Techmeme
November 22, 2022, 1:30 PM

Top News

Washington Post:
Sources detail Elon Musk's rapid dismantling of Twitter's safety work, narrowing its scope to whatever he deems violent, threatening “sticks and stones” talk  —  Amid the wider turmoil since his takeover last month, Musk has moved rapidly to undermine Twitter's deliberative content-moderation system.
Alex Heath / The Verge:
Sources: at an all-hands, Elon Musk said Twitter is done with layoffs and actively recruiting for roles in engineering and sales; Twitter has 2,700+ employees  —  After purging nearly two-thirds of Twitter's 7,500-person workforce in three weeks, Elon Musk is hiring again.
Alex Heath / The Verge:
Elon Musk holds Blue Verified's relaunch until “there is high confidence of stopping impersonations” and floats using different colors for orgs and individuals  —  Elon Musk told Twitter employees on Monday that the company won't relaunch its paid verification subscription …
New York Times:
After taking over Twitter, Elon Musk repeats tactics from SpaceX and Tesla, including firing workers, talking of bankruptcy, and introducing a “hardcore” style  —  Firing people.  Talking of bankruptcy.  Telling workers to be “hard core.”  Mr. Musk has repeatedly used those tactics at many of his companies.
Koh Gui Qing / Reuters:
Records: FTX, its executives, and SBF's parents bought 19+ properties in the Bahamas worth ~$121M over the past two years as “residence for key personnel”  —  Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX, his parents and senior executives of the failed cryptocurrency exchange bought …
Eliza Gkritsi / CoinDesk:
Filings: FTX, Alameda, and other affiliates have $1.2B in cash reserves, below the $3.1B owed to the top 50 creditors; Alameda's reserves are largest at ~$393M  —  The bankrupt crypto exchange FTX owes around $3.1 billion to its top 50 creditors.  —  The various divisions …
Sunil Jagtiani / Bloomberg:
Samuel Stolton / Politico:
The UK's CMA launches an investigation into Apple's and Google's dominance in mobile browsers and cloud gaming, following a survey that found a “stranglehold”  —  Apple and Google could be forced to loosen their grip on mobile systems after the United Kingdom's competition watchdog launched …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao met with investors in Abu Dhabi last week to raise money for a crypto industry recovery fund  —  Binance Chief Executive Officer Changpeng “CZ” Zhao and several deputies met with investors in Abu Dhabi last week in an effort to raise cash …
Mack DeGeurin / Gizmodo:
Meta's researchers detail Cicero, an AI trained to “human level performance” in negotiation-based strategy game Diplomacy, ranking in the top 10% over 40 games  —  Ever since IBM's Deep Blue artificial intelligence system defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov at his own game in 1997 …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Tumblr plans to support ActivityPub, the open and decentralized social networking protocol powering Mastodon, Instagram-like Pixelfed, PeerTube, and others  —  Tumblr will add support for ActivityPub, the open, decentralized social networking protocol that's today powering social networking software …
David Enrich / New York Times:
An investigation reveals how online US sports betting grew so big, so fast and what the consequences are likely to be for public health, taxpayers, and others  —  The New York Times examined thousands of pages of documents and interviewed lobbyists, executives, lawmakers …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Genesis struggles to raise $1B+ funding for its lending unit and warns potential investors that it may need to file for bankruptcy if its efforts fail  —  Digital-asset brokerage Genesis is struggling to raise fresh cash for its lending unit, and it's warning potential investors …
Stephanie Murray / The Block:
Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:
Report: Amazon's hardware group is on track to lose $10B in 2022, as many Echo devices are sold at cost and plans to monetize Alexa have failed  —  Layoffs reportedly hit the Alexa team hard as the company's biggest money loser.  —  Amazon is going through the biggest layoffs …

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Cheyenne Ligon / CoinDesk:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: