Techmeme
April 26, 2022, 4:50 PM

Top News

Vlad Savov / Bloomberg:
Highlighting China's importance to Tesla, Jeff Bezos asks if Elon Musk's Twitter takeover gives the Chinese government “a bit of leverage over the town square”  —  Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos posed a provocative question after Elon Musk clinched a $44 billion takeover of Twitter Inc. …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Twitter locked down product updates through Friday to limit unauthorized changes by miffed employees after accepting Elon Musk's $44B bid  —  Twitter Inc. locked down changes to its social networking platform through Friday after accepting a $44 billion bid from billionaire Elon Musk …
@jack:
Financial Times:
Sources detail how Elon Musk's Twitter bid succeeded: Morgan Stanley gathered support for $25.5B in loans, shareholders urged the board to accept, and more  —  Tesla boss convinced Wall Street sceptics to back his $44bn takeover offer  —  Just 12 days ago, some of the most experienced operators …
Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
Twitter has aggressively defended users' privacy and free speech rights, pushing back on unmasking subpoenas; it's unclear if this will continue under Musk  —  For all the talk of how Elon Musk wanted to buy Twitter to make it more supportive of free speech, there remain a ton of questions about what it will actually mean in practice.
Javier Espinoza / Financial Times:
EU internal market commissioner Thierry Breton warns Elon Musk that Twitter must follow the new Digital Services Act rules or face fines or even a ban in Europe  —  EU commissioner Thierry Breton tells Tesla chief executive: ‘Elon, there are rules’  —  Brussels has warned Elon Musk …
Casey Newton / Platformer:
Some former employees say Twitter, which has long been an underperformer, stands a better chance of improving the service as a private company run by Elon Musk  —  What employees are saying.  PLUS: Musk's key decisions  —  In the moments before Elon Musk bought Twitter …
Ranjan Roy / Margins:
Kate Conger / New York Times:
Brad Stone / Bloomberg:
Lauren Feiner / CNBC:
Anne Tergesen / Wall Street Journal:
Fidelity will let retirement savers allocate up to 20% of their 401(k) accounts to bitcoin later in 2022, the first major US retirement plan provider to do so  —  Investment giant's move could send cryptocurrency investing further into mainstream if employers decide to offer option
Under the Hood:
Robinhood will let go of ~9% of its full-time employees, after growing its headcount from ~700 to ~3,800 from 2019 to 2021; stock drops ~5% after hours  —  Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev shared the below to Robinhood employees following a company-wide meeting to discuss the changes.
Lauren Forristal / TechCrunch:
Sensor Tower: TikTok was the most downloaded app globally in Q1 2022, passing 3.5B all-time downloads, followed by Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Telegram  —  TikTok is one of the world's fastest-growing social media platforms.  Sensor Tower recently released its “Q1 2022 …
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / VICE:
A leaked document written by some Facebook ad team privacy engineers: Meta has an inadequate level of “control and explainability over how our systems use data”  —  “We do not have an adequate level of control and explainability over how our systems use data,” Facebook engineers say in leaked document.

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Osato Avan-Nomayo / The Block: