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Techmeme
July 21, 2023, 11:35 AM

Top News

Makena Kelly / The Verge:
OpenAI, Meta, Google, Microsoft, and others make voluntary AI governance pledges to the White House, including cybersecurity investment and watermarking systems  —  The White House is bringing in AI's top seven companies Friday to make a series of voluntary promises to protect users.
Lindsey Choo / Wall Street Journal:
Sensor Tower: Threads' DAUs declined to 13M, down 70% from the July 7 peak; Similarweb: average time spend on Threads' app declined to four mins, down from 19  —  Data show user engagement has fallen 70% as executives focus on options such as a chronological feed
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Reddit removes the moderators of r/malefashionadvice, one of the biggest subreddits to close protesting Reddit's API changes, and takes charge of the subreddit  —  Reddit is now in charge of r/malefashionadvice, which for a time was the biggest subreddit still closed in protest of the platform's API pricing changes.
Rich Stanton / PC Gamer:
Troy Hunt: sensitive info of ~4,000 people who attended Roblox Developer Conference between 2017-2020 was leaked in 2021; Roblox disclosed the leak just now  —  This may cost the company a few Robux.  —  The major gaming platform Roblox has suffered a major data breach …
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Sergey Brin has increased his visits to Google in recent months to three to four days a week, working with AI researchers building Google's Gemini  —  Co-founder is working alongside AI researchers at tech giant's headquarters, aiding efforts to build powerful Gemini system
Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:
FTX sues Sam Bankman-Fried, Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang, and Nishad Singh for $1B+, alleging they misappropriated funds for “pet projects” before FTX bankruptcy  —  FTX Trading Ltd on Thursday sued founder Sam Bankman-Fried and other former executives at the cryptocurrency exchange …
Leah Nylen / Bloomberg:
Filing: the US FTC suspends its in-house trial against Microsoft's Activision Blizzard acquisition scheduled for August, opening the door to settlement talks  —  - Move allows Microsoft, Activision to speak with commissioners  — Companies asked for delay ahead of August in-house trial
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: China-linked hackers accessed the emails of the US ambassador to China and the assistant secretary of state for East Asia in a recent Microsoft breach  —  Spying campaign also compromised State Department official who oversees East Asia  —  Hackers linked to Beijing accessed …

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