Techmeme: As many Chinese manufacturers face low overseas demand due to the coronavirus, companies like Pinduoduo and JD have helped many launch their own domestic brands (Karen Hao/MIT Technology Review)

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June 8, 2020, 10:20 AM

Top News

Robert Stevens / Decrypt:

Brave browser is caught revising typed-in domains to companies like Binance with URLs including affiliate referral codes; Brave says it will stop the practice — Brave, the crypto-friendly, privacy-first browser has been earning affiliate commissions by redirecting certain search queries to crypto companies via affiliate links.

Olivia Carville / Bloomberg:

Airbnb had more US bookings from May 17 to June 3 than during the same period in 2019, as vacation-rental sites see domestic reservations increase globally — - Weekend getaways are turning into work-from-home respites — Airbnb hasn't ruled out an IPO this year, CEO Chesky says

More: The Verge, SiliconANGLE, and PYMNTS.com

Tweets: @rossdawson, @jessiwrites, @mdudas, @et_rise, @luxury, @aunkurarya, @adrianweckler, @greekanalyst, @sub8u, @miriamgottfried, and @economics

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

Study of kids aged 4 to 15 in the US, UK, and Spain finds they spent an average of 85 min/day on YouTube and 80 min/day on TikTok from February 2019-April 2020 — A new study on kids' app usage and habits indicates a major threat to YouTube's dominance, as kids now split …

More: 9to5Mac, KnowTechie, and Social Media Today

Tweets: @briansolis, @firstadopter, @helienne, and @tysonlw

See also Mediagazer

Rana Foroohar / Financial Times:

To remain this big and unregulated, Facebook aligns itself with powers that be, as its actions in Myanmar and now in the US show — To stay this big and unregulated, the social media platform can't afford to upset rulers — Oligarchs are immoral business leaders who …

More: Monday Note. Tweets: @johnreedwrites, @somospostpc, @nickcohen4, @francesca_bria, @jessefelder, and @schuldensuehner

Chris O'Brien / VentureBeat:

NYU report criticizes Facebook for outsourcing content moderation, arguing it is a “grossly inadequate” way of dealing with a core task of social platforms — In a scathing examination of Facebook's content moderation strategy, a new study identifies the company's decision …

More: NYU Stern Center, The Guardian, Washington Post, Axios, Fbcontentmods, and Digital Trends

Tweets: @authorpmbarrett, @authorpmbarrett, @shady_inf0, and @obrien

Stephanie Wykstra / Undark Magazine:

After rolling out a flawed automated system in 2014, Michigan falsely charged thousands with unemployment fraud and collected millions in fines — REPUBLISH … I N 2014, Carmelita Colvin was living just north of Detroit and taking classes at a local college, when she received a letter …

Tweets: @undarkmag, @undarkmag, @undarkmag, @undarkmag, @undarkmag, @undarkmag, @undarkmag, @undarkmag, @lil_aphasia, and @undarkmag

Om Malik / On my Om:

The struggle between real information and fake information is not too different from the fight against spam email, which took a long time but was worth it — To put it mildly, the last ten days have been tough to watch. Following the news triggers anger, and it makes me feel ashamed.

More: OneZero and Memex 1.1

Karen Hao / MIT Technology Review:

As many Chinese manufacturers face low overseas demand due to the coronavirus, companies like Pinduoduo and JD have helped many launch their own domestic brands — Ask Zhu Kaiyu about his factory, and he can rattle off a series of statistics meant to impress: 15,000 square meters …

Tweets: @_karenhao

Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:

Israeli court sentences the co-owners of vDOS, a now defunct DDoS-for-hire service, to six months of community service — The co-owners of vDOS, a now-defunct service that for four years helped paying customers launch more than two million distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) …

More: Graham Cluley. Tweets: @briankrebs

New York Times:

As the coronavirus speeds up efforts to expand voting from home either through mail-in ballots or online voting, an analysis of the associated security risks — Fear of the coronavirus is speeding up efforts to allow voting from home, but some of them pose security risks and may make it easier …

More: MIT and internetpolicy.mit.edu

Tweets: @brendannyhan and @nicoleperlroth

Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:

RiskSense report analyzing the top 54 open source projects finds security vulnerabilities doubled from 421 bugs in 2018 to 968 in 2019 — Jenkins and MySQL vulnerabilities have had the most weaponized vulnerabilities in the past five years. — A study that analyzed the top 54 open source projects found …

More: BetaNews

Chen Du / PingWest:

Sources: ByteDance has recently implemented a restriction on employees in China from accessing code bases for overseas products like TikTok — ByteDance has been erecting technical firewalls between its China and global operations for more than a year, PingWest has learned …

More: The Overspill. Tweets: @benthompson, @niubi, @elliottzaagman, @lichtspektrum, and @lichtspektrum

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 10:20 AM ET, June 8, 2020.

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

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Trump says Stephen Colbert is a “pathetic trainwreck” and “CBS should, ‘put him to sleep,’ NOW”, after CBS aired a Late Show rerun in which Colbert mocked Trump

Zachary Leeman / Mediaite:

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller calls for CBS staff who “revolted” over Bari Weiss' decision to postpone 60 Minutes' CECOT segment to be fired

Rebecca Rubin / Variety:

Disney crosses the $6B milestone at the box office for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic; no other studio has managed to reach $6B since 2015

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More News

Sai Krishna Kothapalli / InfoSec Write-ups:

Researcher describes how hundreds of medical imaging servers in India were left unsecured months ago and are still leaving 1M+ medical records exposed

Tweets: @kingslyj, @kmskrishna, @zackwhittaker, and @zackwhittaker

Dan Strumpf / Wall Street Journal:

Interviews with Huawei staff and a review of internal documents shed light on Huawei's efforts to reorganize and aggressively respond to the growing US pressure

More: BBC. Tweets: @zichenwanghere, @zichenwanghere, @thorstenbenner, @sasapetricic, @cbcwatcher, @adrianweckler, @bobdavis187, and @docolumide

Manish Singh / TechCrunch:

Reliance Jio Platforms says Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) will invest $750M for a 1.16% stake in the company

More: Bloomberg, Reuters, Moneycontrol, The Financial Express, cnbctv18.com, and Livemint

Tweets: @alex and @aparanjape

Fahmida Y Rashid / IEEE Spectrum:

Q&A: web cryptography pioneers Martin Hellman, Taher Elgamal, and Tom Jermoluk on recent advances in authentication tech, and what the future could look like

More: Decrypt. Tweets: @ieeespectrum

Renee Dudley / ProPublica:

Review finds Amazon is using the top-left slot of its search results pages, a premier bid slot for brands, to promote its private labels during the pandemic

Tweets: @propublica, @cobrapost, @ctmirror, @patrick_hruby, @mdudas, and @propublica

Jared Council / Wall Street Journal:

Black tech execs hope the current attention on racial disparities will help diversify tech workers, as black people account for only 7.8% of core US IT workers

Tweets: @federallamm, @grattongirl, @shatter242, and @wsj

Earlier Picks

Annie Palmer / CNBC:

Three Amazon workers file lawsuit alleging that Amazon has failed to adequately protect workers from COVID-19 by not following CDC's contact tracing guidelines

More: Engadget, Bloomberg, CBS News, KUOW, New York Post, Inquirer Business, and CNN

Tweets: @mattmday, @shawnpmcd, @aaronsojourner, @josheidelson, @josheidelson, @willwilkinson, @teamstersjc16, @josheidelson, @josheidelson, @technology, @mattmday, @annierpalmer, and @hypervisible

Wall Street Journal:

Overall, remote learning this spring didn't work: schools disagree on fair student assessment, students lack equal access to technology, teaching got harder

Tweets: @jrichlive, @codepo8, @joboaler, @afrankhistory, @trumwill, @econ_marshall, @mdudas, @baddogs4343, @erin_bartram, @motheroftheses, @ichheissemikey, @beijingpalmer, @biblioracle, @orrchris, @cszabla, @jrosenworcel, @mattrosoff, @karstenw, and @hoofnagle

Tanya Basu / MIT Technology Review:

Google Docs is a key tool for organizing protests, as activists anonymously edit public lists of funds, charities, books on racism, and letter-writing templates

More: The Next Web and Protocol

Tweets: @lizzadwoskin, @hautepop, @dariorodighiero, @aakarpost, @halleberry, @tanyabasu, @tanyabasu, and @niallfirth

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:

Zoom consultant Alex Stamos and experts say offering end-to-end encryption, which needs user authentication, only to paying customers is a reasonable compromise

Tweets: @ncweaver, @pvineetha, @alexstamos, @alexstamos, and @alexstamos

Stephanie Condon / ZDNet:

Connected learning platform Chegg has acquired Mathway, an automated learning app that helps students understand and solve math problems, for $100M in cash

More: Seeking Alpha, Business Wire, and FinSMEs

Nitasha Tiku / Washington Post:

More than 140 scientists funded by Chan Zuckerberg Initiative urge Mark Zuckerberg to reconsider Facebook's policies on misinformation and incendiary language

More: CNN, CNBC, The Guardian, Mashable, Jason Shepherd, Digital Trends, Gizmodo, The Verge, and CNET

Facebook: Priscilla Chan. Tweets: @erictopol, @garymarcus, @robmay, @futureshift, @reneritchie, @om, @gutjahr, @celestekatznyc, @nitashatiku, @jason_kint, @counternotions, @polotek, @jason_kint, @kristenkfromga, @crisprjournal, @_jack_poulson, @teddyschleifer, and @nitashatiku