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Techmeme
April 20, 2023, 4:45 PM

Top News

Jon Porter / The Verge:
Twitter begins removing blue checkmarks from legacy verified accounts, fulfilling one of Elon Musk's long-stated plans; Musk has called the system “corrupt”  —  The change is apparent on Twitter accounts for several Verge writers and other journalists like LA Times reporter Matt Pearce …
More: New York Times, Wall Street Journal, PCMag, The Hill, Mashable, Insider, Bloomberg, The Information, TechCrunch, Associated Press, Mercury News, 9to5Mac, NBC News, MobileSyrup, TechRadar, Deadline, WeRSM, Gizmodo Australia, The Apple Post, Variety, Techlusive, The Shortcut, and Washington Post
Miles Kruppa / Wall Street Journal:
Google announces Google DeepMind, a unit combining DeepMind's team and Google Research's Brain team, to be led by DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis as its CEO  —  Search giant merges AI resources to accelerate progress in technology that is reshaping business
David Pierce / The Verge:
A look at ActivityPub, the open, decentralized social network protocol finalized in 2018 that is gaining prominence powering Twitter alternatives like Mastodon  —  The tech industry is abuzz about a new standard for social networking that is more open, more user-centric, and potentially more powerful than Twitter and Facebook.
Bloomberg:
The EU Parliament approves the Markets in Cryptoassets, or MiCA, regulation for the crypto industry, including rules for stablecoins set to apply from July 2024  —  European lawmakers on Thursday gave their final blessing to an ambitious law that will give the European Union its first rules to govern the crypto industry.
Financial Times:
Aaron Tilley / Wall Street Journal:
Over 24 executives, inventors, investors, and lawyers who discussed partnerships with Apple or adding their tech into its products say Apple copied their ideas  —  Aspiring partners accuse tech giant of copying their ideas; Apple says it plays by the rules  —  It sounded like a dream partnership …
Christopher Dring / GamesIndustry.biz:
Sony agrees to acquire Firewalk Studios, an AAA multiplayer developer working on a live service game for PS5 and PC; Firewalk will join PlayStation Studios  —  It will be the 20th PlayStation Studios team  —  News by Christopher Dring Head of Games B2B  —  PlayStation has agreed …
Melissa Heikkilä / MIT Technology Review:
OpenAI, which may have trained its models on people's data without consent, faces legal stakes in the EU, which has strict privacy laws and is conducting probes  —  The company's AI services may be breaking data protection laws, and there is no resolution in sight.
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Meta's Oversight Board issues a report backing Meta's content moderation during the pandemic but asks Meta to assess its public health and human rights impact  —  Meta's Oversight Board — an independent panel the social media giant selected to deliberate its content decisions …
Michael Kan / PCMag:
After news broke that Microsoft Advertising was dropping Twitter support, Elon Musk tweeted that it's “lawsuit time” for training “illegally using Twitter data”  —  Microsoft is winding down support for Twitter on its advertising platform, likely because the social media platform wants …
Financial Times:
A look at the India Stack, a set of government-backed APIs upon which third parties can build apps integrated with state services for payments, loans, and more  —  New Delhi has pioneered a new approach to online infrastructure in its drive to connect 1.4bn.  But there are privacy and data protection concerns

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More News

Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
Matt Novak / Forbes:

Earlier Picks

Jay Peters / The Verge:
Jeff John Roberts / Fortune:
Karen Freifeld / Reuters:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer:
Alex Heath / The Verge:
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: