Techmeme
April 4, 2018, 4:20 PM

Top News

Kurt Wagner / Recode:
Facebook now says Cambridge Analytica may have collected information on as many as 87M people, mostly in US; original reports pegged the number closer to 50M  —  You can find out on Monday, April 9, if you were one of them.  —  Cambridge Analytica may have had data from more unwitting Facebook users than originally thought.
Mike Schroepfer / Facebook:
Facebook limits data available from Pages API, Events API, Groups API, and Facebook Login, will now need to approve every app that uses them  —  Two weeks ago we promised to take a hard look at the information apps can use when you connect them to Facebook as well as other data practices.
Tony Romm / Washington Post:
Mark Zuckerberg to testify before House Energy and Commerce Committee on April 11, first of three potential hearings in Congress, about Facebook's data privacy  —  Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg will testify before a key House committee next week, the panel said Wednesday …
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Michelle Broder Van Dyke / BuzzFeed:
YouTube shooter Nasim Aghdam had denounced the platform for age-restricting and demonetizing her videos; her father warned police she might visit YouTube HQ  —  The woman posted frequently on the video sharing platform about animal cruelty, vegan recipes, and said she believed YouTube was discriminating against her.
Casey Newton / The Verge:
New York Times:
Letter circulating within Google, signed by 3,100+ employees, protests the company's involvement in a Pentagon program that uses AI to interpret video imagery  —  WASHINGTON — Thousands of Google employees, including dozens of senior engineers, have signed a letter protesting the company's involvement …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple developing tech that lets iPhone users perform tasks by moving fingers close screen without tapping it and screens that curve from top to bottom  —  Company seeks to differentiate design in crowded marketplace  —  IPhone X's OLED screen also expanding to additional models
Sarah Frier / Bloomberg:
Facebook confirms it scans the text and images people send each other on Messenger; the content gets blocked if it doesn't abide to the platform's rules  —  System is supposed to detect content that violates standards  —  Company on the defensive about how it handles private data
Urs Hölzle / The Keyword:
Google announces that its total purchase of renewable energy exceeded the amount of electricity used by its global operations, including offices, data centers  —  A little over a year ago, we announced that we were on track to purchase enough renewable energy to match all the electricity we consumed over the next year.
Jennifer Jacobs / Bloomberg:
Sources: at a private dinner with Trump last night, Oracle CEO criticized the bidding process for a big Pentagon cloud-computing deal as being rigged for Amazon  —  Competing for multi-billion Pentagon cloud-computing deal  —  President said to tell Catz at dinner he expects fair bidding
Lucian Armasu / Tom's Hardware:
Intel revises roadmap for Spectre patches, now does not plan to patch some older chips including Yorkfield (2007), Bloomfield (2008), Intel Atom “SoFIA” (2015)  —  Updated, 4/4/2018, 7:00am PT: Added Intel's statement.  —  Intel hinted in a previous microcode update guidance …
Fast Company:
An in-depth look at how Twitter is scrambling to combat abuse on its platform, after initially being blinded to safety concerns by its zeal for free speech  —  For years, the company's zeal for free speech blinded it to safety concerns.  Now it's scrambling to make up for lost time.
Nicholas Diakopoulos / Columbia Journalism Review:
The age of trends is over, as social signals like retweets and likes are too easily manipulated by bots, and journalists must learn to identify bots' influence  —  Bots are everywhere.  A report by The New York Times recently outed about 3.5 million of them on Twitter.
Benedict Evans:
As social sharing moves away from algorithmic newsfeeds, formats like Stories and one-to-one messaging are growing by addressing content overload  —  When I got married, my future wife and I were both quite sure that we would have a nice small, quiet wedding - none of these massive, extravagant parties with hundreds of people for us!
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
GoFundMe acquires YouCaring as charitable crowdfunding continues to consolidate  —  GoFundMe, the startup that focuses on crowdfunding for charitable causes, has made another acquisition to scale up its platform: It has acquired YouCaring, a smaller rival, creating a combined community …

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