Techmeme
February 16, 2019, 8:55 PM

Top News

Jason Del Rey / Recode:
Amazon's grave NYC HQ2 mistake: the political landscape changed but the company's playbook didn't  —  The HQ2 contest was very Amazonian.  So was its refusal to back down.  —  No one looks good in the wake of Amazon's decision to scrap plans for a giant New York headquarters in Long Island City, Queens.
Brad Stone / Bloomberg:
Elizabeth Dwoskin / Washington Post:
Records obtained via FOIA requests and interviews with local officials reveal the unusual lengths Google goes to keep its data center construction plans secret  —  Last May, officials in Midlothian, Tex., a city near Dallas, approved more than $10 million in tax breaks for a huge …
Ryan Mac / BuzzFeed:
Twitter hides a tweet, reportedly from Iran's head of state, for pointing out that a previous leader's verdict to murder novelist Salman Rushdie is still valid  —  Twitter has previously used a newsworthiness standard to defend its refusal to apply abuse and harassment rules to President Donald Trump's account.
Wall Street Journal:
An account of the rise and untimely death of Vine and HQ Trivia cofounder Colin Kroll, based on interviews with and documents from friends, police, and others  —  Self-taught coder Colin Kroll shot to startup fame, allowing him to live life in a fast lane  —  Colin Kroll, a college dropout …
Dave Lee / BBC:
Interview with GoFundMe CEO Rob Solomon on medical fundraisers, some campaigns becoming highly politicized, fighting scams, and more  —  Kelsey Colker is less than a year old but she's already spent more time in hospital than most of us will in our lifetime.
Duncan Cooper / Pitchfork:
While some artists whose music is used in TikTok videos are compensated through their labels' sales of blanket licenses, others forgo payment for exposure  —  The company behind lip-sync app TikTok is reportedly worth three times as much as Spotify, but the artists whose music powers the platform are seeing very little of that money.
TechCrunch:
Security researcher says Twitter retains direct messages for years, including messages users have deleted, which may be illegal under the EU's new GDPR laws  —  When does “delete” really mean delete?  Not always or even at all if you're Twitter .  —  Twitter retains direct messages for years …
Matthew Gardner / ITEP:
Amazon has made $11.2B in profits in 2018 but will pay no federal income tax and will receive a rebate of $129M due to unspecified tax credits  —  Amazon, the ubiquitous purveyor of two-day delivery of just about everything, nearly doubled its profits to $11.2 billion in 2018 from $5.6 billion …

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Earlier Picks

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