Techmeme
October 20, 2022, 9:25 PM

Top News

Washington Post:
Docs: if Elon Musk buys Twitter, he plans to cut nearly 75% of staff; otherwise, Twitter aims to cut payroll by ~$800M by the end of 2023, ousting ~25% of staff  —  Previously unreported details shed new light on Twitter's motivations for selling the company — and Elon Musk's plans to transform it
Emily Baker-White / Forbes:
Documents: a China-based ByteDance audit and risk control team planned to collect TikTok location data of specific US citizens never employed by the company  —  The project, assigned to a Beijing-led team, would have involved accessing location data from some U.S. users' devices without their knowledge or consent.
Adam James / The Block:
DeFi proponents criticize Sam Bankman-Fried for a regulatory proposal suggesting websites facilitating trading on decentralized exchanges should be regulated  —  - Various individuals in the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry are lambasting Sam Bankman-Fried after the FTX CEO shared …
Platformer:
Mailchimp CEO Ben Chestnut stepped down in August 2022 after sending an email saying that staff announcing their pronouns in meetings “does more harm than good”  —  Ben Chestnut stepped down in August after arguing that asking for pronouns at the start of meetings “does more harm than good”
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
YouTube announces YouTube Premium's first major price hike, increasing the family plan from $17.99/month to $22.99/month, or $29.99/month in the App Store  —  YouTube Premium is getting its first major price hike as the service will now charge $22.99 per month for its family plan.
Kyle Alspach / Protocol:
Microsoft confirms some customer data was exposed due to a server configuration error but says SOCRadar exaggerated by claiming 65K+ companies were affected  —  Microsoft said Wednesday that an unspecified amount of customer data, including contact info and email content …
Miles Kruppa / Wall Street Journal:
Texas' AG sues Google for allegedly using Photos, Assistant, and Nest features to collect facial- and voice-recognition data without seeking users' full consent  —  State alleges tech giant didn't obtain user consent for biometric-data use  —  The Texas attorney general sued Alphabet Inc …
Thomas Germain / Gizmodo:
Google now lets users disable targeted ads without breaking useful features by having to turn off settings like Web & App Activity and YouTube History  —  In a major fix, Google's own privacy settings will no longer disable crucial features of its apps.  —  Alerts
New York Times:
Sources: Instacart is pulling its plans to go public in 2022; the company confidentially filed for an IPO earlier this year  —  The food delivery company had been moving toward a public offering, but the window for such deals is shutting amid market turmoil.
More: Axios
Tim Hakki / Decrypt:
CoinGecko: the Aptos token fell 40.5% on its first day of trading; Aptos' Layer 1 blockchain was panned for opaque tokenomics and a low transaction throughput  —  The price of Aptos has crashed more than 40% a day after launch as investors remain wary of the network's widely-panned mainnet rollout.
Jonathan Vanian / CNBC:
Snap reports Q3 revenue up 6% YoY to $1.13B, vs. $ 1.14B est., DAUs up 19% YoY to 363M, vs. 358.2M est., a $360M net loss, up from $72M YoY; stock is down 25%+  —  - Snap beat analysts' expectations on earnings per share but missed on revenue.  — The company's board authorized a stock repurchase program of up to $500 million.
Forbes:
Sources: senior Stripe executives asked managers to restart giving lower ratings on performance reviews to 10% to 15% of staff, to prune the company's workforce  —  As the economy slows, more tech companies have been showing employees the door.  Now some senior leaders at Silicon Valley fintech giant Stripe …
Meta:
Meta adds Reels to Facebook Groups, and says that most Facebook users are members of at least 15 active groups and there are 100M+ “group joins” every day  —  Takeaways  — We're adding more options for people to connect over shared interests, including Reels in Facebook Groups and updates to your Group profile.
Abner Li / 9to5Google:

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:
Zoho Sign is a “high growth performer” in the Frost & Sullivan's Frost Radar™ for electronic signature software, 2024  —  We are happy to announce that Zoho Sign has clinched a position as a high growth performer …
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. 11/08 - Share To TikTok
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 9:25 PM ET, October 20, 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

Chavi Mehta / Reuters:
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Gavin Bonshor / AnandTech:

Earlier Picks

ProPublica:
Song Jung-a / Financial Times:
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Dave Lee / Financial Times: