Techmeme
April 21, 2023, 9:15 AM

Top News

Jon Porter / The Verge:
Twitter begins removing blue checkmarks from legacy verified accounts, fulfilling one of Elon Musk's long-stated plans; Musk has called the system “corrupt”  —  The change is apparent on Twitter accounts for several Verge writers and other journalists like LA Times reporter Matt Pearce …
More: Bloomberg, New York Times, Insider, BBC, Bloomberg, PCMag, Wall Street Journal, Mashable, TweakTown, The Guardian, SiliconANGLE, Newser, Social Media Today, Livemint, Instagram - Kara Swisher, NBC News, The Irish Times, Associated Press, CryptoSlate, SlashGear, Deadline, TechCrunch, Variety, and Washington Post
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The Verge:
Twitter offered LeBron James a complimentary Blue subscription after he said he wouldn't pay for one; Musk says he's paying for “a few” subscriptions personally  —  Twitter has started getting rid of legacy blue checks for those who don't pay up.  Well, unless you're LeBron James and a couple of other celebrities.
Paul Sawers / TechCrunch:
Email: Twitter tells advertisers that they must have “a verified checkmark or subscribe to either Twitter Blue or Verified Organizations” to keep running ads  —  As Twitter's legacy blue check mark system finally comes to an end, the social network's new paid-for verification system …
Jahnavi Nidumolu / Reuters:
Twitter dropped the “Government-funded” and “China state-affiliated” labels from accounts of media organizations and journalists, including NPR, BBC, and Xinhua  —  Twitter dropped the “Government-funded” and “China state-affiliated” labels, which implies government involvement …
Miles Kruppa / Wall Street Journal:
Google announces Google DeepMind, a unit combining DeepMind's team and Google Research's Brain team, to be led by DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis as its CEO  —  Search giant merges AI resources to accelerate progress in technology that is reshaping business
Ina Fried / Axios:
Humane co-founder Imran Chaudhri demoed an AI-powered wearable with a projected display that does not need a nearby phone and uses voice and gestures for input  —  Ex-Apple employee Imran Chaudhri gave TED attendees on Thursday an early glimpse of the AI-powered wearable that his startup, Humane, has been developing.
Paresh Dave / Wired:
Stack Overflow CEO says the company plans to charge large AI developers for access to the 50M questions and answers on its service as soon as mid-2023  —  The programmer Q&A site joins Reddit in demanding compensation when its data is used to train algorithms and ChatGPT-style bots
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
After YouTube pulls Heart On My Sleeve due to a UMG copyright notice, a look at the legal dilemma for Google, which claims scraping data to train AI is fair use  —  If young Metro don't trust you, I'm gonna... tie you up in a decade of fair use litigation.  —  The AI Drake track …
David Pierce / The Verge:
A look at ActivityPub, the open, decentralized social network protocol finalized in 2018 that is gaining prominence powering Twitter alternatives like Mastodon  —  The tech industry is abuzz about a new standard for social networking that is more open, more user-centric, and potentially more powerful than Twitter and Facebook.
Wall Street Journal:
Internal Q&A: Mark Zuckerberg says Meta plans to slow hiring, and that net employee growth of 1% to 2% per year will be the standard going forward  —  Facebook-parent CEO says employee growth of 1%-2% a year will be standard in future  —  Meta Platforms Inc. Chief Executive Mark …
Carina Chocano / New Yorker:
A profile of Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn, who co-created CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA, as he predicts AI will eventually make computers better teachers than humans  —  The company's founder, Luis von Ahn, believes that artificial intelligence is going to make computers better teachers than humans.

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