Techmeme
September 2, 2021, 8:05 PM

Top News

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
Aditya Kalra / Reuters:
Indian non-profit Together We Fight Society has filed a complaint with the Competition Commission of India accusing Apple of anticompetitive App Store practices  —  Apple Inc (AAPL.O) is facing an antitrust challenge in India for allegedly abusing its dominant position in the apps market …
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 …
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
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 …
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 …
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 …
Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch:
Jeeves, which is building tools to help startups manage expenses, raises $57M Series B at a $500M valuation, after raising $31M equity and $100M debt in June  —  The founders of a dozen unicorn companies join VCs in Series B  —  Last summer, Jeeves was participating in Y Combinator's summer batch as a fledgling fintech.
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Facebook Gaming expands its program that lets streamers play some copyrighted music during live streams from 1,000 to 100,000 streamers  —  A new GamesBeat event is around the corner!  Learn more about what comes next.  —  Facebook Gaming is expanding streamers' access to a library …
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 …
Ash Parrish / The Verge:
Gamesight data shows a dip in Twitch viewership on Wednesday, possibly 5%-15%, as some streamers took #ADayOffTwitch to bring awareness to “hate raids”  —  It seems as if the Twitch walkout was a success  —  Streamers took a day off Twitch on September 1st to bring attention …
Muyao Shen / CoinDesk:
A doge meme NFT that sold for $4M in June is now valued at $225M+ after it was fractionalized into nearly 17B tokens and sold in a one-day auction  —  Just three months after a non-fungible token (NFT) representing an image of the original Shiba Inu dogecoin meme sold for about $4 million …
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) …
Jackie Davalos / Bloomberg:
Dallas-based Match Group creates a fund to help cover costs for staff and dependents who need care outside of Texas after the state's near-total ban on abortion  —  - Dubey says she felt compelled to speak out about her views  — Fund would cover costs for those seeking care outside Texas
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.
Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch:
Panorama, which provides K-12 education software to 50 of the largest 100 school districts in the US, raises $60M Series C, bringing total funding to $105M  —  Panorama Education, which has built out a K-12 education software platform, has raised $60 million in a Series C round of funding led by General Atlantic.
Insider:
Sources: Amazon will launch their own TV featuring Alexa software and without third-party manufacturer branding in the US, possibly as soon as October  —  - Amazon is planning to roll out its own Amazon-branded TV, Insider has learned.  — A US launch is targeted for as soon as October.
Thanks:@jpmanga
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.
Connor Smith / Barron's Online:
HPE beats in Q3 with revenue of $6.9B, up 1% YoY, Intelligent Edge revenue of $867M, up 27% YoY, and HPC & MCS revenue of $741M, up 11% YoY  —  Hewlett Packard Enterprise beat earnings expectations during its fiscal third quarter, though sales came in a bit below expectations.
More: ZDNet
Ben Bowman / The Streamable:
Kait Sanchez / The Verge:
Twitter launches Super Follows for iOS, letting a select group of US test users charge either $2.99, $4.99, or $9.99 per month for their tweets  —  Select users in the US can now charge for tweets  —  Twitter is starting to roll out Super Follows, its new feature that lets users charge for subscriber-only content.

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:
Thu. 11/21 - What The DOJ Wants Google To Do
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 8:05 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

Stephen Harrison / Slate:
Tom Krisher / Associated Press:

Earlier Picks

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Anna Nicolaou / Financial Times: