Techmeme
August 15, 2020, 6:10 AM

Top News

Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
Facebook launches paid online events in 20 countries with waived fees during COVID-19, says Apple is hurting SMBs by refusing to waive its 30% cut on iOS  —  Facebook Inc. joined a growing list of developers to publicly criticize Apple Inc. over its revenue-sharing policy for in-app purchases …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
By weaponizing Fortnite and with Apple as its primary target, Epic Games is well positioned to lead the fight for a change in app store policies  —  Epic Games executed its most ambitious Fortnite live event yesterday, leading both Apple and Google to remove one of the world's most popular games from their app stores.
Nick Statt / The Verge:
Epic's Tim Sweeney says fight with Apple is about “the basic freedoms of all consumers and developers” to install and distribute apps as they choose  —  Sweeney says the explosive feud with Apple is not solely about money  —  Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has issued a series …
Nick Statt / The Verge:
Nick Statt / The Verge:
Lora Kolodny / CNBC:
Trump issues EO forcing ByteDance to sell or spin off its US TikTok business within 90 days and destroy all copies of TikTok data attached to US users  —  - President Donald Trump issued an executive order Friday that will force China's ByteDance to sell or spin off its U.S. TikTok business within 90 days.
New York Times:
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Facebook didn't apply hate speech rules to at least four flagged individuals and groups in India, showing a pattern of favoritism to Modi's party  —  Company executive in vital market opposed move to ban controversial politician; some employees allege favoritism to ruling party
BuzzFeed News:
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Sources: Google is planning to eventually replace Duo with Meet, after placing its consumer communication services under G Suite head Javier Soltero  —  With classic Hangouts on the way out, Google today has two video calling apps.  However, that is one too many for the company …
Bloomberg:
VC firm Initialized raises $230M for its fifth fund and says the fund was “heavily oversubscribed” despite the departure of co-founder Alexis Ohanian  —  - Existing portfolio includes unicorns Instacart, Coinbase, Ro  — Fifth fund “heavily oversubscribed” despite co-founder exit
Kim Lyons / The Verge:
In a new Instagram update, Facebook has started replacing the Instagram DM icon with Messenger's logo, although cross-messaging is still not functional  —  You might see this pop-up when you open Instagram  —  Facebook appears to flipping the switch on integrating the chat systems for Instagram and Messenger.
Biz Carson / Protocol:
Interviews with 20+ founders and investors provide an inside look at Y Combinator's virtual W20 Demo Day, which saw some companies lower their target valuations  —  It was four weeks before Y Combinator's scheduled March 2020 Demo Day, and the pressure was on Helena Merk as she tried to pivot her startup idea ahead of the big pitch.
Richard Waters / Financial Times:
Ripple, sitting on $16B in XRP, says it plans to expand beyond its original cross-border payments system by becoming the “Amazon of payments”  —  The start-up is still trying to find compelling uses for the blockchain technology underpinning its XRP currency
Jason Schreier / Bloomberg:
Ubisoft fires Ashraf Ismail, the creative director of its newest Assassin's Creed game, following an investigation into misconduct allegations  —  Ubisoft Entertainment SA has dismissed the creative director of the newest Assassin's Creed game, the latest result of a MeToo reckoning …
Kim Lyons / The Verge:
ICE signed a contract with facial recognition company Clearview AI this week for “mission support”, government contracting records show  —  The contract comes after months of scrutiny of Clearview's privacy practices  —  Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) …

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.
Zoho:
The crossroads of AI and SaaS  —  Enabling businesses of all sizes to build products in-house and disqualifying SaaS tools that are not AI-powered.  In a span of just two years, AI has made a name for itself as the key driver for innovation.
Genesys:
Executive Insights: The Era of Contact Center AI Copilots  —  How AI copilots are transforming customer experience and agent performance.
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.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Fri. 12/20 - Gemini Flash Thinking
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 6:10 AM ET, August 15, 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

John Gruber / Daring Fireball:

Earlier Picks

Katyanna Quach / The Register:
Tom Simonite / Wired: