Techmeme
September 2, 2021, 9:20 PM

Top News

Sam Schechner / Wall Street Journal:
Ireland's Data Protection Commission, on behalf of the EU, fines WhatsApp €225M for privacy violations, the second-largest fine under GDPR; WhatsApp will appeal  —  Regulators say chat-service unit failed to disclose fully how it collected and shared data about its users
Aditya Kalra / Reuters:
Indian non-profit Together We Fight Society has filed a complaint with the Competition Commission of India accusing Apple of anticompetitive App Store practices  —  Apple Inc (AAPL.O) is facing an antitrust challenge in India for allegedly abusing its dominant position in the apps market …
The Verge:
Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
Sources: Twitter is testing new privacy-focused tools, including archiving and hiding old tweets and editing follower lists, as part of a “social privacy” push  —  - Features give users more control over who sees which posts  — ‘Social privacy’ push targets reputation, identity management
Andrew Thurman / CoinDesk:
Dom Hofmann's Loot, with NFTs of random lists of items ostensibly from a fantasy video game, had $46M in sales in just 5 days, attaining a market cap of $180M+  —  The latest non-fungible token (NFT) craze is among the simplest - and the strangest - yet: a randomly generated list …
Benjamin Mayo / 9to5Mac:
Apple begins prompting iOS 15 users for consent to enable Personalized Ads for their Apple ID, which was previously on by default and led to antitrust scrutiny  —  For iOS 15 users, Apple has begun prompting for their consent to enable Personalized Ads for their Apple ID …
Insider:
Sources: Amazon will launch its own TV featuring Alexa software and without third-party manufacturer branding in the US, possibly as soon as October  —  - Amazon is planning to roll out its own Amazon-branded TV, Insider has learned.  — A US launch is targeted for as soon as October.
Sheila Dang / Reuters:
Sources: AWS plans to hire content moderators to look for emerging extremist groups and remove content that violates its cloud service policies  —  Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) plans to take a more proactive approach to determine what types of content violate its cloud service policies …
Muyao Shen / CoinDesk:
A doge meme NFT that sold for $4M in June is now valued at $225M+ after it was fractionalized into nearly 17B tokens and sold in a one-day auction  —  Just three months after a non-fungible token (NFT) representing an image of the original Shiba Inu dogecoin meme sold for about $4 million …
Ash Parrish / The Verge:
Gamesight data shows a dip in Twitch viewership on Wednesday, possibly 5%-15%, as some streamers took #ADayOffTwitch to bring awareness to “hate raids”  —  It seems as if the Twitch walkout was a success  —  Streamers took a day off Twitch on September 1st to bring attention …
Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch:
Jeeves, which is building tools to help startups manage expenses, raises $57M Series B at a $500M valuation, after raising $31M equity and $100M debt in June  —  The founders of a dozen unicorn companies join VCs in Series B  —  Last summer, Jeeves was participating in Y Combinator's summer batch as a fledgling fintech.
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Facebook Gaming expands its program that lets streamers play some copyrighted music during live streams from 1,000 to 100,000 streamers  —  A new GamesBeat event is around the corner!  Learn more about what comes next.  —  Facebook Gaming is expanding streamers' access to a library …
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:
General Motors says it is temporarily halting production at six of its North American factories due to the global chip shortage  —  ‘The situation remains complex and very fluid’  —  General Motors, parent company of Chevrolet, GMC, Cadillac, and Buick, said it was temporarily halting production …
Issie Lapowsky / Protocol:
Texas' abortion law creates new legal challenges and risks for tech companies, such as subpoenas requesting user data or providing on-demand rides to clinics  —  With the Supreme Court deciding not to block Texas' effective ban on abortion this week, fears have been rightly focused on the people …
Taylor Hatmaker / TechCrunch:
Roblox adds voice chat, initially in some games as “spatial audio” where players chat with others around them, and plans a Discord-like persistent voice chat  —  As one the frontrunners in the race to build the metaverse, Roblox is thinking ahead to what virtual worlds really need.
Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch:
Callin, a social audio app founded by David Sacks that offers tools for turning live recordings into podcasts, raises $12M Series A led by Sequoia and others  —  As live audio becomes more and more popular, co-founders David Sacks (former COO of PayPal and CEO of Yammer) …
Jackie Davalos / Bloomberg:
Dallas-based Match Group creates a fund to help cover costs for staff and dependents who need care outside of Texas after the state's near-total ban on abortion  —  - Dubey says she felt compelled to speak out about her views  — Fund would cover costs for those seeking care outside Texas
Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch:
Panorama, which provides K-12 education software to 50 of the largest 100 school districts in the US, raises $60M Series C, bringing total funding to $105M  —  Panorama Education, which has built out a K-12 education software platform, has raised $60 million in a Series C round of funding led by General Atlantic.
Sara Fischer / Axios:
Facebook says it helped airlift 175 Afghan citizens out of Afghanistan to Mexico, including journalists and some of its own employees  —  Facebook on Wednesday confirmed that it was part of an effort to fly 175 Afghan citizens out of Afghanistan to Mexico, including some of its own employees, according to a statement provided to Axios.
Anna Nicolaou / Financial Times:
YouTube Music reached 50M paying subscribers in August, up from 30M paid music and premium subscribers that YouTube had reported in October 2020  —  Google-owned platforms have grown rapidly to become serious streaming competitor  —  YouTube's paid music streaming services have amassed 50m subscribers …

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