No to Political Ads, Yes to 5G, Fintech and Femtech Twitter | Benefit Daily

No to Political Ads, Yes to 5G, Fintech and Femtech

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said the company would no longer allow political ads on its social network. "While internet advertising is incredibly powerful and very effective for commercial advertisers, that power brings significant risks to politics, where it can be used to influence votes to affect the lives of millions," he emphasized. Twitter's policy banning political ads will go into effect on November 22, and the full policy will be posted one week earlier, on November 15. Dorsey pushed back against the reasoning Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg who defends Facebook's policy of allowing paid political ads with intentional lies and misinformation.

Berlin-based femtech startup Inne is coming out of stealth to announce an €8 million (~$8.8M) Series A and give the first glimpse of a hormone-tracking subscription product for fertility-tracking and natural contraception that’s slated for launch in Q1 next year. The Series A is led by led by Blossom Capital, with early Inne backer Monkfish Equity also participating, along with a number of angel investors — including Taavet Hinrikus, co-founder of TransferWise; Tom Stafford, managing partner at DST; and Trivago co-founder Rolf Schromgens.

UK-founded fintech startup Koyo, which gives loans to people with younger or partly-wiped credit scores, has raised $4.9 million in a mixture of debt and equity funding. Koyo is designed to help those who have a short, untested credit history behind them. Led by London-based ‘venture fund meets startup studio’ Foward Partners, the round also saw participation from European global market investor Seedcamp, founder and CEO of non-bank mortgage lender LendInvest Christian Faes, and founder and CEO of real-time financial crime insights platform ComplyAdvantage Charles Delingpole.

China plans to turn on its first 5G networks on Friday, setting up the country to leapfrog other nations in deploying the superfast cellular technology. China’s three major state-owned wireless carriers, China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom, will open the country’s 5G network for public use in about 50 major cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, said Chen Zhaoxiong, vice minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on Thursday at a Beijing conference. That will allow those with the few available 5G-compatible smartphones to buy a subscription to access the network.

Read and Ponder

He used to work at Starbucks. Now this founder's coffee empire is closing in on a valuation of $1 billion. How?