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Techmeme
July 14, 2023, 6:50 PM
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
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Top News

Hayden Field / CNBC:
Sensor Tower: from July 8 to July 11 and 12, Threads DAUs fell ~20% and time spent fell 50% to 10 minutes; Similarweb: Android DAUs fell 25%+ from July 7 to 10  —  - Facebook's Twitter-killer, Threads, has seen drops in daily active users and time spent on app since the weekend, according to SensorTower and SimilarWeb.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Meta confirms taking “additional steps” to prevent EU-based users from accessing Instagram's Threads; users report no longer being able to use Threads via a VPN  —  After multiple EU-based users complained about not being able to access Instagram's Threads app through VPN, Meta confirmed that it is blocking such efforts.
Matt Wales / Eurogamer.net:
Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb, Xbox's senior director of corporate communications, is leaving Microsoft after 22 years to “work on the next chapter of my career”  —  To “work on the next chapter of my career.”  —  Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb, long one of the most recognisable presences …
Wall Street Journal:
Source: Binance has fired over 1,000 people in recent weeks; the cuts are global, ongoing, and could result in the company losing more than a third of its staff  —  Crypto exchange reduces workforce as Justice Department investigation continues  —  Binance, the giant crypto exchange …
Taylor Lorenz / Washington Post:
Twitter makes its first ad sharing payouts to creators, including far-right influencers like Andrew Tate, who made $20K+, Ian Miles Cheong, and Benny Johnson  —  The platform is paying high-profile creators, including Andrew Tate, thousands of dollars for posting to the app
Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch:
Twitter starts paying Twitter Blue creators who earned 5M+ impressions per month for three months a revenue cut from the ads beside the replies to their tweets
Michael Schulman / New Yorker:
Netflix's Orange Is the New Black was an early indicator of how lopsided the streaming economy would be, as 10 actors from the show detail tiny residual incomes  —  The innovative and daring show was a worldwide hit for Netflix, but some of the actors say that they were never fairly compensated.
Andrew Webster / The Verge:
SAG-AFTRA: the AMPTP's AI proposal lets studios scan a background actor to create a digital likeness, for a day's pay, for perpetual use without consent or pay  —  During today's press conference in which Hollywood actors confirmed that they were going on strike, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland …
Tim Copeland / The Block:
Crypto bridging protocol Multichain ceases operations after confirming Chinese police detained its CEO, Zhaojun, and his sister, who held ~$220M of user assets  —  - Multichain confirmed its CEO has been detained in China.  — It said the CEO's sister moved $220 million of funds …
Aoyon Ashraf / CoinDesk:
After the US court ruling in Ripple's favor, Coinbase, Kraken, and Bitstamp resume XRP trading on their US exchanges and Gemini is exploring listing the token
Tom Hals / Reuters:
A US judge says Ripple's XRP sales to sophisticated investors violated securities law but that sales on exchanges were not offers of securities
Reuters:
Twitter sues four unnamed entities in Texas for “unlawfully scraping data” and seeks $1M+ in relief; Elon Musk: “that is why we had to put rate limits in place”  —  Twitter has filed a lawsuit against four unnamed entities in Texas for data scraping last week …
Semafor:
Sources: Elon Musk claimed his new startup xAI was worth $20B while he was trying to recruit top AI talent, including by offering equity in xAI  —  Elon Musk sought to recruit top AI talent to his new artificial intelligence company with equity in the venture he claimed was already worth tens …
Salvador Rodriguez / Wall Street Journal:
Meta insiders detail a return to “OG Mark” and how staff secretly toiled away to determine how to create a Twitter-like service that fit with the company's apps  —  Staffers toiled for months to create a Twitter-like service that would fit with existing apps

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 6:50 PM ET, July 14, 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”

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

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

More News

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Twitter aims to reduce DM spam with a setting that moves messages from Blue users you don't follow back to the Message Request inbox instead of the main inbox
More: Techlusive, Dexerto, and Engadget
Bluesky: @jww.wtf and @setia.ink.  Twitter: @twittersupport.  Threads: @carnage4life.  Forums: r/RealTesla
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Meta unveils CM3leon, an image generation transformer model requiring five times less compute and a smaller training dataset than past transformer-based methods
Reuters:
Sources and a doc: India told streaming services like Netflix and Disney to use an independent panel to review content for obscenity and violence before release

Earlier Picks

Bloomberg Law:
A US district judge denies the FTC's motion to stay Microsoft's $68.7B Activision Blizzard acquisition; the FTC is seeking emergency action by the 9th Circuit
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Microsoft names Aptos as the next default font for its Microsoft 365 productivity apps, replacing Calibri; Aptos was available for two years as Bierstadt
Sapna Maheshwari / New York Times:
The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University files a lawsuit challenging Texas' TikTok ban on state devices, for limiting research and teaching
Tim Hardwick / MacRumors:
Apple launches Tap to Pay on iPhone in the UK, starting with Revolut and Tyl by NatWest as the first payment platforms, following the US, Australia, and Taiwan
Sam Schechner / Wall Street Journal:
Google updates Bard with 43 more languages, from Arabic to Vietnamese, and privacy features requested by EU regulators, and debuts the tool in Europe and Brazil
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