Techmeme
August 15, 2018, 5:50 PM

Top News

Steven Musil / CNET:
Twitter puts account of Alex Jones in read-only mode for seven days after a tweet violated policy; he can browse but can't tweet, retweet, or like other posts  —  Twitter has cut off Alex Jones from key functions of his account after the founder and star of conspiracy site Infowars violated another Twitter policy.
Alyssa Newcomb / NBC News:
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey defends decision to just give Infowars' Alex Jones a timeout after Jones urged viewers to ready “battle rifles” against media and others  —  “We can't build a service that is subjective just to the whims of what we personally believe," Dorsey told NBC News' Lester Holt in an exclusive interview.
Washington Post:
Megan Rose Dickey / TechCrunch:
Uber's Q2 2018 financials: revenue rose 51% YoY to $2.7B as adjusted EBITDA losses widened to $404M, up from $304M in Q1; gross bookings rose 41% YoY to $12B  —  While Uber isn't required to disclose its financial results, Uber has done so for past few quarters as it gears up to go public next year.
Steve Stecklow / Reuters:
Investigation finds 1,000+ Facebook posts, comments, images, and videos attacking Rohingya in Myanmar, highlighting Facebook's woeful attempts to fix the issue  —  Reuters found more than 1,000 examples of posts, comments and pornographic images attacking the Rohingya and other Muslims on Facebook.
Ry Crist / CNET:
Amazon and Microsoft begin rolling out Alexa and Cortana integrations, with the ability to ask each assistant to “open” the other  —  Alexa and Cortana: Tech's new BFFs?  —  That's the premise behind a cooperative effort from Amazon and Microsoft that lets Alexa users cue up Cortana on their Echo speakers.
Gregory Barber / Wired:
Coinbase acquires the five-person team behind Distributed Systems to help Coinbase find ways to integrate decentralized identity across its services  —  EARLIER THIS YEAR, the executors of #DeleteFacebook engaged in a form of decentralized group therapy.  Catharsis came in a zip file downloaded …
Selina Wang / Bloomberg:
Y Combinator names former Baidu COO Qi Lu as CEO of Y Combinator China, a new Chinese arm it says may start as soon as next summer  —  - This marks the seed investor's first international program  — Former Baidu COO, Qi Lu, will oversee the rollout in China
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: WhatsApp cofounder Jan Koum has continued to show up at least monthly at the Facebook office to secure his stock rewards of ~$450M  —  Jan Koum said he was leaving Facebook in April, but has been making periodic appearances in the office to secure stock rewards
Bloomberg:
Sources: China freezes game approvals amid a restructuring within regulatory administrations, affecting all online, mobile, and console games  —  - The halt has shaken Tencent as smaller players struggle  — Regulatory administrations are said to be under restructuring
Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg:
Sources: Amazon's Twitch has been pursuing exclusive livestreaming deals with popular companies and personalities, offering millions per year in some cases  —  It wants to turn its Twitch online hangout for avid gamers into a broader video service.  —  YouTube has become synonymous …
Zeynep Tufekci / MIT Technology Review:
How digital technologies and social media went from being hailed as tools of freedom during the Arab Spring to being blamed for upheavals in Western democracies  —  To understand how digital technologies went from instruments for spreading democracy to weapons for attacking it, you have to look beyond the technologies themselves.
Andy Kroll / Rolling Stone:
Email and documents show the FBI has investigated cyberattacks on California Democratic candidate Hans Keirstead, who was running in Dana Rohrabacher's district  —  The FBI investigated hacking attempts targeting a Democrat who ran against “Putin's favorite congressman”

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