Techmeme
August 12, 2021, 4:55 PM

Top News

Mike Isaac / New York Times:
Reddit raises $410M+ led by Fidelity Investments at a $10B+ valuation, up from $6B six months ago when it raised $250M; the new round could reach ~$700M  —  Reddit, the virtual town square of the consumer internet, has raised a fresh $410 million in funding, valuing it at more than $10 billion, the company said on Thursday.
Naman Ramachandran / Variety:
UK's CMA says it has provisionally found that Facebook's Giphy acquisition could negatively impact competition, such as by denying competitors access to GIFs  —  The merger of social media giant Facebook and Giphy, the largest provider of GIFs, has run into a roadblock from the U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
TikTok details upcoming protections for users aged 13 to 17, including turning in-app messaging off by default and changes to notifications  —  TikTok today becomes the latest tech company to roll out increased protections for minors on its platform in the wake of increased regulatory scrutiny.
Simon Evans / Reuters:
Lionel Messi's new contract with Paris St Germain includes a “large number” of crypto $PSG Fan Tokens from Socios.com, which let holders vote on minor decisions  —  Argentine soccer star Lionel Messi's transfer to French club Paris St Germain included a payment in cryptocurrency fan tokens …
Joseph Cox / VICE:
Google says it banned location data company SafeGraph in early June, meaning apps using SafeGuard location SDK had to remove it  —  SafeGraph sells smartphone location data to essentially anyone.  Google banned the company in June.  —  Joseph Cox  —  Google has banned SafeGraph …
Nathan Grayson / Washington Post:
Thousands of marginalized streamers implore Twitch to counter “hate raids”, where groups of malicious users fill a streamer's chat with targeted abuse  —  During an Aug. 6 broadcast, the Twitch streamer RekItRaven — who is Black and uses they/them pronouns …
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / VICE:
Nvidia says part of its April keynote was led by a virtual replica of CEO Jensen Huang, created by scanning Huang and then training an AI to mimic his gestures  —  Nvidia pulled off a stunt to promote and showcase its latest technology by digitizing its CEO Jensen Huang in a conference keynote.
Joseph Cox / VICE:
Internal docs: Amazon plans to monitor keyboard strokes and mouse movements of customer service staff to stop rogue workers or hackers accessing customer data  —  An internal document also mentions cases where imposters have stolen Amazon customer data.  —  Joseph Cox
Andrew Deck / Rest of World:
As Substack expands abroad, writers say it needs local payment options and customer service in other languages; some worry about legal support in hostile states  —  From India to Brazil, Substack is awarding grants and lending journalists editorial resources.  How far will that support really go?
Gael Fashingbauer Cooper / CNET:
Twitter rolls out a web and app redesign, implementing its first proprietary font, Chirp, high-contrast black and white follow and unfollow buttons, and more  —  It's inevitable: Twitter changes Twitter, and Twitter users complain on Twitter.  But does Chirp make you feel like a woodpecker is pounding on your skull?
Jon Porter / The Verge:
Honor unveils Magic 3 series, its first post-Huawei smartphones, all with 6.76-inch displays, Google services, up to 512GB and 12GB RAM, starting at €899  —  Honor has announced its first flagship smartphones since being sold off by former parent company Huawei: the Magic 3 series.
Wolfie Zhao / The Block:
The attacker who stole $611M from Poly Network has now returned over $342M in USDC, BTCB, SHIBA, and others, after saying they were “ready to surrender”  —  Quick Take  — Poly Network attacker has started returning the funds that were stolen in the largest DeFi hack to date.
Li Jin / Li's Newsletter:
A look at how centralized social media platforms have made the creator economy corrosive for online workers and what can be done to remedy the issue  —  The creator economy is becoming the gig economy—but there's still time to turn things around  —  Nearly two years ago, I published …

Sponsor Posts

Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Zoho:
CIO challenge 6: Can we find an effective solution that also minimizes operational costs?  —  Welcome to the next and final installment of our CIO series!  After what feels like a thousand cups of coffee …
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Techmeme Leaderboards:
Discover the top reporters on AI, VR, policy, and much more  —  We've analyzed Techmeme's news crawl to identify the most influential and prolific writers on 48 news topics.  Download reports immediately for just $100.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Fri. 11/15 - Crypto Ascendant
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:55 PM ET, August 12, 2021.

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

Eric Krebs / Bloomberg:
Li Yuan / New York Times:

Earlier Picks

John D. McKinnon / Wall Street Journal: