Techmeme
January 31, 2019, 4:20 PM

Top News

Facebook:
Facebook says it removed 262 Pages, 356 accounts, three groups, and 162 Instagram accounts tied to Iran for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior  —  Today we removed multiple Pages, groups and accounts that engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior on Facebook and Instagram.
CNBC:
Intel promotes Robert Swan from interim to permanent CEO, its seventh in 50 years, following the ouster of Brian Krzanich in June 2018  —  - Analysts and media outlets speculated early on about several possible candidates, including two female executives who had left Intel in the relatively recent past.
Casey Newton / The Interface:
Apple shutting down Facebook's internal iOS apps should serve as a reminder of the power Apple holds over the rest of us  —  At around 2:30 a.m. ET on Wednesday, Facebook sent me an update about the controversial market research program revealed on Tuesday by TechCrunch.
The Verge:
Andy Greenberg / Wired:
Hackers are distributing Collections #2-5, 845GB of usernames and passwords or 25B records, almost tripling Collection #1, on hacker forums and torrents  —  WHEN HACKERS BREACHED companies like Dropbox and LinkedIn in recent years—stealing 71 and 117 million passwords, respectively …
Janko Roettgers / Variety:
Ultraviolet, the cloud movie locker that launched in 2011 with support from major Hollywood studios, is shutting down on July 31  —  Ultraviolet, a cloud movie locker once hailed as Hollywood's best bet to get consumers hooked on digital movies, is shuttering.
Nick Summers / Engadget:
Nintendo reports Q3 profit of ~$1.5B, up 36% YoY, on revenue of $5.6B, up 26% YoY, sells 9.41M Switch consoles, but cuts its fiscal year target from 20M to 17M  —  Nintendo sold 9.41 million Switch consoles in the three months leading up to December 31st, 2018, bringing lifetime sales to 32.27 million.
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
IDC: 375.4M smartphones shipped in Q4 2018, down 4.9% YoY, closing out worst year; Apple shipped estimated 68.4M iPhones, down 11.5% YoY; Samsung was top vendor  —  The smartphone market isn't looking too hot.  In a report published today, research firm International Data Corporation (IDC) …
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Google says Google+ for consumers will shut down April 2; all content posted by consumer accounts, including Google+ pages, photos, and videos, will be deleted  —  In late 2018, Google announced that it would shut down Google+, its beleaguered social network, for consumers due to “low usage” …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Sources: on-demand storage service Clutter is raising between $200M and $250M in a round led by SoftBank  —  Marie Kondo's rise as a cultural icon shows there's big business to be had in sorting out a mess.  And startups are also hoping to get in on the action.
More: Bloomberg
Athena Jones / CNN:
New York AG, in a precedent-setting settlement, finds selling fake followers and likes or using stolen IDs on social media is illegal in its case against Devumi  —  New York (CNN Business)A company that brought in millions of dollars in revenue by creating fake social media posts and comments …
Frank Chaparro / The Block:
Binance now allows users to buy cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin, and XRP with a credit or debit card  —  Binance, the largest spot cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, is now accepting credit and debit cards for crypto payments, the firm announced Thursday.
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Mark Zuckerberg:
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
Sam Byford / The Verge:
Samsung reports Q4 revenue of $53.3B, down 10% YoY, operating profit of $9.7B, down 29% YoY, says earnings primarily affected by falling demand for memory chips  —  Samsung Electronics has turned in an earnings report in line with its guidance, as happens every quarter.

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Christine Kim / CoinDesk: