Techmeme
January 8, 2020, 12:40 PM

Top News

New York Times:
TikTok says it has fixed major security vulnerabilities that could have let hackers manipulate content, gain access to private videos, and extract personal data  —  The vulnerabilities, which the app says it has fixed, could have let attackers manipulate content and extract personal data.
Apple:
Apple says App Store customers spent $1.42B during holidays, up 16% YoY, and $386M on New Year's Day, up 20% YoY, touts 2019 as the biggest year for Services  —  Apple has marked the close of a historic 2019 for its Services offerings, a year that introduced Apple Arcade, Apple TV+ …
BuzzFeed News:
A look at the worldwide industry of PR and marketing firms offering disinformation services including fake accounts, false narratives, and pseudo news sites  —  Peng Kuan Chin pulled out his phone, eager to show the future of online manipulation.  —  Unseen servers began crawling the web for Chinese articles and posts.
Khari Johnson / VentureBeat:
Google says Assistant now has 500M users and announces upcoming features: Scheduled Actions, privacy-focused voice controls, longform reading, and Sticky Notes  —  Google Assistant is now used by 500 million monthly active users, and today Google is previewing features on the way in 2020 …
Priya Anand / The Information:
Sources: Twitch had ~$230M in ad revenue in 2018 and as of middle of last year was on track to earn ~$300M for 2019, short of an internal goal of $500M-$600M  —  After Amazon paid nearly $1 billion to acquire the streaming video service Twitch more than five years ago, it looked like the company …
Will Oremus / OneZero:
Facebook's deepfakes policy is a step in the right direction but remains severely limited, covering only certain videos created by AI while excluding satire  —  It's better than nothing — but just barely  —  Monday, Facebook announced a new policy against “deepfake” videos.
Andrew Bosworth / Facebook:
Andrew Bosworth publicly releases his internal post on Facebook's role in 2016 election, Cambridge Analytica, polarization, algorithmic transparency, and more  —  The NYT recently obtained a copy of a post I made to the wall of my internal profile within Facebook.
New York Times:
Cory Weinberg / The Information:
Sources: Softbank-backed car-rental startup Getaround plans to lay off ~150 employees, or about a quarter of its staff, to mitigate rising costs  —  Car-rental startup Getaround plans to lay off roughly 150 employees, or about a quarter of its staff, in a bid to reduce rising costs, people familiar with the matter said.
Anna Baydakova / CoinDesk:
Telegram says it will not integrate TON Blockchain and a Gram cryptocurrency wallet into its messenger app for now  —  Telegram will not integrate a crypto wallet into its messaging app, at least until it gets the green light from U.S. regulators, the company said Monday on its official website.

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