Techmeme
September 5, 2020, 4:30 AM

Top News

Slate:
Facebook's pre-election ban on political ads will likely suppress important speech and inhibits campaigns' ability to respond to late-breaking news on Facebook  —  On Thursday, Facebook announced a set of U.S. election season changes to political advertising and content moderation.
Jeremy B. Merrill / ProPublica:
Facebook's ban on political ads in the week prior to the election applies to election officials, who use Facebook to inform voters about the voting process  —  ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.  Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published.
Ashley Gold / Axios:
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Financial Times:
Sources: unusually large purchases of call options by SoftBank over the past month partly fueled the latest tech stock rally  —  Japanese conglomerate has been snapping up options in huge amounts over past month  —  SoftBank is the “Nasdaq whale” that has bought billions of dollars' worth …
Amazon Web Services:
Amazon responds to JEDI decision, calling it a “politically corrupted contract award” and attacks Trump's role in steering the award away from AWS  —  Earlier today, the DoD announced it had concluded its corrective action and affirmed its prior JEDI contract award to Microsoft.
Aaron Gregg / Washington Post:
Pentagon reaffirms its controversial decision to give JEDI cloud contract to Microsoft; Amazon is likely to continue its legal challenge  —  The Pentagon reaffirmed its controversial decision to give its largest-ever cloud computing contract to Microsoft instead of to market-leader Amazon …
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Facebook is testing displaying Instagram Stories directly in the main Facebook app; the test requires users opt in and link their accounts together  —  Only your Instagram followers can see your stories in Facebook  —  Some Facebook users have recently noticed that they can now watch …
Patrick McGee / Financial Times:
Under shareholder pressure, Apple quietly publishes its human rights policy based on UN guiding principles, but will follow national law if the two conflict  —  iPhone maker approves new policy after shareholder pressure  —  Apple has for the first time published a human rights policy …
Dave Lee / Financial Times:
Amazon deleted 20,000 reviews by 7 of its top 10 UK contributors after an FT analysis found they appeared to profit from posting thousands of five-star ratings  —  FT investigation finds suspicious behaviour by 9 of top 10 UK contributors on feedback  —  Amazon has deleted approximately …
Zeynep Tufekci / The Atlantic:
In an attempt to open during the pandemic, many US universities are forcing students to download location-tracking apps, sometimes as a condition of enrollment  —  Trying to do so is all but useless.  —  In Michigan, a small liberal-arts college is requiring students to install an app called Aura …

Sponsor Posts

Termina:
AI Powered Diligence at Scale  —  VCs and founders deploy Termina AI Scans on >12% of all known series A+ deals to uncover hidden risks and opportunities.  Explore how you too can invest and build better companies with AI.
Zoho:
Zoho Notebook: The best free note-taking app for Mac  —  If you're a Mac user, you know the value of a tool that just fits when it's designed to keep up with you.  That's exactly what Zoho Notebook delivers.
SBS Comms:
Expect Better: SBS Comms  —  The media landscape is changing fast, so don't be slow — out with the old, in with the new.  SBS helps tech companies like GitHub, Cloudflare, Flexport, Ramp and more modernize comms and secure impactful results.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Techmeme Ride Home:
The 2,000th Episode Spectacular
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe to Techmeme Ride Home.
The Logan Bartlett Show:
Yamini Rangan (CEO, Hubspot) On Sales and Marketing Frameworks That Win in the Age of AI
A podcast hosted by Logan Bartlett, an investor at Redpoint Ventures, covering tech with industry insiders.
Subscribe to The Logan Bartlett Show.
Generative Now:
Arvind Jain: Why Now Is the Time to Solve Enterprise Search
A podcast from Lightspeed dedicated to highlighting the stories, strategies and insights behind today's most exciting AI companies.
Subscribe to Generative Now.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Matthew Ball: Why the games business is broken
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Invest Like the Best:
Ravi Gupta - AI or Die
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:30 AM ET, September 5, 2020.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Alex Weprin / Hollywood Reporter:

Earlier Picks

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
TechCrunch:
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Alex Heath / The Information:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: