Techmeme
September 23, 2020, 7:45 AM

Top News

New York Times:
Facebook removes accounts, groups, and Pages tied to China that posted about US politics; the network was followed by fewer than 3K US accounts  —  The social media campaign was small but targeted all sides of the debate.  Officials said Beijing had not decided whether to wade more directly in the American presidential race.
Taylor Hatmaker / TechCrunch:
Ian Sherr / CNET:
Interview with Satya Nadella and Phil Spencer on buying more game companies, investing in Xbox Game Pass, and Microsoft's rejected TikTok bid  —  In an interview, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Xbox head Phil Spencer discuss further acquisitions, how to keep making hits and what happened with TikTok.
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
Overview of the state of bundles in 2020 across Netflix, Disney, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft  —  Manage your Stratechery subscription.  —  If the famous Jim Barksdale quote is to be believed — the one about there only being two ways to make money in business, bundling and unbundling …
Janko Roettgers / Protocol:
Samsung is launching its ad-supported streaming service Samsung TV Plus, available on Samsung TVs since 2016, on some of its latest mobile phones  —  Samsung is doubling down on free, ad-supported streaming: After turning Samsung TV Plus into a massive success story on smart TVs …
Joseph Keller / iMore:
The Swift Project announces its language tools are now available for Windows 10  —  Swift is taking flight on Windows.  —  What you need to know  — Swift is seeing its initial release on Windows.  — Developers can now download Swift toolchain images for Windows 10.
More: Swift.org, Fossbytes, MSPoweruser, and NeowinTweets: @swiftlang
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Microsoft says it will exclusively license OpenAI's GPT-3 language model, which will continue to be offered via the Azure-hosted API launched in June  —  Microsoft today announced that it will exclusively license GPT-3, one of the most powerful language understanding models in the world, from San Francisco-based AI startup OpenAI.
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Eugene Wei / Remains of the Day:
How TikTok's UI, focused on just one auto-playing video at a time, generates clean user-driven data thanks to its “algorithm-friendly design”  —  In my previous post on TikTok I discussed why its For You Page algorithm is the connective tissue that makes TikTok work.
Julia Alexander / The Verge:
YouTube says it will use AI-powered moderation to automatically age-restrict certain content  —  AI moderation measures will be used to automatically age-restrict certain content  —  YouTube is rolling out more artificial intelligence-powered technology to catch more videos …
Danny Palmer / ZDNet:
Authorities from the US, UK, Germany, Europol, and others arrest 179 during Operation DisrupTor, targeting the sale of illicit goods on the dark web  —  ‘Operation Disruptor’ involved agencies from nine countries and the seizure of over $6.5m in cash and cryptocurrencies as criminals warned law enforcement will track them down.
Abram Brown / Forbes:
Manticore, a Roblox-like startup that enables users to quickly build multi-player desktop games, raises $15M led by Epic, bringing its total raised to $60M  —  Manticore, a new gaming startup with software that enables users to quickly build high-resolution multi-player desktop games …
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Microsoft debuts new Teams features, including virtual commute, Headspace integration, breakout rooms, and virtual coffee shops for meetings  —  Microsoft today announced a slew of Teams features available now, coming later this year, and even arriving in 2021.
Peter Slattery / OneZero :
How Spotify's UX decisions have encouraged the growth of adjective-laden generic artist names, enabling a kind of SEO spam for music  —  The platform is filled with search-optimized spammers, and there's no end in sight  —  Welcome to The Cheater's Guide to Spotify, a series about the schemes …
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
Google says it will pull the plug on paid Chrome extensions over the next year, after temporarily banning them due to fraudulent transactions  —  Earlier this year, Google announced some changes to the Chrome Web Store in an effort to curb malicious extensions.
Steve O'Hear / TechCrunch:
Warsaw-based Uncapped, which offers revenue-based finance to European startups, raises $26M led by Mouro Capital  —  Uncapped, the London-headquartered and Warsaw-based startup that offers “revenue-based” finance to European businesses so that founders don't have to give up equity stipulated …

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Earlier Picks

Wall Street Journal:
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Hannah Murphy / Financial Times: