Techmeme
August 22, 2018, 1:20 AM

Top News

Facebook:
Facebook removes 652 Pages, groups, and accounts on Facebook and Instagram after a FireEye tip led it to investigate inauthentic behavior out of Iran and Russia  —  Today we removed multiple Pages, groups and accounts for coordinated inauthentic behavior on Facebook and Instagram.
Twitter Safety / @twittersafety:
Twitter says it has suspended 284 accounts for engaging in coordinated manipulation and that many of the accounts appeared to originate from Iran  —  Working with our industry peers today, we have suspended 284 accounts from Twitter for engaging in coordinated manipulation. Based on our existing analysis, it appears many of these accounts originated from Iran.
New York Times:
Research that looked at every anti-refugee attack in Germany over two years shows more attacks on refugees happened where Facebook use was higher than average  —  ALTENA, Germany — When you ask locals why Dirk Denkhaus, a young firefighter trainee who had been considered neither dangerous nor political …
Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
Santa Clara Fire Department says Verizon throttled “unlimited” data plan to a fire truck during Mendocino wildfire response; Verizon says it made a mistake  —  Fire dep't had to pay twice as much to lift throttling during wildfire response.  —  Verizon Wireless' throttling …
Elizabeth Dwoskin / Washington Post:
Facebook assigns a trustworthiness score to each of its users, tracking things like whether an article a user flags as false turns out, after review, to be true  —  SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook has begun to assign its users a reputation score, predicting their trustworthiness on a scale from zero to 1.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Slack raises $427M Series H led by Dragoneer Investment Group and General Atlantic at a valuation of over $7.1B  —  Slack, the workplace communications platform, has taken off like a rocket since launching in 2013 and now has more than 8 million daily active users and 70,000 teams paying to use it.
Alex Kantrowitz / BuzzFeed News:
Facebook says it plans to remove over 5,000 ad targeting options by this fall in an effort to prevent discriminatory advertising  —  Facebook is planning to remove more than 5,000 ad targeting options in an effort to prevent discriminatory advertising.  —  The bulk of the 5,000 targeting options …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Netflix is testing bypassing iTunes payment method in 33 countries, redirecting users to the mobile web version to log payment details directly with Netflix  —  Netflix is one of the highest-grossing apps on the iOS App Store, but it looks like the video streaming giant is contemplating …
Taylor Soper / GeekWire:
Cloud-based file transfer company WeTransfer acquires FiftyThree, which makes the popular Paper app, including its entire patent portfolio and executive team  —  File-sharing company WeTransfer has acquired the Paper and Paste creative apps from FiftyThree.
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
A look at Facebook's voice ambitions: from developing a speech recognition feature for Facebook and Messenger apps called Aloha to patents for a speaker device  —  Code reveals unlaunched speech recognition feature  —  Facebook has been a bit slow to adopt the voice computing revolution.
Shona Ghosh / Business Insider:
Y Combinator says it's accepting all 15,000+ applicants to its Startup School program after a glitch sent acceptance emails to those who had been rejected  —  - Y Combinator emailed tech founders this week saying they had been accepted into Startup School, its free online course for entrepreneurs.
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Google Fit on iOS and Android is redesigned with “move minutes” and “heart points” to encourage cardiac exercise, new health-tracking rings, and activity goals  —  You'll collect ‘Heart Points’ instead of counting steps  —  Today, Google is rolling out a complete redesign …
Patricia Hernandez / The Verge:
Google launches experimental feature for Assistant users in the US that shares stories from Solutions Journalism Network when asked “tell me something good”  —  Good news, literally  —  Trying to keep up with the news might be aspirational, but these days, it can also be depressing.
Charlie Warzel / BuzzFeed News:
In an interview, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey says Twitter should be built around following topics and interests, thinks an impartial product can exist  —  Twitter's CEO Jack Dorsey doesn't have all the answers.  For one, he's not sure whether you should delete your old tweets.
Jeremy Horwitz / VentureBeat:
HTC announces Vive Wireless Adapter, coming Sept. 24 for $300, allowing wireless usage of Vive and Vive Pro, though the Pro needs a $60 compatibility add-on  —  HTC's long-awaited Vive Wireless Adapter is almost ready to purchase, the company announced today, as the cutting-edge collaboration between …

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