Techmeme
March 2, 2022, 10:00 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 …
Paresh Dave / Reuters:
Google will remove RT and Sputnik apps from the Play Store, after removing Russian state outlets from its news features, following a similar move by Apple  —  Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google said on Tuesday that it has blocked mobile apps connected to RT and Sputnik from its Play store …
Issie Lapowsky / Protocol:
Mark Scott / Politico:
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 …
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Kyle Alspach / VentureBeat:
Bright Security, formerly NeuraLegion, which offers tools for dynamic app security testing, raises a $20M Series A led by Evolution Equity Partners  —  Depending on who you ask in the cybersecurity world, there's a big shift happening right now in the area of application security.
More: TechCrunch
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 …

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.
Zoho:
Introducing AI Forms: Create optimized forms with AI in Zoho Forms  —  The future of form creation isn't coming, it's here.  Forget everything you thought you knew about building online forms.
Genesys:
Executive Insights: The Era of Contact Center AI Copilots  —  How AI copilots are transforming customer experience and agent performance.
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.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Fri. 12/20 - Gemini Flash Thinking
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 10:00 AM ET, March 2, 2022.

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

Chris Stokel-Walker / Wired:

Earlier Picks

Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Corin Faife / The Verge:
Michael Kan / PCMag: