Techmeme
July 8, 2020, 10:15 AM

Top News

Mike Isaac / New York Times:
An independent audit commissioned by Facebook harshly criticizes the company, arguing that some of its decisions were “significant setbacks for civil rights”  —  An independent audit faulted the social network for “vexing and heartbreaking decisions” that affect its users — and potentially the November elections.
Free Press:
After meeting between leaders of Facebook, ADL, Free Press, NAACP, and Color Of Change, boycott organizers are unconvinced meaningful change will occur  —  WASHINGTON — On Tuesday afternoon, leaders of four of the organizations coordinating the #StopHateForProfit advertising boycott met …
Filipe Espósito / 9to5Mac:
Code in the second developer beta of iOS 14 reveals a hidden and unannounced feature in the Wallet app that would allow payments with QR codes using Apple Pay  —  Apple today released the second developer beta of iOS 14 with some small changes across the system.
Diane Bartz / Reuters:
Sources: FTC and Justice Department are looking into allegations TikTok failed to live up to a 2019 agreement to protect children's privacy  —  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Justice Department are looking into allegations that popular app TikTok failed …
Apple:
Apple expands its Independent Repair Provider Program to hundreds of new locations in the US and opens up to businesses in Europe and Canada  —  Independent Repair Provider Program also opens to businesses across Europe and Canada  —  Apple is expanding its Independent Repair Provider Program …
Richard C. Moss / Ars Technica:
A retrospective on a nearly 25-year history of Flash, as Adobe prepares to officially end support and distribution of Flash Player in December 2020  —  Before Flash Player sunsets this December, we talk its legacy with those who built it.  —  Few technologies have yielded such divisive and widespread passion as Flash.
Arielle Pardes / Wired:
The Police Data Accessibility Project, which started on Reddit, aims to aggregate all public police records into one easily searchable, open source database  —  The Police Data Accessibility Project aims to request, download, clean, and standardize public records that right now are overly difficult to find.
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
Samsung announces its next Galaxy Unpacked event for August 5, to be held virtually, where the Galaxy Note 20 lineup and Galaxy Fold's successor are expected  —  Time for a new Galaxy Unpacked event  —  Samsung has announced that its next Galaxy Unpacked event will take place on Wednesday, August 5th, at 10AM ET.
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
Microsoft Teams vs. Slack: Teams is a part of Microsoft's vision to build an OS for the cloud whereas Slack is building an enterprise social network via Connect  —  On November 2, 2016, Microsoft announced Teams at a special event in New York City.  Slack decided to mark the occasion:
Paul Mozur / New York Times:
Facebook, Telegram, Google, and Twitter say they have suspended requests for user data from Hong Kong police, following a new national security law by China  —  The social network said it would review the city's punitive new national security law, a rare public questioning of Chinese policy by a large American tech company.
The Guardian:
Gwyn Topham / The Guardian:
Uber to launch a commuter boat service this summer in London in partnership with Thames Clippers, branded as Uber Boat, and bookable through Uber's app  —  US firm will buy naming rights for fleet and piers, and users can book journeys on its app  —  Uber is to extend its reach in London …
Angus Loten / Wall Street Journal:
Report: nearly 70K tech startup employees worldwide have lost jobs since March, including over 25.5K in the San Francisco region  —  Layoffs among tech startups reflect economic fallout of Covid-19  —  Technology startups have been laying off tens of thousands of workers to cope …
More: PYMNTS.com
Nick Statt / The Verge:
Instagram will start letting users pin up to three comments on their posts, after testing the feature in May  —  To help users highlight positive replies and better moderate abusive ones  —  Instagram on Tuesday started the official rollout of its pinned comment feature …
Tom Simonite / Wired:
A look at how AI companies like Synthesia are creating corporate-friendly uses for deepfakes, like creating multilingual, personalized training videos  —  Coronavirus restrictions make it harder and more expensive to shoot videos.  So some companies are turning to synthetic media instead.
Sheila Dang / Reuters:
TikTok launches a self-service ad platform globally, with a music library and video editing tools to help brands make ads that match the style of TikTok videos  —  (Reuters) - TikTok's launch on Wednesday of a new platform to court small business advertisers is fraught with challenges …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Amazon Fire TV adds live content from Sling TV, YouTube TV, and Hulu + Live TV  —  Amazon is upgrading its Fire TV's live TV experience through new integrations with several live TV streaming services, including Sling TV, YouTube TV, and Hulu + Live TV.  Live content from these services …

Sponsor Posts

Airtable:
Meet Airtable ProductCentral  —  The unified solution for managing your entire product development process in the AI era.
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:
Zoho SalesIQ turns 10: Transforming customer experiences since 2014  —  October marked a remarkable milestone for Zoho SalesIQ—our 10th anniversary.  What began in 2014 as a simple live chat tool has evolved …
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Fri. 11/01 - ChatGPT Search
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 10:15 AM ET, July 8, 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.

More News

Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:

Earlier Picks

Todd Spangler / Variety:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Abdi Latif Dahir / New York Times: