Techmeme
April 9, 2021, 2:30 PM

Top News

Annie Palmer / CNBC:
Amazon wins enough votes to beat union effort in Alabama; of the 3,215 ballots cast, there were 1,798 votes opposing the union and 738 votes in favor  —  - Amazon on Friday secured enough votes to defeat the unionization drive at one of its Alabama warehouses.
About Amazon:
Amazon thanks workers for voting against unionizing, says less than 16% voted to join the union and counters the union's claims that Amazon won by intimidation  —  Thank you to employees at our BHM1 fulfillment center in Alabama for participating in the election.
Kellen / Droid Life:
Epic filing reveals that in a 2016 email Phil Schiller said “moving iMessage to Android will hurt us more than help us”, which Epic argues is proof of lock-in  —  Epic and Apple are preparing to battle it out in court over the App Store (remember that whole Fortnite debacle?) …
Patrick McGee / Financial Times:
Filipe Espósito / 9to5Mac:
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google denies reports Pixel 5a 5G is cancelled, says it'll be available this year in the US and Japan and announced in line with last year's a-series phone  —  Despite rumors this morning to the contrary, Google has just issued an on the record statement that the “Pixel 5a” does indeed exist and will not be canceled.
Jeff Horwitz / Wall Street Journal:
Researchers say Facebook's algorithms disproportionately show certain types of job ads to men and women; no evidence of gender skewing was found on LinkedIn  —  Researchers found the platform's algorithms promoted roles to certain users; company pledges to continue work in removing bias from recommendations
The Markup:
Investigation finds Google uses a secret blocklist to stop advertisers from making YouTube ad campaigns for hate terms; it worked less than a third of the time  —  Many well-known White supremacist and White nationalist terms and slogans were not blocked  —  First of two parts.
The Markup:
New York Times:
Taiwan is going to great lengths to keep water flowing to chip factories of TSMC and others, including shutting off irrigation to legions of rice growers  —  The island is going to great lengths to keep water flowing to its all-important semiconductor industry, including shutting off irrigation to legions of rice growers.
Kim Lyons / The Verge:
Verizon is recalling 2.5M Ellipsis Jetpack mobile hotspots, ~1.3M of which are in use, after investigation found batteries could overheat and pose fire hazards  —  The CPSC says the devices' batteries are the source of the overheating  —  Verizon said Thursday it is working …
Will Gottsegen / Decrypt:
Robinhood says 9.5 million customers traded crypto on its platform in Q1 2021 compared to 1.7 million in Q4 2020, an increase of 458%  —  The online brokerage service Robinhood said on Thursday that 9.5 million of its customers traded cryptocurrency on its platform in Q1 of 2021.
Jack Morse / Mashable:
Source: Reddit is exploring a Clubhouse-like feature that would enable moderator-run voice chats  —  The front page of the internet may be getting a voice.  —  Reddit is quietly exploring a new feature that would enable moderator-run voice chats, possibly similar to Clubhouse, according to a source familiar with the company's plan.
Jeff Kauflin / Forbes:
Orum, which speeds up bank payments by using AI to assess risk, raises $21M Series A led by Bain Capital  —  Today you can load a movie on Netflix in a second, catch an Uber in a minute and get groceries delivered in an hour.  You'd think money would move just as quickly—and some of it does.
Katie Canales / Insider:
Report: hackers scraped data of 500M LinkedIn users and posted it for sale online; LinkedIn confirms the dataset includes publicly viewable info from its site  —  - Personal data from 500 million LinkedIn users has been scraped and is reportedly for sale on a hacking forum.
Casey Newton / Platformer:
Amid a mental health crisis because of COVID-19, Stanford researchers found that most tech platforms have no policies related to discussions of self-harm  —  Exclusive: Amid a rising mental health crisis, Stanford researchers find many companies ignoring posts about self-harm

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More News

R. Lawler / Engadget:
Elizabeth Dwoskin / Washington Post:

Earlier Picks

Luke Plunkett / Kotaku:
David Priest / CNET:
Amanda Macias / CNBC:
Matt Mullenweg:
James Vincent / The Verge:
Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:
Max Chafkin / Bloomberg: