Techmeme
January 17, 2019, 2:55 PM

Top News

Facebook:
Facebook takes down 471 Facebook pages and accounts, as well as 41 Instagram accounts, for coordinated inauthentic behavior originating in Russia  —  Today we removed multiple Pages, groups and accounts that engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior on Facebook and Instagram.
Tim Cook / TIME:
Paul Lamkin / Wareable:
Google to buy Fossil's smartwatch IP, which Fossil has developed following its Misfit acquisition in 2015, for $40M  —  New smartwatch innovation is promised from the big deal  —  The Fossil Group and Google have exclusively revealed to Wareable that Google will pay Fossil $40 million …
Brian Barrett / Wired:
“Collection #1” database, which claims to contain records of ~773M unique email addresses and 21M passwords, some of them hashed, shows up on the web  —  THERE ARE BREACHES, and there are megabreaches, and there's Equifax.  But a newly revealed trove of leaked data tops …
Kate Clark / TechCrunch:
April Underwood, promoted to the role of chief product officer at Slack 10 months ago, is leaving the company to focus on investing  —  Slack is losing its chief product officer April Underwood ahead of a direct listing expected in 2019.  —  Underwood joined Slack, the provider …
Stefan Etienne / The Verge:
Mastercard updates policy to end automatic billing after free trials, will require merchants to request user authorization for recurring subscriptions  —  Plus, merchants will be required to send you monthly updates  —  Mastercard announced a new policy today for merchants who retain …
Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
In an internal post, Sophie Alpert, a Facebook manager who oversaw React, says she quit after being harassed for criticizing Facebook's lack of diversity  —  - A Facebook engineering manager who ran an open-source project left earlier this month after being harassed by her colleagues.
Alex Sherman / CNBC:
Sources: Walmart has abandoned plans to launch a new streaming service after talks with the former CEO of Epix fell apart, will instead concentrate on Vudu  —  - Talks with veteran media executive Mark Greenberg fell apart last year, according to people familiar with the matter.
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Houseparty says the popular mobile game Heads Up will now be available inside its app with “packs” of words costing $0.99 or more  —  Building an ad-free social network through shared experiences  —  Houseparty, the group video chat that has carved out a niche among a segment …
More: Mashable
Sarah Frier / Bloomberg:
Sources: Snap CFO Tim Stone resigned after a dispute with management over pay, going around CEO Evan Spiegel to ask Snap's board for a significant raise  —  - Stone went around Spiegel to seek pay bump, people say  — Executive also sought promotion to Khan's former strategy job
The Seattle Times:
Microsoft pledges $500M to tackle housing crisis in Seattle: $475M for loans to housing developers over three years and $25M for resident services  —  The pledge is the largest in the company's 44-year history, and comes as Microsoft and other tech giants that have driven …

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Earlier Picks

Larry Dignan / ZDNet:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Yogita Khatri / CoinDesk:
Nick Summers / Engadget:
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Paresh Dave / Reuters:
Rachel Yang / Variety: