Techmeme
February 22, 2021, 2:05 AM

Top News

BuzzFeed News:
Sources: Zuckerberg's personal intervention to reduce the severity of Alex Jones' ban in 2019 slowed down Facebook's efforts to deal with dangerous content  —  In April 2019, Facebook was preparing to ban one of the internet's most notorious spreaders of misinformation and hate, Infowars founder Alex Jones.
Bloomberg:
Clubhouse says it has added security safeguards and banned a user after some Clubhouse audio and metadata was found on a third-party website  —  - The app's creators had been warned user data was vulnerable  — An unidentified user streamed audio chats to their own website
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Researchers discover macOS malware dubbed “Silver Sparrow” on at least 30K Macs, which includes a native M1 version and leverages the Installer JavaScript API  —  With no payload, analysts are struggling to learn what this mature malware does.  —  A previously undetected piece …
Ashlee Vance / Bloomberg:
Profile of Youyang Gu, a 27-year-old data scientist whose ML model most accurately predicted COVID-19 death totals, which the CDC put on its forecasting website  —  Spring 2020 brought with it the arrival of the celebrity statistical model.  As the public tried to gauge how big a deal …
David Uberti / Wall Street Journal:
Accellion's file transfer software hack, which affected Jones Day, also impacted New Zealand's central bank, 1M unemployment benefits applicants in WA, and more  —  Like the SolarWinds breach, the incident highlights supply-chain vulnerabilities  —  The hack of software provider Accellion USA LLC …
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
WhatsApp says users who haven't accepted its new privacy policy by May 15 can receive calls and notifications “for a short time”, but not read or send messages  —  WhatsApp said earlier this week that it will allow users to review its planned privacy update at “their own pace” …
Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal:
For many services, moderating content has become an existential crisis; some services are even establishing rules that pre-empt the need for costly moderation  —  Content moderation rules used to be a question of taste.  Now, they can determine a service's prospects for survival.
Ben Smith / New York Times:
Russian investigative journalism is flourishing alongside “probiv”, the buying of data on phone calls, cell location, or air travel off Telegram or the dark web  —  A new wave of news outlets has used conventional, and unconventional, methods to pierce the veil of Putin's power.
Sheldon Chanel / The Guardian:
Facebook's Australia ban is acute for people in places like Fiji, who rely on phone plans with cheap Facebook access as going to news websites costs more data  —  Media experts fear that communities reliant on the site for information will suffer significant impact
Ian Carlos Campbell / The Verge:
Reuters:
China finalizes rules on banks' internet loan businesses, affecting Alibaba and others, setting new capital requirements, must be complied with by July 17, 2022  —  SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China's bank regulator on Saturday tightened requirements on the internet loan business of commercial banks …
Reuters:
Facebook deletes the main page of the Myanmar military for “repeated violations of Community Standards prohibiting incitement of violence and coordinating harm”  —  (Reuters) - Facebook on Sunday deleted the main page of the Myanmar military under it standards prohibiting …
Rich Mogull / TidBITS:
Apple's new Platform Security user guide follows the industry trend of growing vertical hardware, software, and cloud integration to improve ecosystem security  —  Even as a security professional, it's easy to get lost within the digital covers of Apple's latest Platform Security user guide.

Sponsor Posts

Google:
Gemini 2.5 Pro: Our most intelligent AI model  —  Gemini 2.5 Pro (experimental) is now available, with thinking capabilities, enhanced performance, and improved accuracy.  Try it at no cost in the Gemini app.
UiPath:
UiPath Unveils 10 Innovations that Will Shape the Agentic Future  —  Orchestration engine, API workflows and agentic testing among key features of new UiPath Platform™ for agentic automation, launched at UiPath DevCon 2025
Zoho:
How EQ plays a defining role in workplace communication  —  What if everyone you worked with had a psychic ability to understand how you're feeling and respond accordingly?  Wouldn't that be great?
IDrive:
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More News

Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch:

Earlier Picks

Erika Hayasaki / New York Times:
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Eric Benjamin Seufert / Mobile Dev Memo: