Techmeme: From April 1, Viber to start charging chatbot operators $4.5K per month to send up to 500K messages, as part of a controversial new strategy (Jon Russell/TechCrunch)

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Joseph Bernstein / BuzzFeed News:

Survey of 1,000 tech industry workers: 51% believe “Trump has a point when it comes to the media producing fake news” and 59% favor working with the US military — A new study by BuzzFeed News and Lucid surveyed tech workers on their attitudes toward the media.

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Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:

Report: 30.4% of e-sports viewers in Q4 2018 were women, up from 23.9% in 2016 — Women's viewership of esports grew from 23.9 percent of all watchers in 2016 to 30.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2018, according to a report by market researcher Interpret.

Vivienne Walt / Fortune:

An overview of Google's efforts to scale its business in India, where falling data prices and rising smartphone penetration have opened up big new opportunities — Patchy Internet, multiple languages, low smartphone penetration: But a big opportunity. — It is already dark in the New Delhi suburb …

New York Times:

Lawsuit alleges a NYC Airbnb scheme bypassed Airbnb policy to generate $20M in revenues by creating more than 100 misleading host accounts and 18 corporations — Multiple misleading identities, more than 100 host accounts and 18 corporations were created to run an illegal hotel business in Manhattan …

Wired:

Social media companies should gain more in-house knowledge about mental health to realize the impact of recommendation algorithms on users with mental illness — IT'S TROUBLING ENOUGH that British teenager Molly Russell sought out images of suicide and self-harm online before she took her own life in 2017.

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Jon Russell / TechCrunch:

From April 1, Viber to start charging chatbot operators $4.5K per month to send up to 500K messages, as part of a controversial new strategy — Viber, the messaging app down by Japanese e-commerce firm Rakuten, is poised to implement a controversial new strategy that will see it charge companies that run chatbots on its platform.

Rita Liao / TechCrunch:

Eyeing international expansion, China-based selfie app maker Meitu acquires a 31% stake in game publishing company Dreamscape Horizon for ~$340M — China's largest selfie app maker Meitu has been busy working to diversify itself beyond the beauty arena in China.

Farhad Manjoo / New York Times:

Netflix uses subtitles and dubs in many languages to widen audiences for its shows because its subscription model incentivizes it to appeal to global customers — Instead of trying to sell American ideas to a foreign audience, it's aiming to sell international ideas to a global audience.

Tweets: @went1955

Daniel Palmer / CoinDesk:

CipherTrace, which provides blockchain analytics and forensics services that regulators and governments use to stop money laundering, raises $15M — Blockchain and cryptocurrency security firm CipherTrace has raised $15 million in funding from investors including Mike Novogratz's Galaxy Digital, the firm announced Tuesday.

Caroline O'Donovan / BuzzFeed News:

50+ Microsoft staff sign letter to Satya Nadella and Brad Smith demanding an end to a $479M US Army contract to license HoloLens tech for combat and training — A group of Microsoft employees is circulating a letter among the company's over 130,000-person staff demanding that executives cancel a $479 million contract with the US Army.

More: TechCrunch, NBC News, VentureBeat, The Guardian, BBC, TechSpot, Engadget, CNET, Polygon, Mashable, Forbes, Neowin, NPR, OnMSFT.com, PC Gamer, Axios, Bloomberg, The Verge, Reuters, Gizmodo, Washington Post, Recode, GeekWire, The Hill, and Windows Central

Tweets: @msworkers4, @sriramk, @palmerluckey, @chrisfralic, @noonanjo, @fabiochiusi, @feytechnologist, @guardian, @geekwire, @sydell, and @ceodonovan

Jon Porter / The Verge:

What to expect at MWC 2019: new flagships from Sony, LG, and Chinese companies, foldable phones from Huawei and others, return of HoloLens, and a lot of 5G hype — 5G's early steps will continue, and the Galaxy Fold could get some competition — In the next few days …

More: TechCrunch, 9to5Google, Windows Central, The Verge, TalkAndroid.com, CNET, UploadVR, Phandroid, Android Police, Firstpost, 91mobiles.com, 9to5Google, Digit, GQ India, Business Times, India Today, NDTV Gadgets 360, and Wall Street Journal

Tweets: @gimme2pm and @benwood

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