Techmeme
March 2, 2022, 10:15 AM

Top News

Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Apple pauses all product sales in Russia, removes RT News and Sputnik News from the App Store outside Russia, and disables Apple Maps' live traffic in Ukraine  —  Apple today confirmed that it has stopped all product sales from its online website in Russia, which means customers in Russia …
Issie Lapowsky / Protocol:
Mark Scott / Politico:
Andrew Hutchinson / Social Media Today:
Meta releases its Q4 Widely Viewed Content report, showing the most viewed Facebook Page comes from a banned account; Meta would not reveal the account  —  Safe to say that Meta's efforts to refute the idea that Facebook amplifies divisive political content are not going exactly as it would have hoped.
Makena Kelly / The Verge:
SOTU: Biden asks Congress to pass new rules to enhance child safety on social media, including banning targeted ads to, and data collection of, children  —  He wants to ban targeted advertising to kids  —  President Joe Biden called on Congress to pass new rules to enhance child safety …
BuzzFeed News:
Google Maps is removing newly added user content, like pins, in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, amid claims of its use in coordinating Russian military activity  —  Responding to claims that its Maps were being used to coordinate Russian military activity in Ukraine, Google …
Stephen Harrison / Slate:
How Russia's war with Ukraine is playing out on Wikipedia; Russian Wikipedia editors decided to call an invasion what it is, rejecting the Kremlin's narrative  —  On Thursday, President Vladimir Putin issued the order for Russian forces to invade Ukraine.  Since then, Russians …
Vikas SN / Moneycontrol:
Netflix acquires Finnish game developer Next Games for around $72M; the studio specializes in games based on entertainment franchises, such as Stranger Things  —  Next Games had released ‘Stranger Things: Puzzle Tales’, a role-playing game based on the streaming giant's hit 80s horror drama series in October last year.
Mariella Moon / Engadget:
US CPSC and Fitbit recall Fitbit Ionic smartwatches, after receiving 118 reports of burn injuries; Fitbit sold ~1M units in the US and 693K internationally  —  Fitbit has issued a voluntary recall for Ionic smartwatches that it manufactured and sold from 2017 through 2020.
Washington Post:
Twitter's crowdsourced fact-checking program Birdwatch remains a small pilot project 13 months after launch, with only 359 contributors flagging tweets in 2022  —  With the Ukraine war unfolding on social media, parsing fact from fiction has never been trickier — or, for those involved, more urgent.
Washington Post:
A profile of Mykhailo Fedorov, one of Ukraine's deputy prime ministers, who is using his Twitter account to pressure tech giants into standing up to Russia  —  Six months ago, Mykhailo Fedorov, one of Ukraine's deputy prime ministers, made a pilgrimage to Silicon Valley to discuss his country's digital transformation.
Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE:
Sanctuary, which is attempting to build general-purpose humanoid robots, raises a $58.5M Series A led by Bell  —  Sanctuary Cognitive Systems Corp., a startup that's attempting to build general-purpose robots with a humanlike appearance and intelligence, said today it has raised $58.5 million in an early-stage funding.
Christine Hall / TechCrunch:
Mexico City-based 99minutos, a logistics service for Latin American e-commerce vendors, raises an $82M Series C led by Oak HC/FT, bringing its funding to ~$129M  —  99minutos, a logistics service company for e-commerce vendors across Latin America, is making fast work out of attracting funding.
Jo Constantz / Bloomberg:
OpenSpace, which uses head-mounted cameras and AI to visualize construction sites, raises $102M led by PSP Growth at a $902M valuation  —  OpenSpace, a startup that develops technology for the construction industry, raised $102 million in a new funding round that the company said gives it a valuation of $902 million.
Bloomberg:
Singapore-based gaming and e-commerce company Sea has lost $132B in market value from its October peak, including $11B in recent days after weak forecasts  —  Sea Ltd., once the hottest stock in the world, has lost more than $130 billion in market value from its peak last year …

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