Techmeme
December 7, 2021, 10:30 PM

Top News

Wayne Ma / The Information:
Sources: Tim Cook brokered a secret five-year deal with China in 2016, paving the way for Apple's success by promising to invest $275B+ in the country's economy  —  Interviews and internal Apple documents provide a behind-the-scenes look at how the company made concessions to Beijing and won key legal exemptions.
Richard Lawler / The Verge:
Amazon resolves the underlying issues that caused an AWS outage that started around 10:45am ET and is “working towards recovery of any impaired services”  —  Amazon says “many services have already recovered”  —  Problems with some Amazon Web Services cloud servers …
Lauren Kaori Gurley / VICE:
Andrew Hayward / Decrypt:
Ubisoft will add NFT items into its games, starting with Ghost Recon Breakpoint on the Tezos blockchain, becoming the first major gaming company to do so  —  In brief  — Major game publisher Ubisoft will implement in-game NFT items into its games, starting with Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint.
Zac Hall / 9to5Mac:
Twitter acquires messaging app Quill, which will shut down and delete all user data on December 11 after launching in February to challenge Slack  —  In February 9to5Mac reported on the launch of a focus-focused Slack competitor called Quill.  Today Twitter is bringing Quill under its wing …
David McCabe / New York Times:
Ahead of a congressional hearing, Adam Mosseri outlines Instagram parental controls coming in March, including monitoring time spent and bulk deleting posts  —  Adam Mosseri, the head of the company, is expected to face questions from lawmakers this week about whether social media harms children.
Jamie Tarabay / Bloomberg:
Google sues two Russians it claims help run a botnet that has infected 1M+ devices and uses command-and-control server addresses stored on Bitcoin's blockchain  —  - Complaint says the two created a sophisticated ‘botnet’  — Glupteba sells stolen logins, credit cards, Google says
Taylor Hatmaker / TechCrunch:
Twitter is testing a new process for reporting harmful tweets that lets US users describe what happened, and will use this data to improve its responses  —  Twitter is trying out some changes to the way that users report tweets that they believe might break Twitter's rules.
Bloomberg:
Crypto critic Saule Omarova, who was Biden's pick to lead the OCC, withdraws her name from consideration following Senate fights over her background  —  President Joe Biden's pick to lead a key U.S. banking regulator has withdrawn her name from consideration, according to a statement from the White House.
Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
Stan Chudnovsky, Meta's Messenger chief who is also leading the integration of Meta's messaging services, will leave the company, plans to stay until Q2 2022  —  The executive has been overseeing efforts to integrate the company's messaging services  —  Stan Chudnovsky, the Meta Platforms …
Russell Brandom / The Verge:
The Senate confirms Jessica Rosenworcel to lead the FCC, the first female chair in the agency's history, in a 68 to 31 vote  —  She will be the first female chair in FCC history  —  On Tuesday, the Senate voted 68 to 31 to confirm Jessica Rosenworcel's re-appointment to the Federal …
Alex Heath / The Verge:
Hands-on with Snap Spectacles, announced in May: lightweight, bold design, and impressive AR, but overheating and a 30-minute battery is why they aren't on sale  —  Mainstream AR glasses are still years away  —  It doesn't take long to realize why Snap's first true AR glasses aren't for sale.
Axios:
Seventeen groups representing ~150 newspapers quietly filed antitrust lawsuits in the past year against Google and Meta for monopolizing the digital ads market  —  Newspapers all over the country have been quietly filing antitrust lawsuits against Google and Facebook for the past year …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Discord begins testing Premium Memberships, letting creators monetize servers through tiered perks, make channels or servers exclusive to paying users, and more  —  You'll soon be able to subscribe directly to Discord servers  —  Discord is starting to test a new Premium Memberships feature …
Lizzy Lawrence / Protocol:
Q&A with Julien Codorniou, the outgoing head of Meta's Workplace, on expanding into enterprise services, maintaining privacy, the future of Workplace, and more  —  As a parade of executives have announced plans to leave Meta (formerly known as Facebook), employees know exactly where to look …
More: Insider
Ryan Gallagher / Bloomberg:
Switzerland's federal data protection and information commissioner opens a probe into text message provider Mitto after a report alleged it surveilled users  —  Switzerland's federal data protection and information commissioner opened an investigation focusing on a company …

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