Techmeme
April 2, 2019, 2:20 PM

Top News

Mark Bergen / Bloomberg:
Sources: YouTube execs ignored internal warnings, concerns about the spread of toxic videos, and proposals to change recommendations, in favor of engagement  —  A year ago, Susan Wojcicki was on stage to defend YouTube.  Her company, hammered for months for fueling falsehoods online …
Pranav Dixit / BuzzFeed News:
Facebook says it removed over 800 Indian and Pakistani Pages, accounts, and Groups for spreading misinformation and propaganda, ahead of India's election  —  NEW DELHI — Facebook and Instagram removed more than 800 political pages, accounts, and groups in India and Pakistan for spreading misinformation …
Alex Konrad / Forbes:
a16z raises new $2B fund and says the firm's 150 employees are being registered as financial advisors, so they can go deeper on riskier bets, like buying crypto  —  Emerging from the financial crisis in 2009, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz laid out their campaign to take on Silicon Valley.
Paul Thurrott / Thurrott:
Microsoft closes the Microsoft Store's ebook category, offering full refunds on ebook purchases and a $25 credit to those who annotated their ebooks  —  I guess the only surprise here is when this would happen.  But Microsoft is indeed shutting down the ebook functionality in its Edge web browser and in the Microsoft Store.
Matthew Boyle / Bloomberg:
Walmart will let customers order groceries by voice through Google Assistant beginning this month, expanding the service to other platforms in the coming months  —  - Prior purchase data will help identify preferred brands, size  — Retailer to expand service to more platforms in coming months
Abhimanyu Ghoshal / The Next Web:
WhatsApp debuts a fact-checking tip line in India to combat fake news, will work with startup Proto to help review text, photos, links, and video sent by users  —  WhatsApp has launched its next weapon in the fight against misinformation on its platform in India: a tip line to which you can send forwards …
Adrian Zmudzinski / Cointelegraph:
Report: data provided by TokenData shows about $118M has been raised via ICOs in Q1 2019, compared to $6.9B raised during the same period in 2018  —  About $118 million has been raised via initial coin offerings (ICOs) in Q1 of 2019, over 58 times less than $6.9 billion …
Mark Di Stefano / BuzzFeed:
YouTube is removing UK far-right activist Tommy Robinson's videos from search results and prohibiting him from live streaming, stopping short of an outright ban  —  The video platform is removing the far-right activist's videos from search results and stopping him live-streaming.
Jordan Crook / TechCrunch:
Home-buying and selling platform Perch closes its Series B, raising $20M in equity funding and $200M in debt to fund operations and home purchasing  —  Perch, a home-buying and selling platform, has raised $220 million in a combination of equity ($20M) to fund operations and debt ($200M) to finance home purchasing.
More: Perch and BloombergThanks:@sistaklein
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft unveils new mid-range 13-inch Surface Book 2 with Intel quad-core i5 processor, 256GB storage, and 8GB RAM for $1,499  —  Microsoft is quietly refreshing its Surface Book 2 base model today.  The software giant is introducing Intel's latest 8th Gen quad-core i5 processor …
Colin Lecher / The Verge:
1,300+ Googlers sign a petition demanding Google remove Kay Coles James, president of the conservative Heritage Foundation, from its external AI advisory board  —  ‘They think that some of our colleagues either do not or should not exist’  —  When Google announced an external advisory board …

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