Techmeme
January 18, 2025, 11:20 PM

Top News

NBC News:
Trump says he will “most likely” give TikTok a 90-day reprieve after he takes office on Monday “because it's appropriate”  —  Trump spoke to NBC News' Kristen Welker in an exclusive phone interview Saturday, discussing his plans on what to do about the popular social media app.
NBC News:
ByteDance's TikTok and CapCut suspend service in the US, telling users “Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok”  —  Users reported being unable to access TikTok Saturday after a pop-up message from the company came up on their screens saying “a law banning TikTok has been enacted.”
Hayden Field / CNBC:
Source: Perplexity AI made a TikTok US bid to ByteDance, proposing a merger that brings video to Perplexity, with ByteDance investors retaining their stakes  —  Perplexity AI officially made a play for TikTok on Saturday, submitting a bid to its parent company, ByteDance …
Ana Faguy / BBC:
Greg Stohr / Bloomberg:
More: The White House, Associated Press, iPhone in Canada Blog, CBS News, New York Post, UPI, The Hill, Trak.in, CyberInsider, CNBC, Wired, The Verge, Supreme Court of the United States, New York Times, US Department of Justice, New Scientist, Adweek, Fast Company, and Axios
CNN:
Lauren Feiner / The Verge:
Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
Financial Times:
A profile of Charlwin Mao, founder of Xiaohongshu or “Little Red Book”, who claims the name references the color of his university Stanford and ex-employer Bain  —  A sudden surge of US users on Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote, could threaten China's Great Firewall
Politico:
Congressional leaders seem flummoxed by the growing popularity of Chinese-owned apps Xiaohongshu and Lemon8, an unintended consequence of the TikTok ban  —  The Chinese apps RedNote and Lemon8 have exploded in popularity as TikTok faces an imminent ban and the Supreme Court upheld the law forcing its sale.
Will Oremus / Washington Post:
TikTok bans in countries around the world have played out quite differently; Instagram Reels largely replaced TikTok in India, following TikTok's ban in 2020  —  India's 2020 crackdown helped give rise to Instagram Reels, which has largely replaced it there.  But TikTok has proved more resilient elsewhere.
Matthew Green / A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering:
A close look at some privacy implications of AI interfacing with messaging apps and other E2EE systems, Apple's approach to “Private Cloud Compute”, and more  —  Recently I came across a fantastic new paper by a group of NYU and Cornell researchers entitled “How to think about end-to-end encryption and AI.”
Axios:
CoinGecko: $TRUMP rose more than 600% overnight and was trading at just over $32 as of 11AM ET, giving it a fully diluted market capitalization of $32B+  —  - It also speaks to the nature of the crypto industry that someone could have $25 billion worth of something that literally did not exist 24 hours previously.
Andrew Hayward / Decrypt:
Donald Trump is promoting a Solana memecoin called TRUMP from his social media accounts, with 200M $TRUMP available now and growing to 1B “over three years”  —  Talk about a Friday night surprise.  President-elect Donald Trump's social media accounts shared what appears …
Zack Abrams / The Block:
Vitalik Buterin outlines “large changes” to Ethereum Foundation leadership structure, after fellow Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin called for new EF leadership  —  - Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, in a post on X, said “large changes” to the leadership structure of the Ethereum Foundation (EF) are underway.
Jay Peters / The Verge:

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Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Bloomberg:
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