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Techmeme
June 16, 2023, 9:35 PM
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Top News

David Ingram / NBC News:
Steve Huffman praises Elon Musk's aggressive cost-cutting and layoffs at Twitter and says he saw Musk's handling of Twitter as an example for Reddit to follow  —  Steve Huffman said in an interview that Elon Musk's cost-cutting at Twitter was inspiring and that the two have chatted “a handful of times.”
The Verge:
Reddit messages some moderators of the communities participating in the API pricing change protest, looking for defectors “willing to work towards reopening”  —  Some moderators of Reddit communities participating in the protest against API changes today got messages from the company: work to reopen your subreddits or else.
Anne VanderMey / Bloomberg:
Reddit says that 80% of the site's top subreddits are currently open; Reddark estimates that 4K+ subreddits are limiting access, down from almost 9K on June 12  —  Reddit Inc. said that most of the company's communities were operating as normal — four days after a protest that shut …
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
A “Reddit API Fact Sheet” says the company does not plan to “unilaterally” reopen subreddits; Reddit's rules may let the platform replace protesting moderators
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Q&A with Steve Huffman: Reddit's API “was never designed to support third-party apps”, he didn't know how much they “were profiting off of our API”, and more
Sean Lyngaas / CNN:
Oregon and Louisiana warn that the MOVEit hackers may have stolen the SSNs and driver's license numbers of 3.5M Oregonians and 3M+ Louisianians from state DMVs  —  Millions of people in Louisiana and Oregon have had their data compromised in the sprawling cyberattack that has also hit …
Kellen Browning / New York Times:
Félix Lengyel, aka xQc, a Twitch streamer with 12M followers, signs a ~$100M deal with Kick, a streaming service backed by Australian gaming and gambling sites  —  The deal signed by Félix Lengyel, known as xQc, matches traditional athletes' contracts, and is another sign …
Andrew Tarantola / Engadget:
Meta unveils Voicebox, a generative text-to-speech model the company hopes could be the ChatGPT of the spoken word, but won't release an app citing misuse risks  —  But the company won't be sharing the app or its source code for the time being.  —  Today, we are one step closer …
Alex Heath / The Verge:
Meta plans to lower the minimum age for Quest headsets from 13 to 10, with under-13s' profiles and avatars set to private by default; Horizon Worlds remains 13+  —  Government scrutiny of how tech companies handle their underage users is continuing to heat up.
Venkatesh Gorantla / MySmartPrice:
Alleged official renders of the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 show the clamshell-style foldable could have a 3.4" outer display, up from its predecessors' 1.9" screen  —  The newly revealed Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 design render shows that the clamshell-style foldable phone is certainly getting a significant upgrade.
Bloomberg:
NY AG's documents: Tether once counted Chinese companies' securities among its reserves; in July 2022, Tether claimed not to be holding Chinese commercial paper  —  Tether Holdings Ltd. once counted securities issued by Chinese companies among the reserves backing its USDT stablecoin …
Chris Stokel-Walker / Wired:
Stack Overflow removed gender and race questions from its 2023 user survey, citing privacy concerns, after its 2022 survey found that 92% of its users were men  —  The coding hub's 2022 survey found that 92 percent of its users were men.  This time around it simply dropped the question.
CoinDesk:
France probes Binance over alleged illegal digital asset services and poor money laundering checks; Binance exits the Netherlands after failing to get a license  —  Binance is suspected of illegally providing digital asset services to local customers, and implementing poor money laundering checks …
Benedict Evans:
Apple Vision Pro shows that current AR/VR devices, like Meta's Quests, aren't good enough to break out of the gaming market and need a step change in capability  —  The narrative for VR and AR has been pretty static for years.  We have a dream of AR devices that look like a pair of glasses …
Sheila Dang / Reuters:
Source: Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino tells investors no major ad holding firms are recommending an ad pause now and highlights a focus on video and partnerships  —  Twitter plans to focus on video, creator and commerce partnerships to revitalize the social media company's business beyond digital advertising …
Manya Saini / Reuters:
BlackRock files a US SEC application to register a spot bitcoin ETF, using Coinbase Custody as its custodian; the SEC has rejected all bitcoin spot ETFs to date  —  BlackRock (BLK.N), the world's biggest asset manager, on Thursday filed for a bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) …
Leo Schwartz / Fortune:
Digital assets platform Bakkt delists Solana, Polygon, and Cardano, taking proactive action until there is US regulatory clarity on offering coins “compliantly”  —  Just over two months after completing a $155 million acquisition for the trading infrastructure provider Apex Crypto …

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 9:35 PM ET, June 16, 2023.

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.

From Mediagazer

Todd Spangler / Variety:
Memo: Business Insider is cutting staff by 21% to “endure extreme traffic drops outside of our control” and “exiting the majority of our Commerce business”

Pew Research Center:
Share of news influencers on Bluesky has doubled after the 2024 US election to 43%, but X remains popular, with 82% of news influencers maintaining an account

Nikita Mazurov / The Intercept:
PBS station WNET removed at least three educational TV episodes that discuss transgender identity and drag expression, following a DOGE subcommittee hearing

More News

Washington Post:
Meta drops its global approach for its COVID-19 misinformation rules, ending them in countries like the US where the pandemic is no longer a national emergency
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
In a cease and desist, Texas' securities regulator says crypto lender Abra has been insolvent since at least March 31, 2023, and accuses the company of fraud
Dana Priest / Washington Post:
Hanan Elatr, Jamal Khashoggi's widow, sues the NSO Group in Virginia, claiming Saudi Arabia used the Israeli company's Pegasus phone spyware to track them both
Financial Times:
Sources: media companies like News Corp and The Guardian have discussed LLM copyright issues and a subscription fee with OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, or Adobe
Bloomberg:
In a meeting with Bill Gates, Xi Jinping says China is willing to engage in tech cooperation with the US; Xi could meet Antony Blinken on June 18 or June 19

Earlier Picks

Katharine Gemmell / Bloomberg:
The UK CMA clears Amazon's $1.7B iRobot deal announced in August 2022, saying acquiring the robot vacuum maker would have “no impact on competition in the UK”
Lora Kolodny / CNBC:
Twitter suspends the accounts of public records database PlainSite and its founder Aaron Greenspan, who has tracked litigation by or against Tesla and Twitter
More: Insider and Reuters
Bluesky: @romitmehta.com.  Mastodon: @Big_Worker@ioc.exchange.  Tweets: @jeremiahlee, @drewwash, and @arawnsley.  Forums: r/news
Mia Sato / The Verge:
How the “arms race” of SEO experts has left Google Search and the web drowning in garbage text, resulting in customers and businesses failing to find each other
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Twitch launches a Partner Plus tier, offering a 70/30 revenue sharing split to creators who have 350+ recurring paid subscriptions for three consecutive months
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