Techmeme
November 15, 2018, 6:35 PM

Top News

Facebook:
Facebook responds to the NYT exposé, lists “number of inaccuracies” in the story, and denies it knew about Russian activity as early as spring of 2016  —  Yesterday The New York Times published an article about the past two years at Facebook.  There are a number of inaccuracies in the story, including:
New York Times:
Facebook has ended its relationship with Definers Public Affairs, the consulting firm which cast George Soros as a force behind Facebook's critics  —  SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook has ended its relationship with a Washington-based consulting firm, Definers Public Affairs, which spread disparaging information …
Alistair Barr / Bloomberg:
Facebook's board says it pushed Zuckerberg and Sandberg to respond to Russian interference faster and calls NYT report “grossly unfair”  —  Facebook Inc.'s board defended how Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg have handled mounting problems faced …
New York Times:
Mark Zuckerberg / Facebook:
Facebook to demote borderline content in News Feed by default, publish minutes of policy meetings, and let users appeal content decisions to an independent body  —  My focus in 2018 has been addressing the most important issues facing Facebook.  As the year wraps up, I'm writing a series …
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Facebook's second content moderation report: from April to September, 1.5B fake accounts were closed and 23.3M instances of violent content were removed  —  Facebook's latest transparency report shows a big jump in spam and violent content takedowns, some advances in proactively identifying hate speech …
Brian Crecente / Variety:
Sony says it will not attend next year's E3, the annual video game trade show, the first time in E3's 24-year history that Sony will not be there  —  Sony Interactive Entertainment, currently riding high on record sales of its PlayStation 4 gaming console, won't be hosting its annual press conference …
Brian Fung / Washington Post:
FCC gives SpaceX permission to deploy over 7,000 Starlink internet satellites, as part of a full network of 12,000  —  Federal regulators are allowing entrepreneur Elon Musk to use an expanded range of wireless airwaves for his plan to deliver cheap, high-speed Internet access — from space.
Aditya Tendulkar / The Keyword:
Google Maps adds business messaging features to its mobile apps, lets users ask questions, place orders, and track conversations with local businesses  —  Last year we enabled users in select countries to message businesses from the Business Profiles on Google.
Ashley Carman / The Verge:
Instagram adds new shopping features: redesigned business profiles, shop items from video posts, and save items to a shopping collecting  —  Instagram is continuing to build out its shopping features today with the announcement of three new product updates.
Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:
Raspberry Pi Foundation announces $25 Pi 3 Model A+, with a quad-core 1.4GHz CPU but less RAM and USB ports than the $35 Model B+  —  The $25 Pi 3 Model A+  —  The Raspberry Pi Foundation's goal is to make computing as cheap and accessible as possible, so today, it's introducing …
Nikkei:
Alphabet to close its Schaft robotics unit and dissolve the project later this year, after seeking other options when a deal to sell it to SoftBank collapsed  —  Tokyo-born unit Schaft lost its way after departure of robot chief Andy Rubin  —  TOKYO — Alphabet, the holding company behind Google …
Steven Bertoni / Forbes:
Airtable, which wants to make database management mainstream by using drag and drop, raises $100M at a $1.1B valuation  —  n the frenetic world of tech, where the ruling ethos is to move fast and break things, Howie Liu moves at a glacial pace.  With Andrew Ofstad and Emmett Nicholas, he launched Airtable in 2013.
Tom Spring / Threatpost:
Hackers breach iPhone X, Galaxy S9, and Xiaomi Mi6 and earn $325K for exposing 18 exploits at the Pwn2Own Tokyo 2018 contest  —  Three major mobile phone models - the Samsung Galaxy S9, iPhone X and the Xiaomi Mi6 - failed to survive the hacker onslaught at this year's Pwn2Own Tokyo 2018.

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Vlad Savov / The Verge:
Vlad Savov / The Verge: