Techmeme
February 14, 2022, 5:35 PM

Top News

Lucy Harley-Mckeown / The Block:
Coinbase, FTX, eToro, and other apps surge in popularity after multiple crypto Super Bowl ads; Coinbase rose from 186th to 2nd on US App Store after QR code ad  —  Crypto apps shot up App Store download charts in the US on Monday morning, after a Super Bowl studded with digital assets advertising.
John D. McKinnon / Wall Street Journal:
Texas sues Meta over its use of facial recognition from 2010 to late 2021 in the state; source: Texas seeks hundreds of billions of dollars in civil penalties  —  State says social-media giant violated privacy protections in lawsuit, seeks hundreds of billions of dollars in civil penalties
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Microsoft tells employees it will fully reopen its facilities in Washington state starting February 28, citing high rates of COVID-19 vaccination in King County  —  Updated below with information on Expedia reopening.  —  One of the longest “three weeks” in history will soon come to an end.
New York Times:
A profile of Peter Thiel, who plans to leave Meta's board to focus on politics, funding far-right MAGA candidates who peddle conspiracies and deny Biden won  —  Peter Thiel, one of Donald J. Trump's biggest donors in 2016, has re-emerged as a prime financier of the Make America Great Again movement.
The Block:
SEC fines crypto lending company BlockFi $100M, which will register its high-yield crypto savings product and offer it as a security as part of the settlement  —  The Securities and Exchange Commission announced Monday that it fined crypto lending firm BlockFi $100 million …
Billy Perrigo / TIME:
Interviews and documents reveal traumatic working conditions at a Facebook content moderation facility in Kenya, run by Sama, with pay as low as $1.50/hour  —  This story is based on interviews with more than a dozen current and former Sama employees, as well as hundreds of pages …
BBC:
UK's HMRC tax authority seizes three NFTs in a £1.4M fraud case involving 250 alleged fake companies, the first UK law enforcement agency to seize an NFT  —  The UK tax authority has seized three Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) as part of a probe into a suspected a VAT fraud involving 250 alleged fake companies.
Issie Lapowsky / Protocol:
The White House says 10M+ households have enrolled in the Affordable Connectivity Program, funded by the bipartisan infrastructure bill, for broadband discounts  —  The White House is taking a victory lap over its efforts to close the digital divide, announcing Monday that 10 million households …
Mia Sato / The Verge:
Snapchat is testing mid-roll ads in the Stories of some US creators, ahead of a wider rollout, and will share revenue based on engagement and other metrics  —  The feature is currently in beta testing  —  Snapchat is introducing a new way for creators on the app to earn money.
David Gilbert / VICE:
Christian fundraising site GiveSendGo is offline, possibly due to a hack, amid a leak of alleged personal info of ~92K donors to the Canadian “Freedom Convoy”  —  GiveSendGo, the Christian crowdfunding site that helped raise $8.7 million for the anti-vax “freedom convoy” in Canada, was hacked on Sunday night.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
London-based Tripledot, which makes a Solitaire app, Woodoku, and other casual mobile games, raises a $116M Series B led by 20VC at a $1.4B valuation  —  Casual mobile games have reached a fever pitch of interest with consumers, and so too with investors, who are rushing to back the biggest …

Sponsor Posts

TELUS Digital:
See how your customer experience priorities compare  —  TELUS Digital surveyed leaders about the tech they're investing in, the KPIs they're tracking and their plans for outsourcing.  Get the results.  No form fill required!
Intel:
Intel Delivers powerful CPUs for AI and Networking  —  With the onset of AI, businesses demand powerful and efficient CPUs.  Explore new Intel Xeon 6 processors, for the broadest set of workloads with leadership performance and lower TCO.
Zoho:
Introducing new capabilities in Zoho PDF Editor: Add watermarks, secure your content, collect digital signatures, and more  —  Easily organize, edit, and secure your PDFs with the latest version …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Techmeme Ride Home:
Has Intel Found A Way Out?
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe to Techmeme Ride Home.
Hard Fork:
Tech Stock Shock + Solving the Mystery of OpenAI's "Blip" + Tinder's Flirt-Off
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
BG2 Pod:
Liberation Day, Tariffs, US v China Open Source, OpenAI Fundraise, $CRWV, TikTok
Open-source podcast on all things tech, markets, investing, and capitalism, hosted by Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley.
Subscribe to BG2 Pod.
Decoder with Nilay Patel:
What AI anime memes tell us about the future of art and humanity
A show from the Verge about big ideas - and other problems.
Subscribe to Decoder with Nilay Patel.
Great Chat:
Battle of the startup cities
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
The Logan Bartlett Show:
Zach Weinberg (Co-Founder & CEO, Curie.Bio) on The Tariff Trap, Self-Inflicted Recession Risk, and Open AI's Fundraise
A podcast hosted by Logan Bartlett, an investor at Redpoint Ventures, covering tech with industry insiders.
Subscribe to The Logan Bartlett Show.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:35 PM ET, February 14, 2022.

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

David Yaffe-Bellany / New York Times:
Jamie Crawley / CoinDesk:

Earlier Picks

Noam Scheiber / New York Times:
Tom Mitchelhill / Cointelegraph: