Techmeme
November 3, 2022, 7:45 PM

Top News

New York Times:
Sources: Elon Musk and his Twitter advisers discussed adding paid DMs, which would let users privately message “Very Important Tweeters”  —  The billionaire and his advisers have discussed adding paid direct messages, fees to watch videos and other features to the service.
Will Oremus / Washington Post:
Sources: Twitter staff have yet to receive a single official message since Elon Musk took over, relying instead on his tweets, media reports, 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.
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.
Jennifer Surane / Bloomberg:
Memo: Stripe plans to lay off 14% of its staff this week, reducing its headcount by 1,000+ to almost 7,000, to trim expenses in preparation 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.
Wall Street Journal:
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 launches Communities, a structured discussion group feature for of up to 1,024 people, in testing since August 2022, worldwide over the next few months  —  WhatsApp today is officially launching Communities, the new feature offering larger, more structured discussion groups that first entered into testing earlier this year.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge:
Amazon plans to roll out the Matter over Wi-Fi standard to 17 Echo devices in December, starting with Android phones, covering 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.
James Vincent / The Verge:
Google unveils an AI model trained on 400+ languages with the largest “coverage seen in a speech model” and plans to support the 1,000 most spoken languages  —  Google has announced an ambitious new project to develop a single AI language model that supports the world's “1,000 most spoken languages.”
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.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Twitter cancels its Chirp developer conference set for November 16 in San Francisco as the team builds “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.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
In the coming weeks, Google will update Gmail to show live package tracking for order confirmation emails under the sender's name in the inbox  —  Google announced today a small but useful update to Gmail that will allow users to soon be able to track their upcoming package deliveries directly from their inbox.
Thomas Brewster / Forbes:
Police and other sources say Block's Cash App has become a primary payment tool for adult and children sex traffickers due to lax monitoring and user ID rules  —  The Twitter and Block billionaire made Cash App into a $700 million monster.  Now police officers, nonprofit critics and current …
TechCrunch:
Ajit Mohan, the head of Meta India who joined the company in January 2019, has left to become the president of Snap's Asia Pacific business  —  Ajit Mohan, the head of Meta in India, has left the firm and joined rival Snap, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Nelson Wang / CoinDesk:
Coinbase Q3: net revenue down 28% QoQ to $576M, net loss down 50% QoQ to $545M, subscription and services up 43% QoQ, and monthly transacting users down to 8.5M  —  The crypto exchange's transaction revenue fell 44% from the second quarter.  —  Crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN) …
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 …

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