Techmeme
March 17, 2021, 9:40 AM

Top News

Dan Sullivan / Tampa Bay Times:
A Florida teen who hacked well-known Twitter accounts last summer and used them to ask for BTC, netting $100K+, was sentenced to three years in a plea deal  —  Graham Ivan Clark, 18, agreed to plea guilty to fraud charges for a hack of several Twitter accounts last summer.
Sohee Kim / Bloomberg:
Samsung says it is considering skipping launch of a new Note this year to streamline its line-up and warns of a “serious imbalance” in semiconductors globally  —  - It's seeing a ‘serious imbalance’ in global semiconductors  — The warning suggests shortages may spread beyond autos
Dara Khosrowshahi / London Evening Standard:
Uber's thinking on UK driver rights has evolved and worker flexibility “should not come at the expense of social protections”  —  T  —  hree weeks after I became CEO of Uber in 2017, our licence to operate in London was revoked.  It was not how I expected to start my new job …
CNBC:
SEC filing: Uber will reclassify its UK drivers as “workers”, granting them vacation pay, minimum wage, and pension plan access, but not full employee benefits  —  - Uber will reclassify all U.K.-based drivers as workers.  — Under the new designation, more than 70,000 drivers …
Shaan Puri / @shaanvp:
[Thread] Why Clubhouse will fail: most of the content is “meh” and users will struggle to find interesting live content, leading to low user retention  —  So... everyone seems to think clubhouse is the “next big thing” - but I think it's going to fail. Here's how I think it all goes down..
Bloomberg:
Noam Cohen / Wired:
Wikimedia Foundation debuts Wikimedia Enterprise, a premium service for delivering Wikipedia content to companies like Google, but a free option will remain  —  The Big Four all lean on the encyclopedia at no cost.  With the launch of Wikimedia Enterprise, the volunteer project will change that—and possibly itself, too.
Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
Facebook says it will publish an annual report detailing its impact on human rights, and will establish a fund to support human rights activists and journalists  —  - Social media giant to give board formal updates on the issue  — Company has been criticized for role in Myanmar, Sri Lanka
Casey Newton / Platformer:
Facebook's interest in newsletters stems from its shift in product development to focus on private messaging and Groups, not the News Feed  —  Hint: it's all about Groups.  PLUS: Substack fumbles  —  Today let's talk about platforms' growing interest in building newsletter tools …
Sam Schechner / Wall Street Journal:
France says Apple's upcoming IDFA ad privacy changes are not abusive but will investigate if Apple has stricter rules for third-party apps than for its own apps  —  French competition authority says Apple's changes 'don't appear to be abusive'  —  France's competition regulator rejected …
Danny Palmer / ZDNet:
McAfee researchers detail a Chinese cyberespionage campaign targeting at least 23 telcos in the US, Europe, and SE Asia to steal data, including for 5G tech  —  Cybersecurity researchers at McAfee detail an ongoing cyber espionage campaign which is targeting telecoms companies around the world.
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
Sensor Tower: if a 15% commission was in place in 2020, Apple would have missed out on an estimated $595M, or 2.7%, and Google $587M, or 5%, in app store fees  —  - Apple and Google have announced changes to app store fees that impact app makers making less than $1 million per year.
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
Stripe's Patrick Collison, Microsoft's Brad Smith, Google's Thomas Kurian, and Cloudflare's Matthew Prince discuss moderation in internet infrastructure  —  It was Patrick Collison, Stripe's CEO, who pointed out to me that one of the animating principles of early 20th-century Progressivism …
The Verge:
A group of 15 AGs update their antitrust complaint against Google, taking aim at Chrome's Privacy Sandbox and other privacy updates related to ad targeting  —  ‘Google is trying to hide its true intentions behind a pretext of privacy,’ say prosecutors  —  State antitrust watchdogs …
Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:
France-based PayFit, which offers a payroll and HR SaaS service, raises $107M Series D led by Eurazeo Growth and Bpifrance's Large Venture Fund  —  French startup PayFit has raised a $107 million series D funding round (€90 million).  Eurazeo Growth and Bpifrance's Large Venture fund are leading today's round.
More: Tech.eu and EU-Startups
William Turton / Bloomberg:
Leaked audio from a February 8 meeting reveals Parler's chief policy officer saying: “We are not going after misinformation in any way”  —  Leaked recordings of meetings detail role of Rebekah Mercer at social-media platform  —  Conservative donor Rebekah Mercer has been writing checks …

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Ari Levy / CNBC:

Earlier Picks

Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
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