Techmeme
December 10, 2020, 2:00 PM

Top News

New York Times:
Legal experts say FTC and state AGs will find it challenging to prove their allegations against Facebook because the standards of proof are formidable  —  The U.S. and states cases against the social network are far from a slam dunk because the standards of proof are formidable.
Jennifer Newstead / About Facebook:
Facebook responds to the FTC and state AGs, saying the lawsuits they've brought forth are “revisionist history” and their antitrust case is unprecedented  —  Billions of people use Facebook's products every day.  To earn their time and attention, we compete fiercely against many other services across the world.
NY State Attorney General:
Federal Trade Commission:
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Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
Lauren Feiner / CNBC:
Airbnb opens at $146, up from its $68 IPO price, on its first day of trading after raising $3.5B at a valuation of $47.3B  —  - Airbnb is set to double its share price in its IPO debut on Thursday.  — Shares were priced at $68 on Wednesday and are now expected to reach about $153 when it starts trading.
Reed Albergotti / Washington Post:
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Germany launches an antitrust probe into Facebook tying Oculus use to possession of a Facebook account  —  Facebook's bad week just got worse: It's being investigated in Germany for linking usage of its VR product, Oculus, to having a Facebook account.  —  The tech giant raised the hackles …
Khari Johnson / VentureBeat:
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Adobe has released its final scheduled Flash Player update for all regions outside of mainland China and will block Flash content from January 12  —  Adobe releases final Flash update with stronger language asking users to uninstall the app before its EOL.  —  Adobe has released on Tuesday …
Mitchell Clark / The Verge:
Twitter says iOS users can now add tweets to Snapchat Snaps as stickers and it will soon test sharing tweets to Instagram Stories  —  Twitter continues to take over all social networks  —  Twitter is making it even easier to spread your tweets far and wide to every social media platform imaginable.
Charlie Warzel / New York Times:
Biden staffers say their experiences in dealing with Facebook during the election left them concerned that the company is a threat to the electoral process  —  Inside the battle between Biden and Facebook.  —  Opinion Writer at Large  —  In the days after the election …
Ryan Browne / CNBC:
Google launches knowledge panels in search results to show accurate information about coronavirus vaccines, starting with the UK  —  - Google has launched new knowledge panels to show people accurate information about coronavirus vaccines.  — The feature is only available in the U.K …
Washington Post:
National Weather Service says it has an Internet bandwidth problem and proposes limiting users to 60 connections/minute, which could hurt weather apps and sites  —  Agency floats a solution to problems that could hobble private companies and affect popular weather apps.
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
French data protection agency CNIL fines Google $120M and Amazon $42M for placing tracking cookies without consent  —  France's data protection agency, the CNIL, has slapped Google and Amazon with fines for dropping tracking cookies without consent.  —  Google has been hit with a total …
Steve O'Hear / TechCrunch:
Cleo, creator of an AI-powered financial assistance app and chatbot, raises $44M Series B led by EQT Ventures  —  Cleo, the London founded “financial assistant” that takes the form of an app and chatbot and now counts the U.S. as its largest market, has raised $44 million in Series B funding.
D. M. Moore / Polygon:
AT&T has agreed to sell Japanese anime streaming service Crunchyroll to Sony's Funimation Global Group for $1.18B  —  The move consolidates the anime industry in a major way  —  On Wednesday, Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. announced that AT&T and WarnerMedia agreed to sell Crunchyroll to Funimation.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Turing, an automated service to vet and match remote software developers with companies, raises $32M Series B led by WestBridge Capital  —  As remote work continues to solidify its place as a critical aspect of how businesses exist these days, a startup that has built a platform …
Jordan Crook / TechCrunch:
UserLeap, which builds tools to give product managers more qualitative data, raises $16M Series A led by Accel  —  Product managers can only be successful if they can make effective use of both quantitative and qualitative data.  But mapping the former to the latter, and collecting high-quality data …

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Kaitlyn Tiffany / The Atlantic:

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