Techmeme
March 20, 2021, 5:45 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 …
Issie Lapowsky / Protocol:
Facebook's decision to crack down on NYU's Ad Observer highlights the increasingly fraught dynamic between tech companies and academics  —  Laura Edelson was in a state of panic, and I knew I was a little bit to blame for her freakout.  —  “If this is true,” Edelson told me this week during …
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.
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 …
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.
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
Bobby Allyn / NPR:
Interview with CEO of SkySilk, the hosting company that helped bring Parler online, who says he did it to spite tech giants like Amazon who abuse their might  —  On Jan. 10, just days after pro-Trump rioters blitzed the U.S. Capitol, Amazon Web Services pulled the plug on the conservative social media site Parler.
Josh Constine / Josh Constine's PressClub:
Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
Ann-Marie Alcántara / Wall Street Journal:
After Citigroup erroneously sent $900M to lenders using Oracle's Flexcube, some are calling for simplified business software UX to match consumer-facing design  —  Citi's accidental payment makes a strong case for upgrading back-end technology to match consumer-facing design

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