Techmeme
March 20, 2021, 12:50 AM

Top News

Jay Peters / The Verge:
Facebook says it has resolved a major outage affecting Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and other Facebook services  —  The Facebook-owned social networks were down for many  —  Facebook has resolved a major outage affecting Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and other Facebook services on Friday …
Wall Street Journal:
GroupM: Google, Facebook, and Amazon “triopoly” grew its share of US digital ad market from 80% in 2019 to 90% in 2020, and now collects 50%+ of all US ad spend  —  The three tech giants now collect more than half of all ad dollars spent in the U.S. The pandemic economy got them there.
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
Coinbase will pay a $6.5M fine to settle with the CFTC, over allegations that it self-traded cryptocurrencies between 2015 and 2018  —  Coinbase will pay a $6.5 million fine to settle allegations it self-traded cryptocurrencies between 2015 and 2018.  —  Crypto exchange Coinbase …
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: China is restricting use of Tesla cars by military and state employees, citing concerns that the data they collect could be sent back to the US  —  People familiar with the effort cite concerns Tesla cars could be source of national security leaks  —  SINGAPORE—China's government …
Josh Constine / Josh Constine's PressClub:
Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
Sean Coughlan / BBC:
London police warn students about using Sci-Hub, calling the self-described “pirate” site for research papers “a threat to their personal information and data”  —  Police have warned students in the UK against using a website that they say lets users “illegally access” millions of scientific research papers.
Miriam Gottfried / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Chicago-based Relativity, which law firms use to sift through data during discovery, gets an investment from Silver Lake valuing the company at $3.6B  —  The deal values Relativity at about $3.6 billion and will make Silver Lake its largest shareholder
Sean Keane / CNET:
Twitter confirms it's testing an “Undo Tweet” feature, first discovered by Jane Manchun Wong, who suggests it could be part of Twitter's planned subscriptions  —  An app researcher's screenshot shows that among the options for subscribers of an unrevealed service.
Bloomberg:
Weee!, an online grocer specializing in Hispanic and Asian foods, has raised $315M Series D led by DST Global, source says at a $2.8B valuation  —  - Startup raised over $300 million from investors such as DST  — Online market for Asian and Hispanic foods is growing rapidly  —  Weee!
Nilesh Christopher / Rest of World:
Lenders in India are using coercive loan apps that block features and shut down smartphones of customers who fall behind on payments  —  Lenders are turning to coercive loan apps that shut down smartphones if customers fall behind on payments.  —  • BANGALORE, INDIA
Catalin Cimpanu / The Record:
Verkada security camera hacker has been charged in the US for hacking into 100+ of the world's biggest companies since 2019 and leaking proprietary data online  —  The US Department of Justice has charged today a Swiss national for hacking into more than 100 companies and leaking proprietary data online on their personal website.

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Earlier Picks

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
BuzzFeed News:
Financial Times:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Robert Hackett / Fortune:
Katie Notopoulos / BuzzFeed News:
Ashley Carman / The Verge: