Techmeme
January 31, 2021, 9:10 PM

Top News

Jeff Horwitz / Wall Street Journal:
In August, internal research at Facebook showed that ~70% of the platform's most active civic Groups were considered too toxic to recommend to users  —  The giant struggled to balance Mark Zuckerberg's free-expression mantra against findings that rabid partisanship had overrun a feature central to its future
Dave Lee / Financial Times:
More than 2,000 police and fire departments in the US have now partnered with Amazon's Ring, with 1,189 new departments added over the past year  —  Controversial surveillance network has doubled in size in the country in the past year  —  More than 2,000 police and fire departments in the US …
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.
Maggie Miller / The Hill:
A look at the criticism in DC directed at CSET, a State Dept. bureau focused on cybersecurity and emerging technologies formed in the last days of Trump's admin  —  A newly established State Department bureau focused on cybersecurity and emerging technologies could give the Biden administration …
Kellen Browning / New York Times:
League of Legends teams in the US recruited 40+ superstar players from Asia since 2016, with an average salary of $460K for a player in a team's starting five  —  League of Legends teams in the U.S. lag behind their competitors in Asia, so they recruit the world's best players by offering huge salaries.
Yueqi Yang / Bloomberg:
Robinhood reduces the number of companies with trading restrictions from 50 to 8, according to its website; GME, NOK, and BB are still among those restricted  —  Robinhood Markets Inc. reduced the number of companies with trading restrictions to eight from 50 on Sunday, according to an update on its website.
Bloomberg:
Many elderly people in the US aren't getting scheduled for COVID-19 vaccinations due to a lack of familiarity with navigating the internet and web-based signups  —  - Slots go fast, often to those who are more comfortable online  — ‘Health departments are failing’ nationwide, one official says

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