Techmeme
February 5, 2022, 7:00 PM

Top News

Ben Sisario / New York Times:
Joe Rogan apologizes for his past use of the N-word after a compilation video of him using the slur went viral; ~70 JRE episodes have been removed from Spotify  —  His apology came as listeners said that as many as 70 episodes of “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast had been quietly taken off Spotify …
Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg:
Source: Spotify took down episodes of the Joe Rogan Experience at Rogan's request; all the removed episodes were recorded before he signed a deal with Spotify  —  Joe Rogan apologized Saturday for using a racial slur in past episodes of his popular podcast, many episodes of which have been removed from Spotify without explanation.
Ryan Broderick / Garbage Day:
Meta, which ignored creators for years, has only “shameless” creators and their awful content to fall back on in its pivot to video and eventual irrelevance  —  Read to the end for a tremendous meditation on February  —  Facebook Made Its Own World And Now It's Stuck In It
Katie Notopoulos / BuzzFeed News:
An investigation reveals the identities of two founders of the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection: Gargamel is Greg Solano and Gordon Goner is Wylie Aronow  —  The buzzy NFT collection has raked in millions and the eager support of dozens of celebrities.  But its founders' anonymity raises questions …
Riana Pfefferkorn / The Center for Internet and Society:
A close look at how the EARN IT Act, which is modeled after FOSTA and was recently reintroduced in Congress, would harm online speech, privacy, and security  —  This is the latest entry in my lengthy archive of writing, talks, and interviews about the EARN IT Act:
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Peloton is drawing interest from potential buyers, including Amazon; Peloton's market value is now ~$8B, down from its ~$50B high around a year ago  —  The maker of stationary bikes faces pressure from activist investor as its share price sags  —  Peloton Interactive Inc …
Ian Bogost / The Atlantic:
Digital assets like NFTs give us a glimpse into a future where every aspect of human life that can be digitally recorded is collateralized and securitized  —  Twitter has begun allowing its users to showcase NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, as profile pictures on their accounts.
Crystal Tse / Bloomberg:
Dog walking startup Wag will go public via a SPAC merger at a $350M valuation; SoftBank, which invested $300M, sold its stake back to Wag in 2019 at a loss  —  Wag Labs Inc., the developer of dog-walking app Wag!, has agreed to go public through a merger with a blank-check company.
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Report details Stadia's future as a white-label game streaming service called Google Stream, including talks with Capcom, Bungie, and Peloton  —  Stadia's future as a white-label streaming platform has been clear for some months now, especially after the first partnership with AT&T …

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Earlier Picks

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