Equity Monday: If you don’t want to be criticized for your editorial choices, don’t make editorial choices

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.

This Monday show actually felt a bit old-school, in that the weekend controversy in tech has spilled over into the working morning, meaning that we need to talk about it. But first, markets:

• After the somewhat punishing start to last week, today’s trading is somewhat more staid. Global equities are moving, but nothing suicidal, and cryptos are off a bit in the last 24 hours, but up in the last seven days. Naturally, given what has happened in recent trading sessions, all that could change in a moment but at least we’re starting in un-choppy waters.
• The Joe Rogan furor continued. After several musicians decided to take their music off the service in protest of Spotify’s decision to pay for material that those artists viewed as undercutting public health, Spotify made some of its rules public and said that it will append COVID-19 notes to podcasts that discuss the pandemic. We talk about why.
• In startup-land, FTX has raised another huge round, TCV is putting more late-stage money into early-stage rounds, and Bamboo raised.
• Closing out, changes are afoot in China’s venture capital market.

So yes, there’s going to be a lot of Twitter drama this week. But don’t worry! You can compensate for that by hating on people posting Wordle scores, as that appears to be the latest way to lose friends online.