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August 23, 2019, 3:15 PM
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Financial Times:
Sources: at least three of Facebook's Libra backers are discussing how to distance themselves from the project amid increasing regulatory scrutiny  —  Intensifying regulatory scrutiny of Facebook's Libra digital currency has spooked some of the project's early backers, with at least three privately discussing …
Wall Street Journal:
Investigation finds 4,152 items on Amazon that were declared unsafe by federal agencies, are deceptively labeled, or are banned by regulators  —  Just like tech companies that have struggled to tackle misinformation on their platforms, Amazon has proven unable or unwilling to effectively police third-party sellers on its site
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google Photos can now search for text that appears in user images with its optical character recognition filter  —  Google Lens has a powerful optical character recognition (OCR) filter that can pull text from any image.  Available in Google Photos, the backup service this month is adding the ability to search for text in images.
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Strategy Analytics: US users upgrade smartphones after 33 months, 7% plan to spend over $1K on their next purchase, biggest barrier to 5G phones will be price  —  Several reports in the past have linked the increasing prices of smartphones to lengthening iPhone upgrade cycles.
Jennifer Elias / CNBC:
Google says it has shut down 210 YouTube channels after it found they had been tied to misinformation about Hong Kong protesters  —  KEY POINTS  — In a blog post Thursday, Google said it axed more than 200 YouTube channels due to misinformation around Hong Kong protests.
Annie Palmer / CNBC:
Google releases new community guidelines for employees, placing new restrictions on talking about politics on internal mailing lists and forums  —  KEY POINTS  — Google on Friday released a new set of community guidelines that are meant to crack down on what employees can say inside the company.
James Loke Hale / Tubefilter:
Report: Facebook has pushed Instagram into doubling the number of ads since last year; Instagram is testing two back-to-back ads in Stories  —  Instagram is about to get even more ads.  —  Beginning this week, the platform is running a test with what it told AdWeek is a “small percentage” of users.
Tony Wan / EdSurge:
Educational robotic toymaker Sphero acquires littleBits, a maker of electronics building kits and instructional resources for kids  —  When Sphero laid off 45 employees in early 2018, the Boulder, Co.-based company explained the difficult decision as an effort to return its focus …
Mike Isaac / New York Times:
Sources: Uber's $1 Safe Rides Fee, introduced in 2014, was devised primarily to add $1 of pure margin to each trip; court documents: the fee brought in ~$500M  —  The once-swaggering company is losing more money and growing more slowly than ever.  What happened?
CNBC:
Overstock CEO Partick Byrne has resigned from the e-commerce company after his comments about being involved in a “Deep State” investigation of 2016 election
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Identity management company Ping Identity files for an IPO; it was sold to Vista Equity for ~$600M in 2016 and is said to be looking for a $2B to $3B valuation  —  Some eight months after it was reported that Ping Identity's owners Vista Equity had hired bankers to explore a public listing …
Alison Frankel / Reuters:
Oracle board committee recommends court to proceed with a shareholder lawsuit against Larry Ellison and Safra Catz over the $9.3B NetSuite acquisition in 2016  —  (Reuters) - Shareholder derivative suits exist because corporate directors can't always be trusted to put aside their own interests …
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Google's Chrome team proposes new privacy and anti-fingerprinting open standard to make it harder for marketers and advertisers to track users across the web  —  Google today announced a new long-term initiative that, if fully realized, will make it harder for online marketers and advertisers to track you across the web.
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
VMWare to acquire cybersecurity company Carbon Black for $2.1B and Pivotal for $2.7B  —  KEY POINTS  — VMware is acquiring Carbon Black, a cybersecurity company that went public in 2018, the companies announce as part of VMware's quarterly earnings report.

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 3:15 PM ET, August 23, 2019.

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.

From Mediagazer

New York Times:
Video call: WaPo Executive Editor Matt Murray says the paper plans to lay off hundreds of staff, cutting into its local, international, and sports coverage

Deadline:
At a US Senate hearing, Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos committed to a 45-day theatrical window and discussed a meeting with Trump, YouTube, residuals, and more

Katie Robertson / New York Times:
NYT reports adding 450K digital subscribers in Q4 and 1.4M in 2025 for 12.78M in total, putting it on a pace to reach its stated goal of 15M by the end of 2027

More News

Joseph Cox / VICE:
Cities are paying companies like Host Compliance to be “Airbnb Police” and find real addresses of vacation rentals to enforce short term rental legislation
Nick Statt / The Verge:
DoorDash announces a new tipping policy that will let drivers keep 100% of tips, rolling out next month, and pledges to bump up base pay across the board
Johana Bhuiyan / Los Angeles Times:
Amazon says it will no longer use tips or supplemental earnings to cover promised wages of Flex drivers, who deliver for Prime Now, Fresh, and Whole Foods

Earlier Picks

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: News Corp is developing a news-aggregation service called Knewz, to address publisher concerns about Google and Facebook
Washington Post:
Palantir's revenue from US government contracts under Trump surpassed its total under Obama's second term, as sources describe staff debates about work with ICE
ProPublica:
Interviews with 36+ DOD and tech officials shed light on tech giants' fight for $10B Pentagon JEDI cloud contract using backdoor lobbying and an advisory board
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
DOJ says it has indicted 80 individuals, many based in Nigeria, as part of a massive business email scam and money laundering scheme
Tony Romm / Washington Post:
AT&T, Comcast, Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile, and seven other US carriers announce an agreement with 51 attorneys general to implement new tech to block robocalls
Facebook Technology:
A look at Oculus Insight, Facebook's technology that makes inside-out VR tracking on Oculus Quest and Rift S headsets possible
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Samsung Galaxy Note10+ review: the screen is beautiful and handwriting recognition with S Pen is neat but software backslides into confusion and DeX is a mess
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