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Techmeme
July 3, 2024, 1:25 PM
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Top News

Casey Newton / Platformer:
Q&A with Adam Mosseri on Threads' first year, not leaning into political content, driving engagement, focusing on real-time content, the fediverse, and more  —  Programming note: With this post, we now go on a short summer break.  See you back here July 15.  —  A year ago this week, Meta introduced Threads to the world.
Alex Heath / The Verge:
Mark Zuckerberg says Threads has 175M+ MAUs, up from 150M in April, ahead of its one-year anniversary on July 5; source: Meta may turn on ads in Threads in 2025  —  A year and a half ago, Threads was but a twinkle in Mark Zuckerberg's eye.  —  Now, the rival to Elon Musk's X has reached …
Amy Thomson / Bloomberg:
UK-listed Keywords Studios, which provides game development, audio, and art services to Epic and others, agrees to private equity firm EQT's ~£2.1B takeover bid  —  - Investors get £24.50 per share in cash in private equity deal  — Keywords works for titles including Fortnite, Call of Duty
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Proton launches Docs in Proton Drive, a privacy-focused alternative to Google Docs, after acquiring secure note-taking app Standard Notes in April 2024  —  Proton, the Swiss-based pro-privacy productivity app maker, has a new feather in its cap after bringing document creation …
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Koo, an Indian rival to X that had raised $60M+ from Tiger Global, Accel, and others, shuts down after last-resort acquisition talks with Dailyhunt collapsed  —  The Indian social media platform Koo, which positioned itself as a competitor to Elon Musk's X, is ceasing operations …
Rand Fishkin / SparkToro:
Datos: 58.5% of Google searches in the US and 59.7% in the EU result in no clicks; for 1,000 searches, 360 clicks go to the open web in the US and 374 in the EU  —  Over the past decade, I've done several reports with multiple clickstream panels analyzing Google search behavior at scale.
Cynthia Brumfield / CSO:
SCOTUS' Chevron ruling could weaken US federal cybersecurity regulations, as FCC data breach reporting requirements and other rules are likely to be challenged  —  The ruling could weaken almost all US federal cybersecurity regulations, including SEC incident reporting, FCC data breach reporting …
Shaurya Malwa / CoinDesk:
Blockchain platform Polkadot faces criticism from users after spending $87M in H1 2024, doubling its H2 2023 spend, including $36M+ on marketing and outreach  —  The blockchain spent $87 million in the first six months this year, with marketing activities accounting for the majority of expenses.
Emma Farge / Reuters:
WIPO: between 2014 and 2023, 54K generative AI patents were filed, 25% of which were filed in 2023; China leads with 38K+ patents, followed by the US with 6,276  —  China is far ahead of other countries in generative AI inventions like chatbots, filing six times more patents than its closest rival …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple will get an observer role on OpenAI's board, with Phil Schiller chosen for the position, as part of their ChatGPT partnership announced in June  —  CDK Says ‘Substantially All’ Car Dealerships Restored After Hack  —  Northern Data May Be Testing Limits of AI Frenzy With Unit IPO
Paula Arend Laier / Reuters:
Brazil's data regulator suspends the validity of Meta's privacy policy for using personal data to train AI models in the country and sets a daily ~$8,800 fine  —  Brazil's National Data Protection Authority (ANPD) has decided to suspend with immediate effect the validity of Meta's (META.O) …
Chris Kornelis / Wall Street Journal:
Bruce Bastian, who co-created the popular word processing software WordPerfect and was an LGBTQ activist, died on June 16 at age 76  —  While his company was producing the world's dominant word-processing software, he came out as gay to his wife, sons and Mormon community
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Reddit users: Netflix is phasing out its cheapest $11.99/month ad-free tier for existing subscribers as planned, pushing its $6.99, $15.49, and $22.99 tiers  —  Netflix is following through on its plan to phase out its cheapest ad-free tier for existing subscribers.
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Responding to criticism, Figma CTO Kris Rasmussen says Make Design is “powered by off-the-shelf models and a bespoke design system that we commissioned”  —  Figma says it didn't train the generative AI models it used and blames a ‘bespoke design system.’
More: Macworld, The Hindu, and NewsBytes
Threads: @ashzade_.  X: @gleb_sexy.  LinkedIn: Aarman Roy.  Forums: Hacker News and r/technology
Emanuel Maiberg / 404 Media:
Figma disables its recently launched generative AI app design tool Make Design, after a user showed it copied Apple's Weather when asked to design a weather app

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UiPath:
UiPath Unveils 10 Innovations that Will Shape the Agentic Future  —  Orchestration engine, API workflows and agentic testing among key features of new UiPath Platform™ for agentic automation, launched at UiPath DevCon 2025
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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

Wall Street Journal:
The owners of about a third of US nuclear power plants are in talks with tech companies to provide electricity to new data centers needed to meet AI demand
Reuters:
An investigation of US police and court documents finds 30 complaints citing 200+ explicit videos and images of minors on OnlyFans since December 2019

Earlier Picks

Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat:
Meta shares its research on Meta 3D Gen, a system that creates high-quality 3D assets from text descriptions in less than a minute
Lauren Feiner / The Verge:
A US judge temporarily blocked a new Mississippi law that would require age verification for all and parental consent for teens to join some social networks
Jaspreet Singh / Reuters:
Meta says it will lift its ban on the word “shaheed”, or “martyr” in English, after its Oversight Board's year-long review found the approach to be “overbroad”
Financial Times:
Google says its greenhouse gas emissions have surged 48% in the past five years due to the expansion of the data centers that underpin its AI efforts
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