Techmeme
December 6, 2021, 12:00 PM

Top News

Ben Smith / New York Times:
A document from TikTok's engineering team in Beijing details the product's addictive algorithm, which optimizes for “retention” and “time spent”  —  It's the most successful video app in the world.  Our columnist has obtained an internal company document that offers …
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile all have programs that collect additional customer data, like app usage and web history, and they are generally opt-out  —  Verizon says it's to better “understand your interests”  —  The My Verizon app might be collecting information about your browsing history …
Andrew E. Kramer / New York Times:
US investigators traced ransomware payments back to companies in Moscow skyscraper Federation Tower East, suggesting Russia tolerates ransomware operators  —  Cybersecurity experts tracing money paid by American businesses to Russian ransomware gangs found it led to one of Moscow's most prestigious addresses.
Julian E. Barnes / New York Times:
The head of US Cyber Command says the US military has “taken actions” against ransomware groups, the first public acknowledgement of the offensive measures  —  Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, the head of Cyber Command, said a new cross-functional effort has been gathering intelligence …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Many customers complain that T-Mobile and Verizon have failed to deliver promised rebates for promoted Apple products in a straightforward manner  —  Some customers are finding that wireless carriers are denying rebates used to promote Apple Inc.'s newest iPhones, iPads and watches.
Reuters:
Alibaba appoints a new CFO and will reorganize its e-commerce businesses under two new divisions, one domestic and one international  —  Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (9988.HK) said Toby Xu, will succeed Maggie Wu as the company's chief financial officer from April, a move it described as part of the company's leadership succession plan.
Bloomberg:
Investigation: Swiss company Mitto, which offers automated text messages to companies in 100+ countries, helped governments secretly surveil mobile phone users  —  Mitto AG's network used to track people via mobile phones, former employees say.  —  The co-founder of a company that has been trusted …
Jon Porter / The Verge:
WhatsApp will let users set all chats to disappear by default after 24 hours, seven days, or 90 days  —  Its disappearing messages feature is getting an upgrade  —  WhatsApp is adding new functionality to its disappearing messages feature, which lets users set messages in a chat to automatically be deleted after a set period of time.
Benedict Evans:
Overview of macro tech trends, with a focus on Web3, metaverse, and the move to the cloud, which is just beginning as on-prem IT spend still dwarfs cloud spend  —  The most exciting themes in technology today are transformative visions for 2025 or 2030: crypto, web3, VR, metaverse... and then everything else.
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
Amazon's extensive supply chain investments, mostly focused on domestic US logistics, make it very attractive to third-party merchants and customers  —  It seems like a Christmas miracle.  From CNBC: … The intended takeaway of this article — which originated as a digital special report …
Alistair Gray / Financial Times:
GroupM: global ad revenue will reach $763B in 2021, up 18.7% from 2019; Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon control 80-90% of the digital ad market outside China  —  Alphabet, Meta and Amazon have doubled their share of ad revenues in past 5 years, industry estimates
Financial Times:
Researchers describe Meta's roadblocks, including pre-publication review and restrictive contracts, to stifle research that might cast it in a negative light  —  Last March, Orestis Papakyriakopoulos, a researcher at Princeton University, applied to use a special data access tool that allows academics to do research on Facebook.

Sponsor Posts

Meta:
Open Source AI: Available to all, not just the few  —  Meta's open source AI enables small businesses, start-ups, students, researchers and more to download and build with our models at no cost.
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:
5 common accounting mistakes  —  This is a guest post by Yaali Bizappln Solutions.  A lot of businesses manage their customers and finances on separate platforms.  This disconnect often leads to missed invoices …
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Fri. 11/22 - An LLM Siri But... Only The Year AFTER Next?
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 12:00 PM ET, December 6, 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

The Guardian:

Earlier Picks

Issie Lapowsky / Protocol:
David Streitfeld / New York Times:
Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal:
RT:
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Tim Copeland / The Block: