Techmeme
May 26, 2021, 11:55 AM

Top News

Annie Palmer / CNBC:
Amazon says it will acquire MGM Studios for $8.45B, its second-largest acquisition since it paid $13.7B for Whole Foods in 2017  —  - Amazon is buying MGM Studios, the companies announced, marking Amazon's most ambitious move yet into the entertainment business.
Peter Kafka / Vox:
With its MGM acquisition, Amazon doesn't want to compete with streamers like Netflix but reduce Prime subscriber churn by providing enough blockbuster content  —  Amazon isn't competing with Netflix, but it is spending billions trying to figure out Hollywood.  Maybe 007 can help.
Joseph Menn / Reuters:
WhatsApp has filed a lawsuit in Delhi against the Indian government for its new social media regulations, saying they would break privacy protections  —  WhatsApp has filed a lawsuit in Delhi against the Indian government seeking to block regulations coming into force on Wednesday that experts …
Stephen Shankland / CNET:
USB standards body unveils its USB-C 2.1 revision, which supports power up to 240W, up from 100W currently, aimed at devices like 4K displays and gaming laptops  —  An upgrade to the USB-C standard will accommodate levels of up to 240 watts, an improvement that could let you plug power-hungry devices …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Facebook and Instagram now give users options to hide Like counts across all posts and to hide their own public Like counts from others  —  Facebook this week will begin to publicly roll out the option to hide Likes on posts across both Facebook and Instagram, following earlier tests beginning in 2019.
Sam Machkovech / Ars Technica:
Sources say Valve is making a Switch-like portable gaming PC that could launch by year's end  —  We can confirm some, but not all, of what's in store for the codenamed “SteamPal.”  —  Video game and hardware studio Valve has been secretly building a Switch-like portable PC …
Elizabeth Dwoskin / Washington Post:
Facebook says Russia is still the largest producer of disinformation, in a report that details 150 operations that the company has disrupted since 2017  —  Report explores how issue has evolved in recent years  —  A Facebook report released Wednesday says that Russia is still the largest producer …
New York Times:
An overview of Russia's increasingly aggressive attempts to control Google, Facebook, and Twitter, ordering them to store data in Russia and imposing fines  —  Its campaign is part of a global wave of actions by governments that are testing how far they can go to control online speech.
Fadeke Adegbuyi / Cybernaut - Every:
Gen Z students are studying together online across YouTube, TikTok, Discord, and Twitter, seeking inspiration, finding focus, and sharing academic anxieties  —  In late 2020, a 10-hour loop of a song from Mario Kart titled “Coconut Mall” started blowing up on Youtube.
South China Morning Post:
Xiaomi beats with Q1 profit of $1.2B, up 260.6% YoY, on revenue of $12B, up 54.7% YoY, and says it shipped 49.4M smartphones globally for a 14.1% market share  —  Smartphone giant Xiaomi's first-quarter profit beat market estimates to reach US$1.2 billion Revenue in the March quarter hit US$12 billion …
More: PingWest
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Bangalore-based Koo, a microblogging service that allows users to post in English and Indian languages, raises $30M at over $100M valuation led by Tiger Global  —  Investors are backing Koo, an Indian alternative to Twitter, with large size checks at a time when tension is brewing between the American social network and New Delhi.
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
DataDome, which helps secure e-commerce marketplaces against web scraping, account takeover, and payment fraud, raises $35M Series B led by Elephant  —  Elevate your enterprise data technology and strategy at Transform 2021.  —  Bot defense startup DataDome today announced that it raised $35 million …
Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch:
SpotOn, a payments startup focused on SMBs, raises $125M Series D led by a16z, tripling its valuation from last September to $1.875B  —  Certain industries were hit harder by the COVID-19 pandemic than others, especially in its early days.  —  Small businesses, including retailers and restaurants …
DFRLab:
Analysis of 40M pieces of QAnon content from 1/20 to 4/21: Facebook, Twitter, and others have successfully expelled most of the content after it peaked in 6/20  —  The conspiracy's followers on alternative platforms have failed to out-post their counterparts on mainstream ones

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:
5 common accounting mistakes  —  This is a guest post by Yaali Bizappln Solutions.  A lot of businesses manage their customers and finances on separate platforms.  This disconnect often leads to missed invoices …
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Fri. 11/22 - An LLM Siri But... Only The Year AFTER Next?
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 11:55 AM ET, May 26, 2021.

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

Earlier Picks

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Sean O'Kane / The Verge:
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
Lauren Feiner / CNBC:
Jon Fingas / Engadget: