Techmeme
January 30, 2021, 11:15 PM

Top News

Kashmir Hill / New York Times:
How one disgruntled person destroyed the online reputations of 145+ people, aided by “complaint sites” in the US and platforms like Google that rarely intervene  —  Outrageous lies destroyed Guy Babcock's online reputation.  When he went hunting for their source, what he discovered was worse than he could have imagined.
Under the Hood:
Robinhood explains why it placed restrictions on certain securities over the past week, says its clearinghouse-mandated deposit for equities increased tenfold  —  With the extraordinary market activity this week, and the temporary restrictions we put in place on certain securities …
Jesse Westbrook / Bloomberg:
SEC says it “will closely review actions taken by regulated entities that may disadvantage investors” in trading certain securities  —  The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, making its most specific comments about the recent mania in the stock market …
John Herrman / New York Times:
Reddit's uncommon qualities as a community platform, inspiring nihilism and humor, may explain why r/WallStreetBets' growth feels reminiscent of r/The_Donald  —  Reddit communities grow powerful in plain sight.  Why do they keep taking the world by surprise?
New York Times:
Ryan Browne / CNBC:
Wall Street Journal:
Mitchell Clark / The Verge:
Corbin Davenport / Android Police:
Google has reinstated federated chat app Element on the Play Store after briefly pulling it over abusive content, which is now removed, on Element's servers  —  Element is a popular client for the federated chat protocol Matrix, and we highlighted it in our roundup of the best open-source alternatives …
Cat Ferguson / MIT Technology Review:
VAMS, a CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M to manage rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine, has been abandoned by states due to bugs and problems  —  The CDC ordered software that was meant to manage the vaccine rollout.  Instead, it has been plagued by problems and abandoned by most states.
Wall Street Journal:
Experts say Apple's App Tracking Transparency feature will damage Facebook's core business; the feature will limit Facebook's data collection from 85K+ iOS apps  —  New feature on iPhones will limit Facebook's ability to collect data from apps and prove that ads work
Catherine Shu / TechCrunch:
Canalys: smartphone shipments in China fell 4% YoY to 84M in Q4 2020 and shipments for 2020 fell 11% YoY to 330M, as iPhone's share jumped from 15% to 18% YoY  —  The impact of United States government sanctions on Huawei is continuing to hurt the company and dampen overall smartphone shipments in China …
Bloomberg:
Current and former staff say much of Amazon's struggles in gaming rest with the leadership of its gaming division, which reportedly has a budget of $500M/year  —  Mike Frazzini had never made a video game when he helped start Amazon Game Studios.  Eight years later, he has released two duds …
Lara O'Reilly / Business Insider:
Verizon Media says it is planning personalized features for Yahoo Mail, and around 500K users watched NFL streams in the Yahoo Mail app in tests in Q4 2020  —  - Verizon Media CEO Guru Gowrappan tells Insider the unit is preparing a “mega” product launch in the coming weeks.

Sponsor Posts

Command Line:
What will the next generation of developers do when AI writes the code?  —  Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon are betting that the junior devs we train today will be the senior engineers of tomorrow.
Will Reed:
The best sales leaders aren't job hunting.  Here's how to reach them without months of cold outreach.  —  Our team came from Box, Square, and Brex, so we already know the GTM leaders worth meeting.
Zoho:
UK tax compliance with Zoho Books  —  The evolving tax landscape in the UK has added an additional responsibility to business owners, accountants, and bookkeepers to ensure their choice of accounting software supports compliance …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

The Upstarts Podcast:
The $7B Startup Mapping Your Health In Just One Hour | Neko's Hjalmar Nilsonne
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Cheeky Pint:
The company building underwater drones for $50,000
Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.
Subscribe to Cheeky Pint.
BG2 Pod:
Jensen Huang | Does AI Revenue Justify Capex, '27 AI Bottlenecks, Singularity, Open vs Closed & more
Open-source podcast on all things tech, markets, investing, and capitalism, hosted by Brad Gerstner.
Subscribe to BG2 Pod.
Big Technology Podcast:
The Bumpy Road To AGI — With Kevin Roose
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
How to Run a Political Campaign in the TikTok Era (And How Not To)
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Sources:
Robinhood's CEO on letting AI trade your money
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Subscribe to Sources.
 

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More News

Prachir Singh / Counterpoint Research:
Chloe Sorvino / Forbes:

Earlier Picks

Adam Satariano / New York Times:
Reuters: