Techmeme
January 18, 2021, 10:00 AM

Top News

Joan Donovan / HBR.org:
The dominant business model of social media platforms, which emphasizes scale over everything else, makes them particularly vulnerable to disinformation  —  Summary.  —  The attack on the U.S. Capitol building was the culmination of years of disinformation and conspiracy theories that had been weaponized on social media networks.
Zoe Schiffer / The Verge:
GitHub apologizes to the employee it fired for using the term “Nazis” on January 6, offers him his job back, and says the company's head of HR has resigned  —  The company is offering the employee his job back  —  GitHub is admitting that a Jewish employee was fired in error and is offering him his job back.
Reuters:
Sources: in a flurry of parting actions against China, Trump's admin has notified Huawei suppliers including Intel that it's revoking licenses to sell to Huawei  —  NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration notified Huawei suppliers, including chipmaker Intel …
New York Times:
A look at the incentives, like guaranteed auction win percentages, that Facebook got from Google in the ad partnership that is now a focus of an antitrust suit  —  Facebook was going to compete with Google for some advertising sales but backed away from the plan after the companies cut a preferential deal, according to court documents.
Sohee Kim / Bloomberg:
Samsung Electronics heir Jay Y. Lee was sentenced to 30 months in prison over bribery charges; Lee still faces a second prosecution related to succession  —  - Lee sentenced to two and a half years in jail after court case  — Samsung succession scandal has rocked South Korea for years
Sebastian Sinclair / CoinDesk:
Maps.me, an offline mobile map for travelers, raises $50M seed led by Alameda Research, aims to launch “yield earning” DeFi tools inside the app  —  The funding will go toward the launch of a multi-currency wallet on Maps.me, enabling decentralized finance (DeFi) features for 140 million users.
Medium:
A look at the shady aspects of Tether, the stablecoin being probed by SDNY for over a year, widely used to buy BTC and other cryptocurrencies on many exchanges  —  This is the story of a Bitcoin trade — the most financially impactful trade I've ever made in my life.

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Earlier Picks

Alex Danco:
Miriam Berger / Washington Post:
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Washington Post:
Jason Schreier / Bloomberg: