Techmeme
August 19, 2020, 4:50 PM

Top News

Sheera Frenkel / New York Times:
Facebook says it has further cracked down on QAnon, removing 790 Groups and restricting another 1,950 Groups, 440 Pages, and over 10,000 Instagram accounts  —  The social network also said it was restricting another 1,950 groups, 440 pages on Facebook and more than 10,000 accounts on Instagram related to the conspiracy group.
Jeremy Horwitz / VentureBeat:
Apple becomes the first US company to reach a $2T market cap during intraday trading, two years after reaching $1T  —  Just two years after becoming the first U.S. company to reach a $1 trillion market capitalization, Apple has officially doubled its value to $2 trillion.
New York Times:
Stocks of Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Facebook rose a combined 37% in the first seven months of 2020, while all the other S&P 500 stocks fell 6%  —  As the economy contracts and many companies struggle to survive, the biggest tech companies are amassing wealth and influence in ways unseen in decades.
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
Zoom says it is adding support for Amazon Echo Show, Facebook Portal, and Google Nest Hub Max later this year  —  Zoom from even more places  —  Zoom is expanding to a variety of new devices later this year, with the company announcing that the Amazon Echo Show, Facebook Portal …
Committee to Protect Journalists:
Ankhi Das, a top Facebook exec in India, filed a criminal complaint against journalist Awesh Tiwari for sharing a WSJ article critical of Das on Facebook  —  Facebook regional director Ankhi Das should withdraw her criminal complaint against journalist Awesh Tiwari, and respect citizens' rights …
Reuters:
Sources: Facebook and Ankhi Das, a top exec in India, are facing questions from employees over content moderation, with calls to denounce “anti-Muslim bigotry”  —  NEW DELHI/BENGALURU (Reuters) - Facebook (FB.O) and its top lobbying executive in India, Ankhi Das …
The New Indian Express:
The Guardian:
Avaaz: sites spreading health misinfo had ~500M views on Facebook in April; top 10 such sites had almost four times the views of top 10 reputable health sites  —  Research findings undermine firm's claims it is cracking down on inaccurate news  —  Websites spreading misinformation …
Wall Street Journal:
Tim Wu / New York Times:
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Researchers say a new P2P botnet FritzFrog is using advanced measures to infect millions of SSH servers around the world  —  Botnet is hard to detect and with no centralized control server, harder to take down.  —  Researchers have found what they believe is a previously undiscovered botnet …
Ashley Carman / The Verge:
Instagram rolls out “suggested posts”, appearing when users reach the end of their feed, offering related content unlike Explore feed's adjacent content  —  You thought you were done  —  Instagram is expanding its feed today with the launch of “suggested posts.”
Benedict Evans:
With ~1B active iPhones and an est. ~500M weekly active App Store users, it's time for Apple to play by new rules and legal fights in EU and US might make it  —  I write a weekly newsletter around tech and media, picking the 10-20 pieces of news that actually mattered and explaining what they mean …
Pew Research Center:
Survey: 73% of US adults say it is very or somewhat likely social media sites intentionally censor political views; 90% of Republicans and 59% Democrats agree  —  Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to say major tech companies favor the views of liberals over conservatives.
Kyle Daly / Axios:
Twitter says it has locked or suspended 47% more accounts in H2 2019 for breaking its rules than in H1 2019, due to better human oversight, policies, and tools  —  Twitter nearly doubled its enforcement actions against accounts engaging in abuse and harassment and saw government requests …
Ryan Gallagher / Bloomberg:
Sources say the Twitter breach in 2015 involving access of internal data by employees yielded information that led to the disappearance of Saudi dissidents  —  Access of internal data by Twitter employees in 2015 presaged the disappearance of Saudi dissidents
Nick Romeo / New Yorker:
How Americans can draw upon European thinkers, like Dutch politician Marietje Schaake, to address issues of antitrust, Big Tech, and democratic governance  —  Last October, a couple of days before joining Stanford University as the international policy director at the Cyber Policy Center …
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Oculus will soon require all of its VR headset users to sign up with a Facebook account, removing support for new separate Oculus accounts in October  —  Support for separate Oculus accounts will end in 2023  —  Oculus will soon require all of its virtual reality headset users to sign up with a Facebook account.
Issie Lapowsky / Protocol:
Profile of Color of Change, a civil rights group pushing Big Tech on issues of race that has gone from 1.7M members in May to 8M today  —  It felt hot in Brandi Collins-Dexter's attic, but nerves may have had something to do with it.  —  It was late June, and she was sitting in front of her computer …

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Tsering D. Gurung / Rest of World:
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