Open Links In New Tab
Mobile Archives Site News
Techmeme
June 18, 2020, 5:07 PM
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Sponsor Events Newsletter

Top News

Seth Schiesel / New York Times:
Sources: since February, Apple has rejected at least five versions of Facebook Gaming, citing rules that prohibit apps that primarily distribute casual games  —  Apple has repeatedly denied Facebook's new Gaming app from appearing in its App Store, citing its own rules.
Dina Bass / Bloomberg:
Microsoft says some app stores are creating a far higher barrier to fair competition than Microsoft did when found guilty of antitrust violations 20 years ago  —  Microsoft Corp. President Brad Smith said it's time for antitrust regulators in the U.S. and Europe to discuss tactics …
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Q&A with House antitrust committee chair Rep. David Cicilline who says Apple is acting like a monopolist and a bully whose App Store fees are “highway robbery”  —  Apple is acting like a monopolist and a bully, according to the chairman of the House antitrust subcommittee.
Media Matters for America:
Facebook says it has removed ads from Trump's 2020 campaign that featured Nazi iconography; the campaign ran 88 ads with the inverted red triangle symbol  —  Update (6/18/20, 1:15 p.m. EDT): Facebook has removed the ads in question following this post and public backlash.
Leo Kelion / BBC:
In a major U-turn, UK government abandons its own coronavirus-tracing app approach and shifts to the model based on Google and Apple's API  —  In a major U-turn, the UK is ditching the way its current coronavirus-tracing app works and shifting to a model based on technology provided by Apple and Google.
Financial Times:
German payments group Wirecard says €1.9B cash is missing and that “spurious cash balances” might have been provided to its auditor by a third party  —  Shares of payments group crash as it says a third-party may have tried ‘to deceive’ its auditor
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Google's Area 120 launches Keen, an automated, machine learning-based app similar to Pinterest that lets users track their interests  —  A new project called Keen is launching today from Google's in-house incubator for new ideas, Area 120, to help users track their interests.
The Markup:
Investigation finds nearly 100 Amazon listings for products it bans, like drugs, weapons, and spy gear, some sold as “Amazon's Choice” and some by Amazon itself  —  The online giant bans products related to drugs, spying and weapons, but we found plenty for sale …
Jeremy Roebuck / The Philadelphia Inquirer:
Court filings show how the FBI used a Philadelphia protester's Etsy profile, LinkedIn, and other internet history to charge her with setting police cars ablaze  —  As demonstrators shouted, fires burned outside City Hall, and Philadelphia convulsed with outrage over the death of George Floyd …
Sarah Frier / Bloomberg:
Following public condemnation from two Black employees, Pinterest CEO says that it plans to add a person of color to its board, evaluate compensation, and more  —  - CEO commits to non-White board member by end of year  — Company will evaluate whether Black employees are underpaid
Alfred Ng / CNET:
Facebook files lawsuits in the US and Europe against developers it alleges scraped user data, as the company increasingly turns to lawsuits to stop data abuses  —  Facebook is suing a developer it alleges was behind a data scraping campaign that took personal information, including login credentials …
New York Times:
US withdraws from international digital tax negotiations with European countries, saying it'll retaliate if they move forward with new taxes on US tech firms  —  The breakdown in negotiations could prompt President Trump to retaliate against countries that impose taxes on American tech firms.
Steve O'Hear / TechCrunch:
Facebook acquires Swedish mapping startup Mapillary, which is building a crowdsourced database of street-level imagery  —  Mapillary, the Swedish startup that wants to take on Google and others in mapping the world via a crowdsourced database of street-level imagery, has been acquired by Facebook, according to the company's blog.
Thanks:@sohear
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Stockwell, the AI-based vending machine formerly known as Bodega, which had raised at least $45M, will be shutting down July 1  —  Stockwell AI entered the world with a bang but it is leaving with a whimper.  Founded in 2017 by ex-Googlers, the AI vending machine startup formerly known …
Will Knight / Wired:
Baidu says it has left The Partnership on AI, a US-led effort to foster collaboration on the ethical challenges of AI; Baidu was the only Chinese member  —  The search giant was the only Chinese member of the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, a US-led effort to foster collaboration on ethical issues.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Payfone, which offers a service to identify and verify people using data gleaned from their mobile phones, raises $100M, bringing its total raised to $175M  —  As an increasing number of daily and essential services move to digital platforms — a trend that's had a massive fillip in the last few months …
Dan Primack / Axios:
DoorDash raises $400M led by Durable Capital Partners, at a $16B post-money valuation  —  DoorDash has raised $400 million in new equity funding at a $16 billion post-money valuation, Axios has learned.  —  Why it matters: For all the talk of deals that didn't happen because of coronavirus, this one is a product of the pandemic.

Sponsor Posts

Meta:
Open Source AI: Available to all, not just the few  —  Meta's open source AI enables small businesses, start-ups, students, researchers and more to download and build with our models at no cost.
Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Zoho:
CIO challenge 5: Can we find an effective solution that also minimizes operational costs?  —  Welcome to the next and final installment of our CIO series!  After what feels like a thousand cups of coffee …
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Sponsor Techmeme
Techmeme Ride Home:
 Thu. 11/21 - What The DOJ Wants Google To Do
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
Sponsor this podcast
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:07 PM ET, June 18, 2020.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

From Mediagazer

Caitlin Huston / The Hollywood Reporter:
Internal memo: Hearst Magazines president announces layoffs as part of a decision to “reallocate resources” to “continue our focus on digital innovation”

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced she will leave the agency on January 20; she was the first woman to be confirmed to lead the agency

Lachlan Cartwright / The Ankler:
Sources: MSNBC renewed Rachel Maddow's contract early this fall, but with a pay cut; MSNBC bosses' plan to shake up daytime and weekend programming

More News

Danielle Mackey / Rest of World:
Ecuador's state-run Twitter troll army, perfected by former president Rafael Correa, has become less organized but more sophisticated since his departure
Bloomberg:
Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com rises ~6% in its debut in Hong Kong after raising $3.9B

Earlier Picks

Sean Hollister / The Verge:
T-Mobile says its massive outage on Monday was caused by failures of a leased third-party fiber circuit and its backup that resulted in an “IP traffic storm”
Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
No, Google didn't demonetize The Federalist and Zero Hedge, as NBC's misleading story claims, and it is not an example of anti-conservative bias
Rob Copeland / Wall Street Journal:
Sundar Pichai says Google will increase its proportion of execs from underrepresented groups by 30% by 2025, contribute $175M+ for Black business owners, more
Twitter:
Twitter will let users record and add up to 140 seconds of audio to tweets, rolling out to iOS users in the coming weeks
Nico Grant / Bloomberg:
Zoom backtracks on end-to-end encryption, saying it plans to offer E2EE to all tiers of users who verify phone numbers and will start testing it in July
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Sponsor Events Newsletter