Coalition for App Fairness (CAF), a group backing these bills, told us it didn’t know what happened to the bill, but was trying to find out.

Dispo loses investor support, Dobrik

Once-hot mobile photos app Dispo is becoming a case study as to why partnering with high-profile influencers and YouTuber-types without due diligence is just a bad idea. When a recent investigation exposed that a member of YouTuber David Dobrik’s “Vlog Squad” sexually assaulted her, Dispo’s early investors have been distancing themselves from the app.

Initially, lead investor Spark Capital said it would “sever all ties” with the company, TechCrunch’s Natasha Mascarenhas reported earlier this week. Dobrik also left the board and the company hours later. Two other investors, Seven Seven Six and Unshackled, said they would donate any potential profits from their Dispo investment into organizations working with survivors of sexual assault. (Cynically, one could argue, the firms don’t expect there to be much left to donate with this much of a stain on Dispo’s public image and the loss of its big-name backer in Dobrik).

Dispo had been valued at $200 million after its $20 million Series A, led by Spark Capital only weeks ago. The company released a statement saying it would continue to work on the platform.

Facebook’s Clubhouse rival looks like Clubhouse

New screenshots of Facebook’s unreleased audio product, still under development, show what appears to be a live audio broadcast experience that’s more of an extension of Facebook’s existing Messenger Rooms, rather than a standalone app experience. Facebook confirmed the images are examples of the company’s “exploratory audio efforts,” but cautioned that they don’t represent a live product at this time. The images show Clubhouse-like audio rooms with rounded profile icons and a listener section led by the speakers’ friends — very much like Clubhouse.

While the company said not to jump to any conclusions about what this all means in terms of a final product, it’s interesting to see how Facebook is thinking about social audio experiences and where they could fit in on its platform. In this case, it sees it as a third option in Messenger Rooms — users could start either a private video chat with friends or a private audio chat, or they could go live to the public on audio only.

Mark Zuckerberg (rather boldly) went on Clubhouse to praise Clubhouse for what it had pioneered, saying it would end up “being one of the modalities around live audio broadcast.” It seems Facebook sees Clubhouse as just another networking format to be knocked off, like TikTok’s vertical videos or Snapchat Stories — both of which Facebook later adopted for its own platforms.

Platforms: Apple

People noticed that recently created Shortcuts links broke this week, displaying a message “Shortcut Not Found,” instead of opening the Shortcuts app. The issue impacted everyone who has shared shortcuts. Apple said it was aware of the issue and working on a fix.

Apple rolled out its fifth developer betas for iOS 14.5, iPadOS 14.5 and other platforms, which was then shortly followed by the release of the public betas. These may be the last betas before the public launch, though Apple has gone beyond five betas in the past.

Apple responded to Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC), which is investigating the potential anti-competitive nature of the App Store, by saying that there were other options for developers to reach iOS users — like using a website. Some developers were not amused.

Apple also defended its App Review process to the ACCC, saying that it reviews 73% of prospective apps within 24 hours of being submitted by a developer, and offers details as to why an app didn’t comply with its guidelines. It also argued that it offers a worldwide support line that facilitates 1,000 calls per week in all 175 countries where the App Store operates.

A tentative initial witness list in Apple’s courtroom battle with Epic Games over Apple’s alleged monopolist practices includes Apple CEO Tim Cook, Software Engineering SVP Craig Federighi and Apple Fellow Phil Schiller (who helped launch and run the App Store). Epic will be calling its CEO Tim Sweeney and VP Mark Rein. Executives from Microsoft, Facebook and Nvidia are also included.

Platforms: Google

Google announced the Android Ready SE Alliance to make sure that new phones will be ready to support digital alternatives to things like car keys, house keys, wallets (think national IDs, mobile driver’s licenses, passports) and more. This requires that phones include tamper-resistant hardware called a Secure Element (SE) and StrongBox, an implementation of the Keymaster HAL that resides in a hardware security module, which launched with the Pixel 3 in 2018.

A bunch of Android apps, including Gmail and Google Pay, began crashing this week due to an issue with Android System WebView. Google addressed the problem by issuing updates for the standalone WebView app and Google Chrome.

E-commerce

H&M was removed from major e-commerce apps and platforms in China, including Alibaba’s Taobao, JD.com and Pinduoduo, Meituan’s shop-listing app Dianping, map apps from Tencent and Baidu, among other major online platforms. The Swedish retailer had decided to stop buying cotton from Xinjiang, where over 1 million members of the Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities have been confined to detention camps, which are accused of imposing forced labor. Nike, Adidas, Burberry, Uniqlo and Lacoste also criticized China for expressing concern over Xinjiang, leading dozen of celebs to cancel endorsement deals.

NBCU struck a deal with Facebook and Instagram to extend its “shoppable opportunities” to social media platforms. The e-commerce partnership will put pitches from the TV company’s clients on its social handles on Facebook and Instagram.

Fintech

Robinhood, the free trading app and recent home to the GameStop frenzy, confidentially filed for an IPO. The company confirmed the filing in a blog post after several media outlets broke the news.

Social

TikTok belatedly banned some Myanmar accounts that posted violent videos supporting the military’s violent coup, saying that it was aggressively cracking down on accounts promoting violence. The takedowns of the video — some of which threatened protesters with death or spread hate-fueled claims — didn’t start until early March, a month after the coup began.

TikTok added an Ad Library tool that allows marketers to view the top performing ad campaigns taking place across the app. The “top ads” feature can also be filtered by vertical and region, then by time (last seven or 30 days), and performance (CTR, impressions, video view rate).

Snapchat is developing its own take on TikTok Duets with the test of a Snap Remix feature. Duets are a core part of what makes TikTok feel like a social network, rather than just a platform for more passive video viewing. Remix — which shares the name with an Instagram Duets-style feature that’s soon to launch publicly — lets users repurpose others’ Snaps for use in their own through a variety of formats.

Facebook is testing an app for prisoners who are re-entering society, Bloomberg reports. The “Re-Entry App” was shared at the top of some users’ Instagram feeds this week, offering early access.

Axios reported that Trump was in talks with no-name app vendors about creating his own social networking app. One of the companies he spoke to was the largely unknown platform called FreeSpace, which claims its network is designed to “reinforce good habits and make the world a better place.” The app includes a news feed, user profiles and group messaging features.

Parler says it sent the FBI over 50 posts about the Capitol riot ahead of January 6, The NYT reports. If accurate, it raises the question of whether or not the FBI took the threats seriously. The FBI has refused to comment on Parler’s statement. Meanwhile, Parler is facing a lawsuit by former CEO John Matze who claims he was forced out by conservative donor Rebekah Mercer.

U.K. watchdog says Facebook’s acquisition of Giphy raises competition concerns. The Competition and Markets Authority launched the first phase of its investigation in January, and notes that Giphy had competed with Facebook outside the U.K. in digital ad deals.

Twitter seems to be working on an audience picker for its upcoming communities feature, reports Jane Manchun Wong. This would be accessible from within the tweet composer screen.

Streaming & Entertainment

Spotify updated its mobile app with several changes to the Home hub. These include a way to rediscover recently played songs as far back as three months ago; a way for Premium users to view new and unfinished podcasts with a blue dot (new) and progress bar (unfinished); and a new section of personalized music recommendations. The company later in the week updated its desktop and web app, as well.

Triller forges licensing agreements with music publishers, Variety reports. The agreement with the National Music Publishers’ Association, which represents most American publishers, follows Universal withdrawing its entire library from the app last month, claiming Triller withheld payments. Triller claimed to have no idea why UMG would do this.

Clubhouse says its Android launch will “take a couple of months.” Before, the company had said it would be “soon” without promising any sort of time frame.

Gaming

Genshin Impact tops $1 billion on mobile in less than six months following its September 2020 launch, says Sensor Tower. During the last 30 days, the game ranked No. 3 on the App Store and Google Play combined, behind Tencent’s PUBG Mobile and Honor of Kings.

Gaming voice and text chat service Discord, which has expanded into other forms of social networking, is said to be exploring a sale that could be worth over $10 billion. Bloomberg reported Microsoft was in talks to buy the service for more than $10 billion but no deal was imminent and Discord may choose to go public instead.

PUBG Mobile has grossed $5 billion in revenue after generating an average of $7.4 million per day in 2020, Sensor Tower reports. Like many games, PUBG Mobile’s revenue soared during the height of the pandemic with record spending of $300 million last March, during lockdowns.

Google Stadia may soon get touchscreen controls on Android, 9to5Google found by digging into the Android app’s code. The controls would allow users to use gestures like tapping, swiping and pinching.

Education

Apple updated its Schoolwork and Classroom apps with a few more features aimed at making it easier to share projects and support remote learning, among other things. The company also announced a Teacher Portfolio badge that would be awarded to teachers who completed a series of lessons focused on learning foundational skills on iPad and Mac.

Health & Fitness

Tile’s lost item-tracking service arrived on wearables for the first time thanks to a new partnership with Google’s Fitbit. Through a Fitbit app update, new and existing Fitbit Inspire 2 owners will gain access to Tile’s Bluetooth-based finding network to locate their misplaced Fitbit.

Health and fitness apps’ downloads increased 20% in 2020 due to the pandemic and users shifting to at-home workouts, says App Annie. In the IoT and fitness-tracking app space, Mi Fit, Strava, MyFitnessPal, Google Fit, Fitbit, BetterMe, Runtastic, Nike Training Club, Step Tracker by Leap Fitness and Samsung Health saw the most downloads last year.

Data shared by Uswitch notes that demand for sleep apps increased by 104% during the pandemic, while demand for wellness apps grew 26% since March 2020.

Productivity

Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield teased new Slack features were in beta testing: an asynchronous audio messages feature, a Clubhouse-like drop-in voice chat and Slack Stories. The exec announced the news in the PressClub show on Clubhouse, adding “good artists copy, great artists steal.”

Slack also this week launched a new universal DM system called Connect DMs, which allows any Slack user to direct message any other Slack user. The system was immediately called out for potentially enabling harassment and abuse, leading the company to pull the ability to customize the invite message.

Cortana has begun to warn its iOS and Android users that it will be shut down on March 31st. Microsoft pulled back on Cortana last year, but Cortana is still accessible on Windows. The company is also discontinuing Cortana support on the Harman Kardon Invoke speaker, as well.

Opera’s Touch iOS web browser app, now rebranded just Opera, released a major update that modernized the UI with a more flat look, a new color palette, reworked text and new icons in the bottom bar and in the “Fast Action” button, which lets you get to favorite destinations quickly. It also adds a built-in Ethereum wallet.

Privacy & Security

China defined new rules over information apps can collect, saying that users of short video, news, browser and utility apps can access basic services on these platforms without providing their personal info. The new regulation goes into effect May 1 and covers 39 app categories — including also messaging, online shopping, payments, ride hailing, short video, livestream and mobile games — where it specifies what information is necessary to use the app (e.g. if e-commerce, a user’s phone number, name, address, and payment info).

The Indian government is trying to stop WhatsApp’s controversial privacy policy update with an antitrust investigation into the policy changes, in order to determine the full extent of the app’s data-sharing practices enabled through the “involuntary consent” of WhatsApp users.

An investigation by The NYT found that Britain’s top gambling app, Sky Bet, was compiling extensive records about users. Either the app or one of the data providers it hires to collect info on users had access to users’ banking records, mortgage details, location and gambling habits.

Apple responded to ProtonVPN’s claims that Apple was standing in the way of human rights by rejecting one of its app updates. The VPN maker attempted to tie the rejection to the coup in Myanmar, saying that people in the country use its app to bypass internet crackdowns and share information about the ongoing “crimes against humanity” taking place in the country. Apple responded to the attack by noting that it had only asked the developer to reword its description so it doesn’t read like it’s encouraging users to bypass geo-restrictions or content limitations (you know, which would be illegal). And it pointed out that all Proton’s apps have remained available in Myanmar this whole time.

Facebook caught Chinese hackers using fake personas to target Uyghurs abroad. The social network caught the network of China-based hackers using fake Facebook accounts where they posed as activists, journalists and other sympathetic figures to send the targets to compromised websites. The hacking groups are aiming to gain access to the targets’ devices by getting them to install malicious apps for surveillance purposes.

A cybersecurity review of TikTok by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab says it’s not worse than Facebook in either data privacy or security. This, however, may be a low bar.

Scam apps have stolen more than $400 million from users across the App Store and Google, according to a study by Avast. The company reported 204 so-called “fleeceware apps” with over a billion combined downloads that trick users into free trials but then overcharge them with subscriptions that are as high as $3,432 per year.

Messaging app Telegram raised over $1 billion through bond sales to multiple investors, including a combined $150 million investment by Mubadala Investment Co. and Abu Dhabi Catalyst Partners, which is part-owned by the Abu Dhabi state fund. Last week, this column noted that the app had owed its creditors around $700 million by the end of April, per The WSJ’s report.

Fortnite and Houseparty owner Epic Games is reportedly closing on $1 billion in new funding that will value its business at $28 billion.

Twitter acqui-hired the team from API integration platform Reshuffle to work on its own developer API platform. The team of seven, including two co-founders, will immediately begin work on building tools for Twitter developers while Reshuffle’s business is wound down.

Link-in-bio company Linktree, whose mini websites get linked to by creators in your favorite social apps, raised $45 million to develop new social commerce tools. The company says a third of its 12 million users have signed up within the last four months — a trend partially driven by the pandemic.

South Korea’s largest travel app Yanolja is in talks with banks to go public through a dual listing in Seoul and overseas. The company is aiming for a $4 billion valuation.

ironSource, a business platform for the app economy, reached an agreement with Thoma Bravo’s blank-check firm to go public via a SPAC at a $11.1 billion valuation.

Ryu Games raised a seed round of $2.3 million for its service that helps developers add cash tournaments to their mobile games. The company is aiming to be present on a few dozen games this year.

Nigerian fintech Bankly raised $2 million for its app that digitizes cash for the unbanked, in a round led by led by Vault.

Mumbai-headquartered Indian fantasy sports app Dream11’s parent firm, Dream Sports, raised $400 million in a round led by TCV, D1 Capital Partners and Falcon Edge, valuing the business at nearly $5 billion.

Indian social network Public App raised $41 million just six months after its $35 fundraise, valuing the business at over $250 million — or more than double the valuation since the prior fundraise. The app now has over 50 million users, including over 50,000 elected officials, government authorities and citizen journalists.

U.K.-based stock trading app Freetrade raised a $69 million Series B from Left Lane Capital. The Robinhood-like app offers free trades and the ability to buy fractional shares. The company is now valued at $366 million.

Indonesian savings and investment app Pluang raised $20 million in pre-Series B funding led by Openspace Ventures. The company offers savings and investments products that allow users to make contributions starting at 50 cents (USD).

AR pioneer Blippar returns with $5 million in funding after 18 months of repositioning as a B2B company in the AR space. Blippar’s AR Studio can help brands with AR on the web and inside their apps or Blippar’s own app.

Avatarify

Avatarify is another app benefitting from the current interest in bringing photos to life. We’ve already seen apps like MyHeritage, TokkingHeads, Wombo and Piñata Farms introduce their own ideas in this space — whether it’s recalling long-lost relatives or just making a celeb lip sync to Michael Jackson. Avatarify, meanwhile, will let you record a short video which it then uses to animate any photo of your choice — even photos of art, babies or pets. The app is moving up the charts to now No. 28 on the App Store.

Vinyls

Vinyls, reviewed this week by iMore and recently by 9to5Mac as well, is a minimalist music player for Apple Music subscribers. The app was built by the developer behind the Twitter client Aviary, and displays a spinning vinyl record when music is playing. The app also animates a tonearm that aligns itself with the current playback time and moves in and out when playing and pausing the music. You can also “scrub” the vinyl to seek forwards and backwards. Vinyls is available on Mac, iPhone and iPad.

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Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020.

Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices alone. And in the U.S., app usage surged ahead of the time spent watching live TV. Currently, the average American watches 3.7 hours of live TV per day, but now spends four hours per day on their mobile devices.

Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re also a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus. In 2020, investors poured $73 billion in capital into mobile companies — a figure that’s up 27% year-over-year.

This week we’re looking at the case of the missing Arizona app store bill, the latest on the Dispo drama and Facebook’s new audio efforts, among other things.

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So…where did that App Store legislation go?

Arizona’s Senate was supposed to vote on a controversial bill, HB2005, that would make it the first state to regulate the Apple and Google app stores. But though the vote was listed first on the Senate’s livestream agenda on Wednesday, March 24th, the vote never came up.

Basecamp co-founder and Apple critic David Heinemeier Hansson, who submitted testimony in support of HB 2005, basically called the lobbying system corrupt.

It’s true that Apple and Google had hired lobbyists to combat the bill, which would have threatened the companies’ ability to continue collecting their 15% or 30% commissions by allowing app developers to use third-party payment processors for sales and in-app purchases.

Apple had its own lobbyist, Rod Diridon, working on the Arizona bill, and was said to have hired Kirk Adams, a former chief of staff to Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, to negotiate directly with the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Regina Cobb (R).

However, others countered the narrative being laid out by Hansson, saying that the bill’s existence in the first place was the result of lobbying from Epic Games and others, and many lawmakers didn’t even know what they were voting on. A similar bill was already voted down in North Dakota and HB2005 didn’t seem to have much support either, ahead of the would-be vote.

The Coalition for App Fairness (CAF), a group backing these bills, told us it didn’t know what happened to the bill, but was trying to find out.

Dispo loses investor support, Dobrik

Once-hot mobile photos app Dispo is becoming a case study as to why partnering with high-profile influencers and YouTuber-types without due diligence is just a bad idea. When a recent investigation exposed that a member of YouTuber David Dobrik’s “Vlog Squad” sexually assaulted her, Dispo’s early investors have been distancing themselves from the app.

Initially, lead investor Spark Capital said it would “sever all ties” with the company, TechCrunch’s Natasha Mascarenhas reported earlier this week. Dobrik also left the board and the company hours later. Two other investors, Seven Seven Six and Unshackled, said they would donate any potential profits from their Dispo investment into organizations working with survivors of sexual assault. (Cynically, one could argue, the firms don’t expect there to be much left to donate with this much of a stain on Dispo’s public image and the loss of its big-name backer in Dobrik).

Dispo had been valued at $200 million after its $20 million Series A, led by Spark Capital only weeks ago. The company released a statement saying it would continue to work on the platform.

Facebook’s Clubhouse rival looks like Clubhouse

New screenshots of Facebook’s unreleased audio product, still under development, show what appears to be a live audio broadcast experience that’s more of an extension of Facebook’s existing Messenger Rooms, rather than a standalone app experience. Facebook confirmed the images are examples of the company’s “exploratory audio efforts,” but cautioned that they don’t represent a live product at this time. The images show Clubhouse-like audio rooms with rounded profile icons and a listener section led by the speakers’ friends — very much like Clubhouse.

While the company said not to jump to any conclusions about what this all means in terms of a final product, it’s interesting to see how Facebook is thinking about social audio experiences and where they could fit in on its platform. In this case, it sees it as a third option in Messenger Rooms — users could start either a private video chat with friends or a private audio chat, or they could go live to the public on audio only.

Mark Zuckerberg (rather boldly) went on Clubhouse to praise Clubhouse for what it had pioneered, saying it would end up “being one of the modalities around live audio broadcast.” It seems Facebook sees Clubhouse as just another networking format to be knocked off, like TikTok’s vertical videos or Snapchat Stories — both of which Facebook later adopted for its own platforms.

Platforms: Apple

People noticed that recently created Shortcuts links broke this week, displaying a message “Shortcut Not Found,” instead of opening the Shortcuts app. The issue impacted everyone who has shared shortcuts. Apple said it was aware of the issue and working on a fix.

Apple rolled out its fifth developer betas for iOS 14.5, iPadOS 14.5 and other platforms, which was then shortly followed by the release of the public betas. These may be the last betas before the public launch, though Apple has gone beyond five betas in the past.

Apple responded to Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC), which is investigating the potential anti-competitive nature of the App Store, by saying that there were other options for developers to reach iOS users — like using a website. Some developers were not amused.

Apple also defended its App Review process to the ACCC, saying that it reviews 73% of prospective apps within 24 hours of being submitted by a developer, and offers details as to why an app didn’t comply with its guidelines. It also argued that it offers a worldwide support line that facilitates 1,000 calls per week in all 175 countries where the App Store operates.

A tentative initial witness list in Apple’s courtroom battle with Epic Games over Apple’s alleged monopolist practices includes Apple CEO Tim Cook, Software Engineering SVP Craig Federighi and Apple Fellow Phil Schiller (who helped launch and run the App Store). Epic will be calling its CEO Tim Sweeney and VP Mark Rein. Executives from Microsoft, Facebook and Nvidia are also included.

Platforms: Google

Google announced the Android Ready SE Alliance to make sure that new phones will be ready to support digital alternatives to things like car keys, house keys, wallets (think national IDs, mobile driver’s licenses, passports) and more. This requires that phones include tamper-resistant hardware called a Secure Element (SE) and StrongBox, an implementation of the Keymaster HAL that resides in a hardware security module, which launched with the Pixel 3 in 2018.

A bunch of Android apps, including Gmail and Google Pay, began crashing this week due to an issue with Android System WebView. Google addressed the problem by issuing updates for the standalone WebView app and Google Chrome.

E-commerce

H&M was removed from major e-commerce apps and platforms in China, including Alibaba’s Taobao, JD.com and Pinduoduo, Meituan’s shop-listing app Dianping, map apps from Tencent and Baidu, among other major online platforms. The Swedish retailer had decided to stop buying cotton from Xinjiang, where over 1 million members of the Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities have been confined to detention camps, which are accused of imposing forced labor. Nike, Adidas, Burberry, Uniqlo and Lacoste also criticized China for expressing concern over Xinjiang, leading dozen of celebs to cancel endorsement deals.

NBCU struck a deal with Facebook and Instagram to extend its “shoppable opportunities” to social media platforms. The e-commerce partnership will put pitches from the TV company’s clients on its social handles on Facebook and Instagram.

Fintech

Robinhood, the free trading app and recent home to the GameStop frenzy, confidentially filed for an IPO. The company confirmed the filing in a blog post after several media outlets broke the news.

Social

TikTok belatedly banned some Myanmar accounts that posted violent videos supporting the military’s violent coup, saying that it was aggressively cracking down on accounts promoting violence. The takedowns of the video — some of which threatened protesters with death or spread hate-fueled claims — didn’t start until early March, a month after the coup began.

TikTok added an Ad Library tool that allows marketers to view the top performing ad campaigns taking place across the app. The “top ads” feature can also be filtered by vertical and region, then by time (last seven or 30 days), and performance (CTR, impressions, video view rate).

Snapchat is developing its own take on TikTok Duets with the test of a Snap Remix feature. Duets are a core part of what makes TikTok feel like a social network, rather than just a platform for more passive video viewing. Remix — which shares the name with an Instagram Duets-style feature that’s soon to launch publicly — lets users repurpose others’ Snaps for use in their own through a variety of formats.

Facebook is testing an app for prisoners who are re-entering society, Bloomberg reports. The “Re-Entry App” was shared at the top of some users’ Instagram feeds this week, offering early access.

Axios reported that Trump was in talks with no-name app vendors about creating his own social networking app. One of the companies he spoke to was the largely unknown platform called FreeSpace, which claims its network is designed to “reinforce good habits and make the world a better place.” The app includes a news feed, user profiles and group messaging features.

Parler says it sent the FBI over 50 posts about the Capitol riot ahead of January 6, The NYT reports. If accurate, it raises the question of whether or not the FBI took the threats seriously. The FBI has refused to comment on Parler’s statement. Meanwhile, Parler is facing a lawsuit by former CEO John Matze who claims he was forced out by conservative donor Rebekah Mercer.

U.K. watchdog says Facebook’s acquisition of Giphy raises competition concerns. The Competition and Markets Authority launched the first phase of its investigation in January, and notes that Giphy had competed with Facebook outside the U.K. in digital ad deals.

Twitter seems to be working on an audience picker for its upcoming communities feature, reports Jane Manchun Wong. This would be accessible from within the tweet composer screen.

Streaming & Entertainment

Spotify updated its mobile app with several changes to the Home hub. These include a way to rediscover recently played songs as far back as three months ago; a way for Premium users to view new and unfinished podcasts with a blue dot (new) and progress bar (unfinished); and a new section of personalized music recommendations. The company later in the week updated its desktop and web app, as well.

Triller forges licensing agreements with music publishers, Variety reports. The agreement with the National Music Publishers’ Association, which represents most American publishers, follows Universal withdrawing its entire library from the app last month, claiming Triller withheld payments. Triller claimed to have no idea why UMG would do this.

Clubhouse says its Android launch will “take a couple of months.” Before, the company had said it would be “soon” without promising any sort of time frame.

Gaming

Genshin Impact tops $1 billion on mobile in less than six months following its September 2020 launch, says Sensor Tower. During the last 30 days, the game ranked No. 3 on the App Store and Google Play combined, behind Tencent’s PUBG Mobile and Honor of Kings.

Gaming voice and text chat service Discord, which has expanded into other forms of social networking, is said to be exploring a sale that could be worth over $10 billion. Bloomberg reported Microsoft was in talks to buy the service for more than $10 billion but no deal was imminent and Discord may choose to go public instead.

PUBG Mobile has grossed $5 billion in revenue after generating an average of $7.4 million per day in 2020, Sensor Tower reports. Like many games, PUBG Mobile’s revenue soared during the height of the pandemic with record spending of $300 million last March, during lockdowns.

Google Stadia may soon get touchscreen controls on Android, 9to5Google found by digging into the Android app’s code. The controls would allow users to use gestures like tapping, swiping and pinching.

Education

Apple updated its Schoolwork and Classroom apps with a few more features aimed at making it easier to share projects and support remote learning, among other things. The company also announced a Teacher Portfolio badge that would be awarded to teachers who completed a series of lessons focused on learning foundational skills on iPad and Mac.

Health & Fitness

Tile’s lost item-tracking service arrived on wearables for the first time thanks to a new partnership with Google’s Fitbit. Through a Fitbit app update, new and existing Fitbit Inspire 2 owners will gain access to Tile’s Bluetooth-based finding network to locate their misplaced Fitbit.

Health and fitness apps’ downloads increased 20% in 2020 due to the pandemic and users shifting to at-home workouts, says App Annie. In the IoT and fitness-tracking app space, Mi Fit, Strava, MyFitnessPal, Google Fit, Fitbit, BetterMe, Runtastic, Nike Training Club, Step Tracker by Leap Fitness and Samsung Health saw the most downloads last year.

Data shared by Uswitch notes that demand for sleep apps increased by 104% during the pandemic, while demand for wellness apps grew 26% since March 2020.

Productivity

Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield teased new Slack features were in beta testing: an asynchronous audio messages feature, a Clubhouse-like drop-in voice chat and Slack Stories. The exec announced the news in the PressClub show on Clubhouse, adding “good artists copy, great artists steal.”

Slack also this week launched a new universal DM system called Connect DMs, which allows any Slack user to direct message any other Slack user. The system was immediately called out for potentially enabling harassment and abuse, leading the company to pull the ability to customize the invite message.

Cortana has begun to warn its iOS and Android users that it will be shut down on March 31st. Microsoft pulled back on Cortana last year, but Cortana is still accessible on Windows. The company is also discontinuing Cortana support on the Harman Kardon Invoke speaker, as well.

Opera’s Touch iOS web browser app, now rebranded just Opera, released a major update that modernized the UI with a more flat look, a new color palette, reworked text and new icons in the bottom bar and in the “Fast Action” button, which lets you get to favorite destinations quickly. It also adds a built-in Ethereum wallet.

Privacy & Security

China defined new rules over information apps can collect, saying that users of short video, news, browser and utility apps can access basic services on these platforms without providing their personal info. The new regulation goes into effect May 1 and covers 39 app categories — including also messaging, online shopping, payments, ride hailing, short video, livestream and mobile games — where it specifies what information is necessary to use the app (e.g. if e-commerce, a user’s phone number, name, address, and payment info).

The Indian government is trying to stop WhatsApp’s controversial privacy policy update with an antitrust investigation into the policy changes, in order to determine the full extent of the app’s data-sharing practices enabled through the “involuntary consent” of WhatsApp users.

An investigation by The NYT found that Britain’s top gambling app, Sky Bet, was compiling extensive records about users. Either the app or one of the data providers it hires to collect info on users had access to users’ banking records, mortgage details, location and gambling habits.

Apple responded to ProtonVPN’s claims that Apple was standing in the way of human rights by rejecting one of its app updates. The VPN maker attempted to tie the rejection to the coup in Myanmar, saying that people in the country use its app to bypass internet crackdowns and share information about the ongoing “crimes against humanity” taking place in the country. Apple responded to the attack by noting that it had only asked the developer to reword its description so it doesn’t read like it’s encouraging users to bypass geo-restrictions or content limitations (you know, which would be illegal). And it pointed out that all Proton’s apps have remained available in Myanmar this whole time.

Facebook caught Chinese hackers using fake personas to target Uyghurs abroad. The social network caught the network of China-based hackers using fake Facebook accounts where they posed as activists, journalists and other sympathetic figures to send the targets to compromised websites. The hacking groups are aiming to gain access to the targets’ devices by getting them to install malicious apps for surveillance purposes.

A cybersecurity review of TikTok by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab says it’s not worse than Facebook in either data privacy or security. This, however, may be a low bar.

Scam apps have stolen more than $400 million from users across the App Store and Google, according to a study by Avast. The company reported 204 so-called “fleeceware apps” with over a billion combined downloads that trick users into free trials but then overcharge them with subscriptions that are as high as $3,432 per year.

Messaging app Telegram raised over $1 billion through bond sales to multiple investors, including a combined $150 million investment by Mubadala Investment Co. and Abu Dhabi Catalyst Partners, which is part-owned by the Abu Dhabi state fund. Last week, this column noted that the app had owed its creditors around $700 million by the end of April, per The WSJ’s report.

Fortnite and Houseparty owner Epic Games is reportedly closing on $1 billion in new funding that will value its business at $28 billion.

Twitter acqui-hired the team from API integration platform Reshuffle to work on its own developer API platform. The team of seven, including two co-founders, will immediately begin work on building tools for Twitter developers while Reshuffle’s business is wound down.

Link-in-bio company Linktree, whose mini websites get linked to by creators in your favorite social apps, raised $45 million to develop new social commerce tools. The company says a third of its 12 million users have signed up within the last four months — a trend partially driven by the pandemic.

South Korea’s largest travel app Yanolja is in talks with banks to go public through a dual listing in Seoul and overseas. The company is aiming for a $4 billion valuation.

ironSource, a business platform for the app economy, reached an agreement with Thoma Bravo’s blank-check firm to go public via a SPAC at a $11.1 billion valuation.

Ryu Games raised a seed round of $2.3 million for its service that helps developers add cash tournaments to their mobile games. The company is aiming to be present on a few dozen games this year.

Nigerian fintech Bankly raised $2 million for its app that digitizes cash for the unbanked, in a round led by led by Vault.

Mumbai-headquartered Indian fantasy sports app Dream11’s parent firm, Dream Sports, raised $400 million in a round led by TCV, D1 Capital Partners and Falcon Edge, valuing the business at nearly $5 billion.

Indian social network Public App raised $41 million just six months after its $35 fundraise, valuing the business at over $250 million — or more than double the valuation since the prior fundraise. The app now has over 50 million users, including over 50,000 elected officials, government authorities and citizen journalists.

U.K.-based stock trading app Freetrade raised a $69 million Series B from Left Lane Capital. The Robinhood-like app offers free trades and the ability to buy fractional shares. The company is now valued at $366 million.

Indonesian savings and investment app Pluang raised $20 million in pre-Series B funding led by Openspace Ventures. The company offers savings and investments products that allow users to make contributions starting at 50 cents (USD).

AR pioneer Blippar returns with $5 million in funding after 18 months of repositioning as a B2B company in the AR space. Blippar’s AR Studio can help brands with AR on the web and inside their apps or Blippar’s own app.

Avatarify

Avatarify is another app benefitting from the current interest in bringing photos to life. We’ve already seen apps like MyHeritage, TokkingHeads, Wombo and Piñata Farms introduce their own ideas in this space — whether it’s recalling long-lost relatives or just making a celeb lip sync to Michael Jackson. Avatarify, meanwhile, will let you record a short video which it then uses to animate any photo of your choice — even photos of art, babies or pets. The app is moving up the charts to now No. 28 on the App Store.

Vinyls

Vinyls, reviewed this week by iMore and recently by 9to5Mac as well, is a minimalist music player for Apple Music subscribers. The app was built by the developer behind the Twitter client Aviary, and displays a spinning vinyl record when music is playing. The app also animates a tonearm that aligns itself with the current playback time and moves in and out when playing and pausing the music. You can also “scrub” the vinyl to seek forwards and backwards. Vinyls is available on Mac, iPhone and iPad.

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This week’s Amazon public relations push will no doubt go down as one of the odder public-facing strategies in tech. As some of the company’s biggest rivals were getting ready to virtually testify on Capitol Hill, the retail giant’s CEO of worldwide consumer business appeared to suggest that Amazon is not only as progressive as self-declared democratic socialist Bernie Sanders, but also more effective in achieving those leftist policies.

Ahead of the Vermont senator’s visit to Amazon’s Bessemer, Alabama fulfillment center, Dave Clark tweeted, “I welcome [Sanders] to Birmingham and appreciate his push for a progressive workplace. I often say we are the Bernie Sanders of employers, but that’s not quite right because we actually deliver a progressive workplace.”

The statement was unsurprisingly greeted with pushback from labor groups. The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) sent TechCrunch a lengthy response from president Stuart Appelbaum to the odd statement:

How arrogant and tone deaf can Amazon be? Do they really believe that the wage they pay – which is below what workers in nearby unionized warehouses receive and below Alabama’s median wage – gives them the right to mistreat and dehumanize their employees, put their workers’ health and safety in jeopardy, require them to maintain an unbearable pace, which even Amazon itself admits that a quarter of their workforce won’t be able to meet, and to deny working men and women the dignity and respect they deserve.

The organization, which is helping facilitate the Bessemer warehouse’s union voting, goes on to cite high turnover rates and pay cuts amid the pandemic and founder Jeff Bezos’s ballooning wealth. The founder — who is set to step down as CEO some time in Q3 — reportedly added more than $72 billion to his net worth in 2020, as Amazon employees became essential workers amid COVID-19-fueled shutdowns.

“Stuart Appelbaum, Chief Disinformation Officer of RWDSU, in an attempt to save his long declining union, is taking alternative facts to a whole new level,” Amazon’s head of worldwide comms Drew Herdener tells TechCrunch. “But our employees are smart and know the truth—starting wages of $15 or more, health care from day one, and a safe and inclusive workplace. We encourage all of our employees to vote.”

For many in the U.S., Amazon’s online delivery service provided a lifeline, as many stores were forced to close over pandemic precautions. The Bessemer facility opened on March 29, just as the first wave was cresting in the U.S. The company was anticipating a potential strain on its resources as record numbers of Americans were suddenly forced to stay home and were otherwise avoiding in-person shopping at all costs.

“Our team at Amazon is thankful for the support we have received from state and community leaders, and we are excited to be a part of the Bessemer community,” Director of Operations Travis Maynard said at the time. “We’re proud to create great jobs in Bessemer with industry-leading pay and benefits that start on day one, in a safe, innovative workplace.”

After several years of negative coverage over its warehouse working conditions, it’s not surprising that the company has become proactively reflexive when it comes to working conditions.

“When New York City became the epicenter [of COVID-19], that’s when the Bessemer facility opened up,” Christian Smalls, a former Amazon worker-turned-critic said at TechCrunch’s Justice event earlier this month. “So the union got a head start on talking to workers. So that’s a gem for anybody or any union that plans on trying to unionize the building — that you have a facility in your community that’s about to open up, when opening, that’s the best time to connect with workers. That’s what happened last year. And as a result, the workers had seen what happened to the workers that were unprotected and they don’t want that. They want better for themselves.”

Next week, the RWDSU will begin tallying votes for what has shaped up to be the largest union push since Amazon’s 1995 founding, much to the company’s chagrin. In recent months, the company has been hoping to throw a wrench in the works. In January, it unsuccessfully appealed a ruling by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that allowed workers to vote by mail, as more than 350,000 COVID-19 cases had been reported in the state since the beginning of the pandemic.

Amazon expressed concerns that mail-in voting would monopolize too much time and resources. “Union avoidance” firm Jackson Lewis suggested that such rules put employers at a disadvantage, “because eligible voters are given several days after receiving their ballots to return them to the NLRB, the impact and momentum of the employer’s voter education campaign is decreased. This does not exist in connection with a manual ballot election, where the employer may educate employees one-on-one until the last moment before they vote.”

The following month, Amazon ran anti-union ads on its streaming subsidiary, Twitch. The spots featured employees discussing why they were planning to vote no, and compelled people to visit Do it Without Dues, which blasted potential union membership fees.

“Amazon feels that it has to go to extremes like this in order to gaslight its workers about the dreadful working conditions at its Bessemer warehouse,” Appelbaum told the press in response to the ads. Twitch pulled the spots, adding that they, “should never have been allowed to run on [the] service.”

Workers have continued to be critical of conditions in Amazon’s warehouses, frequently comparing the work to that of robots that have increasingly become their colleagues. Last week, New York Magazine published a piece from a Bessemer picker who describes long and tiring days on the floor.

“It really is not fair for employees to get fired for going to the bathroom,” the worker, Darryl Richardson, tells the magazine. “Sometimes the water in the bathrooms isn’t working on the floor, and you have to go down another flight of stairs to go to the bathroom.”

A number of similar stories have been recounted to the media over the years. Images of workers peeing in water bottles so as to not be docked pay — or worse — for taking a bathroom break have almost certainly become the most visceral.

When Wisconsin Rep. Mark Pocan called out Clark’s Sanders comparisons on Twitter earlier this week, an official account shot back, “We hope you can enact policies that get other employers to offer what we already do.”

Sanders has been a long-time critic of the company. The Vermont senator was one of a handful of progressive politicians who compelled Amazon to raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour, while criticizing massive tax breaks. In 2018, he introduced the Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies (BEZOS) bill.

“The taxpayers in this country should not be subsidizing a guy who’s worth $150 billion, whose wealth is increasing by $260 million every single day,” Sanders told TechCrunch at the time. “That is insane. He has enough money to pay his workers a living wage. He does not need corporate welfare. And our goal is to see that Bezos pays his workers a living wage.” That November, the company relented, increasing minimum wage to $15 an hour — something that has since become a major talking point for Amazon.

Responding to Pocan’s comments about “union-bust[ing] & mak[ing] workers urinate in water bottles,” the Amazon News Twitter account wrote, “You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us. The truth is that we have over a million incredible employees around the world who are proud of what they do, and have great wages and health care from day one.”

Pocan’s reply was simple: “[Y]es, I do believe your workers. You don’t?”

In addition to past reports of warehouse workers and delivery drivers peeing in bottles, a new report from The Intercept notes that the act is “widespread,” due to workplace pressures. It cites an email from last May that also adds defecation into the mix.

“We’ve noticed an uptick recently of all kinds of unsanitary garbage being left inside bags: used masks, gloves, bottles of urine,” the email titled Amazon Confidential reads. “By scanning the QR code on the bag, we can easily identify the DA who was in possession of the bag last. These behaviors are unacceptable, and will result in Tier 1 Infractions going forward. Please communicate this message to your drivers. I know it may seem obvious, or like something you shouldn’t need to coach, but please be explicit when communicating the message that they CANNOT poop, or leave bottles of urine inside bags.”

As misguided or glib as the Amazon Twitter response may seem, it’s clear why the company has gone on the offensive here. “We’re not alone in our support for a higher federal minimum wage,” the accounted noted in the wake of the dustup with Pocan. The company adds that it has been pushing for a federal minimum wage increase following its own.

The push to unionize, meanwhile, has made strange political bedfellows, ranging from Stacey Abrams to Marco Rubio. Breaking with the customary party position, the Republican senator wrote in an op-ed, “Here’s my standard: When the conflict is between working Americans and a company whose leadership has decided to wage culture war against working-class values, the choice is easy — I support the workers. And that’s why I stand with those at Amazon’s Bessemer warehouse today.”

Rubio’s support of unionizing was tied, in part, to concerns over a “‘woke’ human resources fad,” but it’s still fairly uncommon for an event like this to find him on the side of the likes of Joe Biden, who had previously promised to be “the most pro-union president you’ve ever seen.”

Amazon will no doubt be keeping a close eye on Tuesday’s vote count, aware that the results will have a far wider ranging impact than the 6,000 workers currently employed at Bessemer. If unionization fails, the company will tout the results as vindication that its work force is perfectly happily without labor interference. A vote to unionize, on the other hand, could well embolden further unionization efforts across the company.

This story has been updated to include comment from Amazon. 

Update: The Amazon News Twitter account has continued to double down on its corporate clap backs against progressive and leftist politicians, having since attempted to take both Senators Sanders and Warren to task.

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