Techmeme
September 2, 2021, 4:45 PM

Top News

Apple:
Apple will let developers of “reader” apps worldwide link to a website to set up or manage accounts early next year, closing an antitrust investigation by Japan  —  Apple will let developers of “reader” apps around the world link to an external website to set up or manage an account beginning early next year
Aditya Kalra / Reuters:
Sources: Apple is facing an antitrust investigation in India over forcing developers to use its in-app payment system  —  Apple Inc (AAPL.O) is facing an antitrust challenge in India for allegedly abusing its dominant position in the apps market by forcing developers to use its proprietary …
The Verge:
Apple's updated rules allowing web signup links appear to apply only to apps that don't make much money for Apple, like Netflix and Spotify  —  It's for apps that don't make Apple any money anyways  —  While vocal app developers accused Apple last week of spinning a lawsuit settlement …
Sam Schechner / Wall Street Journal:
Ireland's Data Protection Commission, on behalf of the EU, fines WhatsApp €225M for privacy violations, the second-largest fine under GDPR; WhatsApp will appeal  —  Regulators say chat-service unit failed to disclose fully how it collected and shared data about its users
Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
Sources: Twitter is testing new privacy-focused tools, including archiving and hiding old tweets and editing follower lists, as part of a “social privacy” push  —  - Features give users more control over who sees which posts  — ‘Social privacy’ push targets reputation, identity management
Kait Sanchez / The Verge:
Benjamin Mayo / 9to5Mac:
Apple begins prompting iOS 15 users for consent to enable Personalized Ads for their Apple ID, which was previously on by default and led to antitrust scrutiny  —  For iOS 15 users, Apple has begun prompting for their consent to enable Personalized Ads for their Apple ID …
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Apple says Arizona and Georgia will be first to support adding IDs to Wallet in iOS 15, with six states, including Utah, Maryland, and Iowa, expected to follow  —  Apple's plan to digitize your wallet is slowly taking shape.  What started with boarding passes and venue tickets later became credit cards …
Andrew Thurman / CoinDesk:
Dom Hofmann's Loot, with NFTs of random lists of items ostensibly from a fantasy video game, had $46M in sales in just 5 days, attaining a market cap of $180M+  —  The latest non-fungible token (NFT) craze is among the simplest - and the strangest - yet: a randomly generated list …
Taylor Hatmaker / TechCrunch:
Roblox adds voice chat, initially in some games as “spatial audio” where players chat with others around them, and plans a Discord-like persistent voice chat  —  As one the frontrunners in the race to build the metaverse, Roblox is thinking ahead to what virtual worlds really need.
Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch:
Callin, a social audio app founded by David Sacks that offers tools for turning live recordings into podcasts, raises $12M Series A led by Sequoia and others  —  As live audio becomes more and more popular, co-founders David Sacks (former COO of PayPal and CEO of Yammer) …
Sara Fischer / Axios:
Facebook says it helped airlift 175 Afghan citizens out of Afghanistan to Mexico, including journalists and some of its own employees  —  Facebook on Wednesday confirmed that it was part of an effort to fly 175 Afghan citizens out of Afghanistan to Mexico, including some of its own employees, according to a statement provided to Axios.
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:
General Motors says it is temporarily halting production at six of its North American factories due to the global chip shortage  —  ‘The situation remains complex and very fluid’  —  General Motors, parent company of Chevrolet, GMC, Cadillac, and Buick, said it was temporarily halting production …
More: PCMag and Engadget
Anna Nicolaou / Financial Times:
YouTube Music reached 50M paying subscribers in August, up from 30M paid music and premium subscribers that YouTube had reported in October 2020  —  Google-owned platforms have grown rapidly to become serious streaming competitor  —  YouTube's paid music streaming services have amassed 50m subscribers …
Ben Bowman / The Streamable:
Tom Krisher / Associated Press:
NHTSA sends Tesla a letter asking for detailed information on how Autopilot detects and responds to parked emergency vehicles as part of a wider investigation  —  DETROIT (AP) — The U.S. government's highway safety agency wants detailed information on how Tesla's Autopilot system detects …
Sheila Dang / Reuters:
Sources: AWS plans to hire content moderators to look for emerging extremist groups and remove content that violates its cloud service policies  —  Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) plans to take a more proactive approach to determine what types of content violate its cloud service policies …

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 4:45 PM ET, September 2, 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

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:
Lauren Feiner / CNBC: