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Techmeme
February 23, 2019, 8:50 PM

Top News

Joseph Bernstein / BuzzFeed News:
Caroline O'Donovan / BuzzFeed News:
50+ Microsoft staff sign letter to Satya Nadella and Brad Smith demanding an end to a $479M US Army contract to license HoloLens tech for combat and training  —  A group of Microsoft employees is circulating a letter among the company's over 130,000-person staff demanding that executives cancel a $479 million contract with the US Army.
Ryan Broderick / BuzzFeed News:
After reports of pedophiles using YouTube comments to sexualize videos of children, YouTube warns creators it may demonetize videos with inappropriate comments  —  A new controversy this week over the sexualized exploitation of children on YouTube has set off a wave of advertiser boycotts …
Ryan Mac / BuzzFeed News:
Sources characterize Zuckerberg's May announcement of Facebook's Clear History tool as an example of the company's history of prioritizing optics over substance  —  Last May, Facebook promised to create a “Clear History” function it said would give users more control over their data.
Wired:
Social media companies should gain more in-house knowledge about mental health to realize the impact of recommendation algorithms on users with mental illness  —  IT'S TROUBLING ENOUGH that British teenager Molly Russell sought out images of suicide and self-harm online before she took her own life in 2017.
Vivienne Walt / Fortune:
An overview of Google's efforts to scale its business in India, where falling data prices and rising smartphone penetration have opened up big new opportunities  —  Patchy Internet, multiple languages, low smartphone penetration: But a big opportunity.  —  It is already dark in the New Delhi suburb …
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Report: 30.4% of e-sports viewers in Q4 2018 were women, up from 23.9% in 2016  —  Women's viewership of esports grew from 23.9 percent of all watchers in 2016 to 30.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2018, according to a report by market researcher Interpret.
Monica Nickelsburg / GeekWire:
Sources: Amazon may be scaling down its expansion in Seattle, including subleasing offices it rented in a new skyscraper, and expanding in neighboring Bellevue  —  For years, Amazon has gobbled up office space in Seattle at a breakneck pace, creating a red-hot commercial real estate market in the city's urban core.
Tweets: @mnickelsburg
Timothy B. Lee / Ars Technica:
Florida inmate sues the Florida Department of Corrections after he was told he has to repurchase $569 of music he bought after the FDOC changed music vendors  —  Prisoners who paid $1.70 per song lost access when the prison changed vendors.  —  Florida inmate William Demler says that since 2012 …
Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
Twitter co-founder and former CEO Ev Williams is stepping down from the company's board  —  Twitter Co-founder and former CEO Ev Williams is stepping down from the company's board, according to a Friday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.  —  “It's been an incredible 13 years …
Stephen Nellis / Reuters:
Intel says it does not expect consumer products with its 5G modems to appear on the market until 2020  —  (Reuters) - Intel Corp executives said on Friday its 5G modem chips will not appear in mobile phones until 2020, raising the possibility its biggest customer, Apple Inc …

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More News

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Earlier Picks

Caroline O'Donovan / BuzzFeed News:
Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:
Joe Rossignol / MacRumors:
Jon Porter / The Verge: