Techmeme
August 28, 2016, 1:20 PM

Top News

Facebook Newsroom:
Facebook will now select stories and excerpts automatically for Trending topic pages, show topics instead of story descriptions in Trending section  —  Today, we're making some changes to the Trending feature on Facebook that will make the product more automated and will no longer require people …
Quartz:
Sources: Facebook letting go of entire Trending Topics editorial staff, consisting of 15-18 workers contracted through a third party  —  Facebook will no longer employ humans to write descriptions for items in its Trending section, which attracted controversy over allegations of political bias in May.
Bloomberg:
Sources: Spotify retaliates against artists who give exclusives to rivals by excluding tracks from promoted playlists and demoting their songs in search results  —  Service said to tell labels it may keep tracks off playlists  —  Apple Music emerges as largest challenge to streaming leader
Peter Kafka / Recode:
Spotify calls report that it demotes songs in search due to artists' exclusives with rivals “unequivocally false”  —  Spotify doesn't like exclusives.  But it says it won't bury Frank Ocean and other acts in its search results.  —  Spotify doesn't like it when big-name acts take their music to Apple or Tidal first.
Wall Street Journal:
US federal court convicts Russian hacker Seleznev in theft and sale of credit cards resulting in $169M in losses; he could face up to 40 years in prison  —  Roman Seleznev could face between four to 40 years in prison  —  The son of a Russian lawmaker was convicted Thursday in federal court …
Jeremy Hsu / Backchannel:
Amazon's $970M bet on Twitch in 2014 gives Amazon an edge as Facebook, Google, and others jockey to own live video  —  In 2014 Amazon surprised many by buying Twitch.  Today it has an edge as Facebook, Google and others jockey to own live video.  —  2015, Twitch viewers watched …
More: TechSpot
Lauren Goode / The Verge:
Inside NBC's Olympic live streaming operation, which required a remote support staff of 1,100+ in Stamford, Connecticut  —  For NBC, this year's Olympic Games coverage was more than just a series of household rating points; it was a moment of truth in a fast-changing media world.
More: Ad Age.  Tweets: @sportstvratings
Ina Fried / Recode:
White House proposing new federal rules letting foreign entrepreneurs with $345K+ in US funding remain in country for 5 years; no congressional approval needed  —  The move, which won't require congressional approval, allows people to stay up to five years, provided their startup has significant U.S. investment.
Jordan Pearson / Motherboard:
AlphaBay, the largest darknet market, begins supporting Monero, a cryptocurrency meant to be more anonymous than Bitcoin  —  Not even bitcoin is anonymous enough for some criminals on the dark net.  —  For years, the cryptocurrency has been the payment method of choice for people buying …

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More News

Thomas Fox-Brewster / Forbes:

Earlier Picks

Jordan Kahn / 9to5Mac:
Sarah Frier / Bloomberg:
Akin Oyedele / Business Insider: