Techmeme
June 16, 2022, 3:43 AM

Top News

New York Times:
Internal Kraken comms and interviews with five workers: some staff accuse CEO Jesse Powell of fostering a hateful workplace and dozens are considering quitting  —  Jesse Powell, who leads the crypto exchange Kraken, has challenged the use of preferred pronouns, debated who can use racial slurs and called American women “brainwashed.”
Molly White / @molly0xfff:
[Thread] A look at Kraken's announcement of a culture overhaul, eschewing “stereotypical team diversity measurements”, as the crypto exchange touts hiring plans  —  Kraken, a U.S.-based crypto exchange, has announced they'll be continuing to hire, and have announced a culture overhaul that promotes “diversity of thought” over “stereotypical team diversity measurements” and prohibits describing another's words as “racist” or “x-phobic”. 🧵
Alex Heath / The Verge:
Internal memo: Meta plans to make Facebook more like TikTok, including bringing Messenger back into the app and recommending posts from “unconnected” sources  —  Facebook employees were recently given a new directive with sweeping implications: make the app's feed more like TikTok.
The Markup:
Investigation: 294+ US crisis pregnancy centers, which try to dissuade people from abortions, share website visitor info with Meta via Facebook's tracking pixel  —  The social media giant gathers data from crisis pregnancy centers through a tracking tool that works whether or not a person is logged in to their Facebook account
Josh Taylor / The Guardian:
Microsoft retires Internet Explorer after nearly 27 years, disabling the desktop app and directing users to Edge, which arrived with Windows 10 in 2015  —  Company says decision to disable desktop app comes as web developers less likely to make sites compatible with browser, which first graced computers in 1995
CNN:
Japan passes an amendment making “online insults” punishable by up to a year in prison, after the suicide of a reality TV star who had faced social media abuse  —  Tokyo (CNN)Japan's parliament on Monday passed legislation making “online insults” punishable by imprisonment amid …
Ron Miller / TechCrunch:
DataStax, which develops a cloud-native noSQL database built on Apache Cassandra, raised $115M at a $1.6B valuation; DataStax had an $830M valuation in 2014  —  When DataStax hired Chet Kapoor as CEO in October 2019, one of the first moves he made was to bring in his old pal Sam Ramji …
Reuters:
Sources: the US increased its funding into VPN companies nthLink, Psiphon, and Lantern by about 50% since February to support the surge in their Russian users  —  The U.S. government has pushed new, increased funding into three technology companies since the start of the Ukraine conflict …
Wall Street Journal:
Analysis: 50%+ of the areas covered by the FCC's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund had been fully or partially covered by at least one prior US broadband program  —  Flaws in government programs have left some residents behind  —  The U.S. government has spent billions of dollars on several rounds …
Javeria Khalid / Rest of World:
After Pakistan banned dating apps Tinder, Grindr, and Skout in September 2020, Facebook matchmaking groups for Pakistanis gained tens of thousands of members  —  A ban on dating apps like Tinder has left young Pakistanis with limited avenues to meet new people.  Facebook matchmaking groups are gaining popularity among them.
Issie Lapowsky / Protocol:
Researchers say Big Tech's political ad bans are a charade and likely had minimal impact on curbing misinformation while hurting smaller advocacy groups  —  Say ExxonMobil wanted to run an ad on Twitter about how natural gas is actually totally climate-friendly.
New York Times:
NHTSA data from July 1, 2021, to May 15, 2022: six people died in 392 incidents involving driver-assistance tech; Teslas were in 273 crashes and five were fatal  —  The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released data on 10 months of crashes involving systems like Tesla's Autopilot.

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More News

Anna Kramer / Protocol:
Sydney Maki / Bloomberg:
Mariella Moon / Engadget:

Earlier Picks

Miles Kruppa / Wall Street Journal:
Financial Times:
Foo Yun Chee / Reuters:
Jon Porter / The Verge:
Frank Chaparro / The Block: