Techmeme
January 16, 2021, 12:25 PM

Top News

New York Times:
How a group of Dorsey's lieutenants overcame his reluctance to ban Trump's account when it became clear Trump was using his Twitter presence to incite violence  —  Jack Dorsey, the chief executive, had reservations about locking the president's account.  But the calls for violence that his tweets provoked were too overwhelming.
Nick Statt / The Verge:
WhatsApp to delay new privacy policy by three months following widespread confusion over whether the policy would mandate data sharing with Facebook  —  The new update will now go out on May 15th  —  WhatsApp on Friday announced a three-month delay of a new privacy policy originally slated …
Shoshana Wodinsky / Gizmodo:
A deep dive into the WhatsApp privacy policy change that prompted an exodus of users from the app and why Facebook struggled to communicate what was in it  —  Even if you aren't the type of person who peruses WhatsApp on a regular basis, chances are you've tried perusing its new privacy policy.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple to launch redesigned iMacs this year with a Pro Display XDR-like design, and is working on two new Mac Pros, one of which may use Intel CPUs  —  Apple Inc. is planning the first redesign of its iMac all-in-one desktop computer since 2012, part of a shift away from Intel Corp. processors …
Benjamin Mayo / 9to5Mac:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple has begun preliminary work on an iPhone model with a foldable screen, while testing an in-screen fingerprint reader for 2021  —  Apple Inc. has begun early work on an iPhone with a foldable screen, a potential rival to similar devices from Samsung Electronics Co. and others …
Alex Pasternack / Fast Company:
A look at the raging debate inside Wikipedia, where neutrality is prized above all, on what to call the attack on the Capitol  —  ‘Storming’?  ‘Insurrection’?  ‘Riot’?  ‘Attempted coup’?  On Wikipedia, where neutrality is prized above all, volunteers are still searching for the words.
Tom Roston / OneZero :
Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
Parler is not down due to a single company but because the market chose not to do business with it because it's toxic, which is the nature of a free market  —  I've delayed writing deeper thoughts on the total deplatforming of Parler, in part because there was so much else happening …
Zoe Schiffer / The Verge:
Leaked screenshots show GitHub employees using the term “Nazi” in its internal Slack to protest the unexplained firing of an employee that used the same word  —  Now in protest, they're using Slack to call Nazis what they are  —  GitHub employees are protesting the firing …
Wall Street Journal:
FAA approves the first fully automated commercial drone flights, letting Massachusetts-based American Robotics operate its drones in rural areas below 400 feet  —  American Robotics granted permission to operate drones without hands-on piloting  —  U.S. aviation regulators have approved …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft is planning to fix a Windows 10 vulnerability that could corrupt a NTFS-formatted hard drive simply by viewing a folder with a malicious shortcut  —  A bizarre Windows bug for 2021  —  Microsoft says it's planning to fix a bizarre Windows 10 bug that could corrupt a hard drive just by looking at an icon.
Eva Mathews / Reuters:
Tencent Music acquires China-based Lazy Audio, a platform for audiobooks, podcasts, and radio shows, for $417M  —  (Reuters) - China's Tencent Music Entertainment Group said on Friday it acquired audiobook platform Lazy Audio, owned by Shenzhen Lanren Online Technology Co, for 2.7 billion yuan ($417 million).
South China Morning Post:
A look at the rise and fall of Xiami, Alibaba's discontinued music streaming service, which only had 22.4M MAUs by Oct. vs. 450M+ for Tencent's three music apps  —  Once a leader, Xiami saw its monthly active users (MAUs) fall to 22.4 million by October 2020, a tiny fraction of the 450 million …
Financial Times:
Sources: investors, including BlackRock, GIC, and Silver Lake, who invested $10.3B in Ant's 2018 pre-IPO round are left with illiquid stakes after canceled IPO  —  BlackRock among groups left holding $10.3bn worth of illiquid stakes in Chinese fintech  —  Investors including BlackRock …

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Featured Podcasts

Hard Fork:
Anthropic's Cybersecurity Shock Wave + Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz on Their Sam Altman Investigation + One Good Thing
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The Upstarts Podcast:
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Earlier Picks

Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:
The Information:
Mike Rogoway / Oregonian:
Lauren Feiner / CNBC: