Techmeme
November 20, 2021, 2:00 PM

Top News

Sean Hollister / The Verge:
The Apple Podcasts app's review score went from 1.8 to 4.6 stars after Apple began prompting users for ratings, confusing some into rating individual podcasts  —  Apple Podcasts rises above bad reviews, but at what cost?  —  You pissed off people by somewhat breaking your app, and they're leaving angry reviews.
Kelly Crow / Wall Street Journal:
ConstitutionDAO, which crowdfunded over $40M, loses Sotheby's US Constitution auction to a $43.2M bid from Citadel CEO Kenneth Griffin  —  The 53-year-old billionaire paid $43.2 million for the historic document, plans to lend it to Crystal Bridges museum in Arkansas
Karen Hao / MIT Technology Review:
Investigation shows how Facebook and Google fund misinformation globally by paying millions of dollars in ad revenue to the operators of clickbait pages  —  A month after the fall of the democratic government.  —  In 2015, six of the 10 websites in Myanmar getting the most engagement …
Matt Burgess / Wired UK:
DuckDuckGo launches App Tracking Protection for Android, a beta feature that blocks third-party trackers from Google and Facebook  —  The privacy-focused tech company's latest update promises to block invasive data collection across your whole phone.  —  At the end of April …
Dan Ennis / Banking Dive:
Berlin-based neobank N26, which was recently valued at $9B, to exit the US on January 11 after over two years, following its UK departure in April 2020  —  Dive Brief:  — German neobank N26 is shutting down its U.S. operations to focus on expanding in Europe, the company said Thursday.
More: BloombergTweets: @sub8u
Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch:
Sao Paulo-based social commerce marketplace Facily raises a $250M Series D at an $850M valuation, bringing its total funding to $366M  —  Facily, a São Paulo-based social commerce marketplace, has quietly raised over $366 million in funding across four different rounds over the last year.
Zoe Schiffer / NBC News:
Internal memo: Apple affirms that employees have the right to discuss working conditions and pay internally and externally  —  Following months of internal controversy about how much workers make at one of the highest valued companies in the world, Apple has announced that employees …
CoinDesk:
Square's TBD division releases a white paper detailing tbDEX, a new decentralized protocol for exchanging digital and other assets  —  Payments giant Square released a white paper on Friday detailing a new decentralized protocol for exchanging digital and other assets known as tbDEX.
Steve Knopper / Billboard:
Profile of Berlin-based Ableton, whose music production software changed the way recordings are produced and how DJs perform by eliminating cumbersome equipment  —  Gerhard Behles and his partners wrote the code that makes modern pop sing — and makes investors drool.  But they're not selling.

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Conversations with people I admire about things I'm genuinely interested in.
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More News

Kaitlyn Tiffany / The Atlantic:
Dustin Volz / Wall Street Journal:

Earlier Picks

Ryan Broderick / Garbage Day:
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Steven Levy / Wired:
Matthew Gault / VICE: