Is it safe to send kids back to school?

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Your daily dose of what’s up in emerging technology

06.30.20

Good morning! Today: is it safe for kids to return to school? Also: a day of social media bans for Trump and the far right, and covid-19 could accelerate the robot job takeover. Get your friends to sign up here to get The Download every day.

Is it safe to send kids back to school?

Shuttered: In the UK and in most US states, schools closed in March. Many of them will keep their doors shut until the fall. That’s six months without the normality of a school day.

How will we know when it’s safe for children to return? There can never be a cast-iron guarantee. But for parents to be able to gauge the level of risk, there are three questions that need answering. How susceptible are children to covid-19? How badly does it affect them? And do they spread it to others? Children are less likely to catch the coronavirus than adults, and when they do catch it, they usually get very mild effects. However, we don’t know the extent to which children can spread the coronavirus once infected. That will require more studies and more research. Read the full story.

How Reddit kicked off a day of bans for Trump and the far right

The news: Early on Monday, Reddit banned r/The_Donald, a once-notorious pro-Trump forum, for repeated rule-breaking, one of 2,000 subreddits banned on the site. Later in the day, live-streaming video service Twitch announced that it had temporarily suspended President Trump’s account for rebroadcasting comments about Mexican immigrants that broke its “hateful conduct and harassment policies.” YouTube, meanwhile, followed by banning several far-right and racist creators, including white supremacists David Duke, Richard Spencer, and Stefan Molyneux.

Better late than never? Monday’s bans were preceded by policy changes at Twitter and Facebook that shifted, to a degree, how the platforms handle rule-breaking behavior by accounts linked to the president and the far right. r/The_Donald was once a core organizing point for the pro-Trump internet, involved in spreading the Pizzagate conspiracy theory.

But will it do anything? In reality, r/The_Donald had been nearly dormant for months, as the Washington Post noted—and most of the other banned subreddits were tiny or inactive. Still, the swift sequence of bans and suspensions was a moment reminiscent of August 2018, when conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was banned from most mainstream social-media sites over the space of a few days. Traffic to his Infowars website dropped significantly as a result, and it is now around a third of where it was in 2018. Read the full story.

—Abby Ohlheiser

Covid-19 could accelerate the robot takeover of human jobs

Inside a Schnucks grocery store in St. Louis, Missouri, the toilet paper and baking ingredients are mostly cleared out. A rolling robot turns a corner and heads down an aisle stocked with salsa and taco shells. It comes up against a masked customer wearing shorts and sneakers; he’s pushing a shopping cart carrying bread.

The robot looks something like a tower speaker on top of an autonomous home vacuum cleaner—tall and thin, with orb-like screen eyes halfway up that shift left and right. A red sign on its long head makes the introductions. “Hi, I’m Tally! I check shelf inventory!” A moment of uncertainty ensues. The customer heads down another aisle.

Tally carries on taking stock of Ritz crackers, tuna fish cans, and nutmeg. Customers—some wearing gloves, a few choosing to shop maskless—are unfazed by its presence.

What seemed a little strange to shoppers when Tally arrived a year ago is now, mid-pandemic, not even close to being the most unusual thing happening inside the store. The robot has become part of the backdrop, posing far less threat than other shoppers and arousing much less concern than more pressing topics such as personal safety, possible meat shortages, and when the next shipment of Clorox wipes might arrive.

Such machines are not just at grocery stores. Roboticists at Texas A&M University and the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue recently surveyed over 120 reports from around the world about how robots were being used during the covid-19 pandemic. They discovered them spraying disinfectants, walking dogs, and showing properties for real estate agents. But where they may be doing the most to save lives is in hospitals, helping with things like disinfection, patient intake, and delivery of supplies. Read the full story.

Read the rest of the latest edition of MIT Technology Review here and subscribe.

And check out our list of 35 young innovators who are trying to change the world.

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction in these weird times. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet 'em at me.)

+ The wondrous joy of wild swimming.
+ A strangely mesmerizing and relaxing hour-long, 10-year timelapse video of the sun from NASA.
+ This pastry designer produces incredible, intricate patterns.
+ Some stunning photos of the great outdoors.
+ A free online exhibition about digital identity and privacy.

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The top ten must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 India has just banned TikTok—plus 58 other Chinese apps
App bans as a weapon of international diplomacy. Very 2020. (TR)

2 Why this coronavirus mutation has taken over the world
At least four lab experiments suggest it makes the virus more infectious. (WP $)
+ The virus is spreading too quickly and widely to contain, says the CDC. (Axios)
+ Some US states are having to hit pause on reopening. (NYT $)
+ Blood donors will help us work out how long coronavirus antibodies last. (The Verge)

3 A covid-19 vaccine candidate has been approved for use by China’s military 💉
Whether it will be mandatory or optional for troops to get the shot hasn’t been disclosed. (Reuters)

4 How hate speech campaigners found Facebook’s weak spot
It took less than two hours for the company to react after big brands started boycotting it. (The Guardian)
+ The campaigners have the right company but the wrong diagnosis. (The Verge)

5 Tensions are rising at Amazon
Warehouse workers say the pandemic has worsened existing problems. (Recode)
+ Amazon employees in Germany are striking over safety concerns. (CNBC)
+ Inside Amazon’s race to hire 175,000 workers during a pandemic. (TR)

6 House Democrats want 100% clean cars by 2035 🚗
The pledge will be unveiled as part of an ambitious plan to combat climate change today. (Bloomberg)
+ A study claims road deaths could be halved if safety tech was ubiquitous. (Engadget)

7 A flu virus with “pandemic potential” has been found in China
Oh give us a BREAK, world. (BBC)
+ In all seriousness: should we be worried? (CNET)

8 The 👁👄👁 stunt highlighted tech’s race issues
Shiny new things are so much easier than self-reflection and deep structural change. (Wired $)

9 The best lesbian dating app: TikTok
There’s a whole community on there with its own memes, cliques, influencers and drama. (NYT $)

10 Could teleportation ever work?
Probably not, but it’s fun to imagine how we might try. (Gizmodo)

Do you see hype in tech when others see hope? Or vice versa?

MIT Technology Review wants contrarians for our Global Panel. Join today.

Quote of the Day

“They are no longer talking to you but about you to each other; it’s a book club and you’re the book.”

—Writer Marie Le Conte describes the bruising experience of inadvertently becoming the target of a Twitter feeding frenzy in an article for The Critic.

Top image credit: MAXWELL HOLYOKE-HIRSCH

Please send pastry to hi@technologyreview.com.

Follow me on Twitter at @charlottejee. Thanks for reading!

—Charlotte