Techmeme
September 16, 2017, 2:00 PM

Top News

Alex Kantrowitz / BuzzFeed:
Google allowed advertisers to target racist and bigoted keywords, suggested more similar keywords, and allowed campaigns using those keywords to run  —  Google, the world's biggest advertising platform, allows advertisers to specifically target ads to people typing racist and bigoted terms …
Brian Patrick Byrne / The Daily Beast:
Twitter says it has fixed a “bug” that allowed advertisers to target users based on racist and derogatory terms like the n-word and “Nazi”  —  Twitter's advertising platform tells prospective customers it has 26.3 million users interested in the derogatory term …
Facebook:
AnnaMaria Andriotis / Wall Street Journal:
Equifax announces its Chief Security Officer Susan Mauldin and Chief Information Officer David Webb are retiring effective immediately  —  The departures of the company's chief information officer and chief security officer come in the wake of a massive data breach
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Facebook gave special counsel Mueller data on Russian ad buys including copies of ads, targeting and account info, withheld same details from Congress  —  Social-media company shared copies of ads and account information, people familiar with the matter said
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Chrome will no longer autoplay videos with sound starting from January 2018  —  Google today announced Chrome is going to war with autoplay.  Starting next year, Chrome will only autoplay a given piece of content when the media won't play sound or the user has indicated an interest in the media.
Brenda Goh / Reuters:
Source: Beijing city regulator told bitcoin exchanges to inform users about trading halt; OkCoin, Huobi, others say they will comply and stop trading by Oct 31  —  SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Chinese authorities have ordered Beijing-based cryptocurrency exchanges to cease trading and immediately notify users …
Mark Harris / IEEE Spectrum:
Google has spent $1.1B on its self-driving car project since its inception in 2009 through 2015, Waymo employee's deposition in Uber trial implies  —  Google has never publicly shared how much it spends on its self-driving cars.  At first, Project Chauffeur was hidden away in Google's ultra-secret X moonshot program.
Lucia Moses / Digiday:
Washington Post's automated Heliograf tool has written ~850 stories in one year, including 500 on 2016 election that got 500K+ clicks  —  It's been a year since The Washington Post started using its homegrown artificial intelligence technology, Heliograf, to spit out around 300 short reports and alerts on the Rio Olympics.

Sponsor Posts

Google:
Try Gemini 3 Pro  —  Google's newest and most intelligent AI model that helps you bring any idea to life
Soxton:
AI-powered law for startups  —  Soxton automates startup legal so founders can move faster and sleep better.  We handle incorporation, advisor, employment and commercial contracts.  Join the waitlist for early access!
Zoho:
Zoho CRM Plus in 2025: A year of thoughtful CX improvements  —  2025 marked 11 years of building a customer experience platform designed to support organizations as customer expectations, channels …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
Alex And Ranjan's 2026 Outlook: ChatGPT 1 Billion, AI Shopping, Apple's Big Year, AI Love Boom
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Hard Fork:
Where Is All the A.I.-Driven Scientific Progress?
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
The Talk Show With John Gruber:
'A Naughty Citizen', With Quinn Nelson
The director's commentary track for Daring Fireball. Long digressions on Apple, technology, design, movies, and more.
Subscribe to The Talk Show With John Gruber.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Podcast Pioneer PJ Vogt's Second Act: Less Budget, More Control
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
BG2 Pod:
AI Enterprise - Databricks & Glean
Open-source podcast on all things tech, markets, investing, and capitalism, hosted by Brad Gerstner.
Subscribe to BG2 Pod.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Ted Sarandos: Netflix and how tech changed storytelling
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 2:00 PM ET, September 16, 2017.

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

Yasha Levine / The Baffler:

Earlier Picks

Neil Hughes / AppleInsider: