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:

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