Techmeme
February 22, 2021, 8:30 AM

Top News

BuzzFeed News:
Sources: Zuckerberg's personal intervention to reduce the severity of Alex Jones' ban in 2019 slowed down Facebook's efforts to deal with dangerous content  —  In April 2019, Facebook was preparing to ban one of the internet's most notorious spreaders of misinformation and hate, Infowars founder Alex Jones.
Bloomberg:
Clubhouse says it has added security safeguards and banned a user after some Clubhouse audio and metadata was found on a third-party website  —  - The app's creators had been warned user data was vulnerable  — An unidentified user streamed audio chats to their own website
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Researchers discover macOS malware dubbed “Silver Sparrow” on at least 30K Macs, which includes a native M1 version and leverages the Installer JavaScript API  —  With no payload, analysts are struggling to learn what this mature malware does.  —  A previously undetected piece …
Ben Smith / New York Times:
Russian investigative journalism is flourishing alongside “probiv”, the buying of data on phone calls, cell location, or air travel off Telegram or the dark web  —  A new wave of news outlets has used conventional, and unconventional, methods to pierce the veil of Putin's power.
Ashlee Vance / Bloomberg:
Profile of Youyang Gu, a 27-year-old data scientist whose ML model most accurately predicted COVID-19 death totals, which the CDC put on its forecasting website  —  Spring 2020 brought with it the arrival of the celebrity statistical model.  As the public tried to gauge how big a deal …
Reuters:
China finalizes rules on banks' internet loan businesses, affecting Alibaba and others, setting new capital requirements, must be complied with by July 17, 2022  —  SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China's bank regulator on Saturday tightened requirements on the internet loan business of commercial banks …
David Uberti / Wall Street Journal:
Accellion's file transfer software hack, which affected Jones Day, also impacted New Zealand's central bank, 1M unemployment benefits applicants in WA, and more  —  Like the SolarWinds breach, the incident highlights supply-chain vulnerabilities  —  The hack of software provider Accellion USA LLC …
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
WhatsApp says users who haven't accepted its new privacy policy by May 15 can receive calls and notifications “for a short time”, but not read or send messages  —  WhatsApp said earlier this week that it will allow users to review its planned privacy update at “their own pace” …
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Sources: Twitter recently explored buying Indian social media startup ShareChat for $1.1B and had committed to an $900M additional investment  —  Twitter recently held talks to acquire Indian social media startup ShareChat as the company explored ways to expand its presence …
More: coinspeaker.com and MUO
Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg:
Splice, which makes tools for musicians and offers royalty-free samples, raises $55M at a ~$500M valuation, bringing its total raised to $150M  —  Growing up in County Cavan, Ireland, Shane Codd dreamed of performing at huge nightclubs on the Spanish island of Ibiza, the global epicenter of electronic music.

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More News

Rich Mogull / TidBITS:
Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch:

Earlier Picks

Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal:
Reuters:
Sheldon Chanel / The Guardian:
Chris Welch / The Verge: