Techmeme
November 3, 2022, 2:50 PM

Top News

Bloomberg:
Sources: Elon Musk plans to cut ~3,700 jobs at Twitter, or half of the company's workforce, starting on November 4, and reverse its work-from-anywhere policy  —  Elon Musk plans to eliminate about 3,700 jobs at Twitter Inc., or half of the social media company's workforce …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Twitter aims to charge for verification as soon as November 7, give current verified users a multi-month grace period, and make the edit button free  —  Twitter Inc. aims to start selling blue verification badges for user profiles as soon as next week, part of a plan by new owner Elon Musk …
Will Oremus / Washington Post:
Sources: Twitter staff are yet to receive a single official message since Musk took over and are relying on media reports, Musk's tweets, and private chats  —  Workers follow new boss's tweets and share rumors on anonymous apps amid silence from leadership on firings, staff cuts and product changes.
Jennifer Surane / Bloomberg:
Memo: Stripe plans to lay off 14% of its staff, reducing its headcount by 1,000 to almost 7,000, to prepare for “leaner times”  —  Stripe Inc., one of the world's most valuable startups, will cut more than 1,000 jobs as it seeks to rein in costs ahead of any economic downturn.
Dan Milmo / The Guardian:
TikTok plans to update its privacy policy on December 2 to confirm that its staff outside of Europe, including in China, can access the data of European users  —  Privacy policy update confirms data of continent's users available to range of TikTok bases including in Brazil, Israel and US
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
WhatsApp announces Communities, a group messaging feature for larger, more structured groups of up to 1,024 people, rolling out worldwide in the coming months  —  WhatsApp today is officially launching Communities, the new feature offering larger, more structured discussion groups that first entered into testing earlier this year.
Wall Street Journal:
Lyft plans to cut 13% of its 4,000 employees, or nearly 700 jobs, after previously cutting 60 people, or under 2% of its workforce, in July  —  Ride-hailing company, which is cutting 13% of staff, maintained its earnings outlook  —  Lyft Inc. said it is cutting 13% of staff, or nearly 700 jobs …
Annie Palmer / CNBC:
Amazon pauses hiring for roles in its corporate workforce, after announcing in October plans to freeze hiring for corporate roles in its retail business  —  KEY POINTS  — Amazon is pausing hiring for roles in its corporate workforce, the company announced in a memo to staff Thursday.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Twitter cancels its Chirp developer conference, set for November 16, and says it is building “some things that we're excited to share with you soon”  —  Twitter is canceling its developer-focused Chirp conference amid management transition, the company said late Thursday.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge:
Amazon will roll out Matter over WiFi smart home standard to 17 Echo devices in December, initially for Android, supporting smart plugs, bulbs, and switches  —  Amazon will start its Matter journey slowly, bringing support for the new smart home standard to 17 Echo devices in December.
TechCrunch:
Sources: Ajit Mohan, the head of Meta in India who joined the company in 2019, has left to become the president of Snap's APAC business  —  Ajit Mohan, the head of Meta in India, has left the firm and joined rival Snap, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Substack announces Chat, an opt-in feature letting writers host discussions with their subscribers, available in the Substack iOS app and coming soon to Android  —  Another company hoping to capitalize on Twitter's upheaval in the wake of Elon Musk's takeover is the newsletter platform Substack.
Kate Irwin / Decrypt:
Meta lets select Instagram creators in the US test a toolkit for minting NFTs and selling them on and off the platform, and says it won't charge fees until 2024  —  Instagram will soon have NFT creation and trading tools built in, but in-app purchases will be “subject to applicable app store fees.”
Maria Deutscher / SiliconANGLE:
Google debuts Code as Policies, a tool that uses AI models to generate code for robots to perform a variety of tasks, under an open-source license on GitHub  —  Google LLC today debuted an internally developed software tool that can reduce the amount of effort involved in training a robot to perform new tasks.
Chloe Chaplain / The i Paper:
Source: amid free speech criticism, the UK plans to remove the Online Safety Bill's “legal but harmful” content rules, except for material targeted at children  —  EXCLUSIVEThe Bill is due to be brought back to Parliament later this month after it was delayed over the summer

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Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: