Techmeme
February 11, 2021, 12:45 AM

Top News

Mike Isaac / New York Times:
Sources: Facebook is building an audio chat product, currently in the earliest stages of development, that is similar to Clubhouse  —  The social network, which has a history of cloning its competitors, has started working on an audio chat product.  —  SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook is building …
Casey Newton / Platformer:
New York Times:
Facebook says it will test a reduction of political content in News Feed for some users in Canada, Brazil, and Indonesia this week, and the US in coming weeks  —  News feeds will start getting less political content in Canada, Brazil and Indonesia, the social network said, with the change reaching the U.S. in coming weeks.
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Users noticed Google iOS apps warning them the apps were out of date, despite Google not updating them since before Apple's Dec. 8 privacy label change  —  Though Google has promised to update its suite of apps with App Privacy labels to comply with App Store rules that Apple began enforcing in December …
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Europol, working with US, UK, and others, says 10 people have been arrested for allegedly stealing $100M in cryptocurrency from celebrities via SIM-swap attacks  —  Eight men were arrested in England and Scotland as part of an investigation into a series of SIM swapping attacks targeting US celebrities.
Justine Calma / The Verge:
Tesla's $1.5B bitcoin purchase conflicts with its environmental goals, as mining the cryptocurrency consumes massive amounts of energy by design  —  Tesla's banking on a cryptocurrency that's inherently inefficient  —  Tesla just gave bitcoin a big boost that's likely to result …
Financial Times:
Daniel Goldblatt / The Wrap:
Facebook says Instagram has removed Robert F Kennedy Jr's account for making false claims about COVID-19 and vaccines  —  Move comes as the company is expanding efforts to crack down on conspiracy theory content  —  Instagram removed Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s account on Wednesday …
David Yaffe-Bellany / Bloomberg:
Biden administration asks a federal judge to put litigation over Trump's proposed TikTok ban on hold while it undertakes a review  —  The Biden administration asked a federal judge in Washington to put on hold the litigation over a ban on the Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok that was pursued by former president Donald Trump.
Ax Sharma / BleepingComputer:
A researcher was able to breach 35+ companies, including Microsoft and Apple, using a software supply chain attack that leveraged an open source ecosystem flaw  —  A researcher managed to breach over 35 major companies' internal systems, including Microsoft, Apple, PayPal, Shopify, Netflix …
The Information:
Internal data shows only 11.3M US households regularly watch NBCU's Peacock; sources: NBCU has pitched ViacomCBS about bundling their streaming services  —  As Netflix and Disney cement their leads over an array of rivals in the video-streaming market, top executives at Comcast and its NBCUniversal arm are in a quandary.
Financial Times:
Sources: Microsoft made an offer to acquire Pinterest in recent months; talks are not active right now  —  Exclusive: Software group looked at potential deal for $51bn social media company  —  Microsoft approached Pinterest in recent months about a potential deal to acquire …
Lora Kolodny / CNBC:
Uber reports mixed Q4 results: revenue drops 16% YoY to $3.2B, net loss narrows to $968M from $1.1B YoY; net loss in 2020 was $6.77B, down from $8.51B in 2019  —  - Uber's losses are narrowing as delivery growth continues to outpace a drop in ride-sharing revenue.
Saqib Shah / Engadget:
Google launches Google News Showcase in UK and Argentina, after debuting the service in Australia last week, and says it now has over 450 publications globally  —  Google News Showcase is starting to roll out to more countries worldwide, including the UK and Argentina, on the heels of its Australian launch last week.
The Information:
Sources: Stir Money, whose software helps video and audio producers, writers, and performers manage their income, raises Series A led by a16z at $100M valuation  —  Andreessen Horowitz recently won a competitive deal to lead the Series A financing of Stir Money, a startup whose software helps video …
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Twitter says it has suspended 500+ accounts in India for violating rules but has not taken any action on accounts of journalists, activists, and politicians  —  Twitter said on Wednesday it has taken actions on more than 500 accounts and reduced visibility of some hashtags in India …
Sky Sports:
Instagram to impose stricter penalties, including removing accounts, to prevent abusive messages in DMs, after racist abuse was directed at footballers  —  Instagram to remove accounts of people who send abusive messages while developing new controls to help reduce the abuse people …

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Sharon Otterman / New York Times:
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