Techmeme
January 31, 2021, 2:15 PM

Top News

Kashmir Hill / New York Times:
How one disgruntled person destroyed the online reputations of 145+ people, aided by “complaint sites” in the US and platforms like Google that rarely intervene  —  Outrageous lies destroyed Guy Babcock's online reputation.  When he went hunting for their source, what he discovered was worse than he could have imagined.
Cat Ferguson / MIT Technology Review:
VAMS, a CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M to manage rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine, has been abandoned by states due to bugs and problems  —  The CDC ordered software that was meant to manage the vaccine rollout.  Instead, it has been plagued by problems and abandoned by most states.
Corbin Davenport / Android Police:
Google has reinstated federated chat app Element on the Play Store after briefly pulling it over abusive content, which is now removed, on Element's servers  —  Element is a popular client for the federated chat protocol Matrix, and we highlighted it in our roundup of the best open-source alternatives …
Under the Hood:
John Herrman / New York Times:
Evelyn Douek / Lawfare:
Analysis of the first Oversight Board rulings, which in the long term may influence Facebook moderation rules more than the upcoming decision on Trump ban  —  After seemingly endless announcements heralding the arrival of the Facebook Oversight Board (FOB) over the past 18 months, the board has …
Wall Street Journal:
Experts say Apple's App Tracking Transparency feature will damage Facebook's core business; the feature will limit Facebook's data collection from 85K+ iOS apps  —  New feature on iPhones will limit Facebook's ability to collect data from apps and prove that ads work
Christine Hall / Crunchbase News:
Analysis: investors have pumped $7.3B into ~730 US-based fitness apps and services over the past five years, with $2.4B coming just in 2020 across 187 deals  —  Sometimes the best way to know something works is by trying it out yourself.  —  Health and fitness-related goals are commonly …
Zeyi Yang / Protocol:
A look at Bilibili, the “YouTube for China”, as it balances competition and cooperation with Alibaba and Tencent, both of which invested in the video platform  —  “Should Bilibili keep expanding and become a larger player, their relationship with Tencent will surely deteriorate.”

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 2:15 PM ET, January 31, 2021.

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Lara O'Reilly / Business Insider:

Earlier Picks

Prachir Singh / Counterpoint Research:
Catherine Shu / TechCrunch:
Chloe Sorvino / Forbes: