Techmeme
February 23, 2019, 5:40 PM

Top News

Caroline O'Donovan / BuzzFeed News:
50+ Microsoft staff sign letter to Satya Nadella and Brad Smith demanding an end to a $479M US Army contract to license HoloLens tech for combat and training  —  A group of Microsoft employees is circulating a letter among the company's over 130,000-person staff demanding that executives cancel a $479 million contract with the US Army.
Ryan Mac / BuzzFeed News:
Sources characterize Zuckerberg's May announcement of Facebook's Clear History tool as an example of the company's history of prioritizing optics over substance  —  Last May, Facebook promised to create a “Clear History” function it said would give users more control over their data.
Joseph Bernstein / BuzzFeed News:
Ryan Broderick / BuzzFeed News:
After reports of pedophiles using YouTube comments to sexualize videos of children, YouTube warns creators it may demonetize videos with inappropriate comments  —  A new controversy this week over the sexualized exploitation of children on YouTube has set off a wave of advertiser boycotts …
Monica Nickelsburg / GeekWire:
Sources: Amazon may be scaling down its expansion in Seattle, including subleasing offices it rented in a new skyscraper, and expanding in neighboring Bellevue  —  For years, Amazon has gobbled up office space in Seattle at a breakneck pace, creating a red-hot commercial real estate market in the city's urban core.
Tweets: @mnickelsburg
Wired:
Social media companies should gain more in-house knowledge about mental health to realize the impact of recommendation algorithms on users with mental illness  —  IT'S TROUBLING ENOUGH that British teenager Molly Russell sought out images of suicide and self-harm online before she took her own life in 2017.
Timothy B. Lee / Ars Technica:
Florida inmate sues the Florida Department of Corrections after he was told he has to repurchase $569 of music he bought after the FDOC changed music vendors  —  Prisoners who paid $1.70 per song lost access when the prison changed vendors.  —  Florida inmate William Demler says that since 2012 …
Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
Twitter co-founder and former CEO Ev Williams is stepping down from the company's board  —  Twitter Co-founder and former CEO Ev Williams is stepping down from the company's board, according to a Friday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.  —  “It's been an incredible 13 years …
Caroline O'Donovan / BuzzFeed News:
YouTube says it will remove ads on anti-vaccine videos, launches info panel below anti-vaccine videos that links to the Wikipedia page for “vaccine hesitancy”  —  YouTube on Friday said it would prevent channels that promote anti-vax content from running advertising …
Jon Porter / The Verge:
What to expect at MWC 2019: new flagships from Sony, LG, and Chinese companies, foldable phones from Huawei and others, return of HoloLens, and a lot of 5G hype  —  5G's early steps will continue, and the Galaxy Fold could get some competition  —  In the next few days …
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
Shira Ovide / Bloomberg:
Academic paper argues that Facebook's potential abuses of monopoly power and violations of users' privacy are not separate but are two sides of the same coin  —  Once it became indispensable, it gained the power to reverse promises it had made not to gather certain data.

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