Techmeme
December 18, 2017, 9:45 PM

Top News

Kurt Wagner / Recode:
Facebook clamps down on “engagement bait” posts and pages that urge people to like and share by demoting them in News Feed starting this week  —  Facebook has identified a new kind of spam: Engagement baiting.  —  Facebook is cracking down on a new type of clickbait …
Chris Sonderby / Facebook:
Facebook transparency report for H1 2017: account data requests up 21% globally YoY to ~79K; 57% of US requests included order banning FB from notifying users  —  Today we are releasing our Transparency Report, previously called the Government Requests Report, for the first half of 2017.
Kurt Wagner / Recode:
Sources: at least three prominent investors have decided not to fund HQ Trivia after finding troubling conduct on part of the founders, particularly Colin Kroll  —  Former Vine co-founders Rus Yusupov and Colin Kroll don't have a lot of fans from their time at Twitter.
Thuy Ong / The Verge:
Twitter starts enforcing new policies on violence and hateful conduct both on platform and off it, but changes don't apply to military or government entities  —  Policies now extend to hateful imagery and to conduct both on platform and off  —  Twitter says it will now begin enforcing …
Shona Ghosh / Business Insider:
Nicole Lee / Engadget:
Amazon Echo Spot review: appealing design, great for video calls, touchscreen enhances Alexa experience, but mediocre audio, screen is bad for video playback  —  When Amazon unveiled the Echo Show earlier this year, we questioned if we really needed an Echo with a touchscreen.
Joe McDonald / Associated Press:
Huawei says some of its phones to be sold by US carriers in 2018, starting with Mate 10; Consumer Business Group CEO says phones will be “competitively priced”  —  An executive of Huawei says the Chinese smartphone brand plans to start sales in the U.S. market through carriers next year …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Reddit updates its Android and iOS apps with support for real-time comments, chat, mod tools, and more  —  Reddit today is giving its mobile apps a major upgrade - the first since their launch last year, when the company decided to take back control over the official Reddit experience on mobile …
Thomas P. Bossert / Wall Street Journal:
In op-ed, Trump's homeland security adviser Thomas Bossert says North Korea was behind the WannaCry ransomware cyberattack in May  —  The massive cyberattack cost billions and put lives at risk.  Pyongyang will be held accountable.  —  Cybersecurity isn't easy, but simple principles still apply.
Jeremy Herron / Bloomberg:
The stock of a small fintech company, Longfin, surged 2,400% in a week after acquiring Ziddu, a “blockchain-empowered global micro-lending solutions provider”  —  LongFin buys microlender that transacts only in digital coins  —  Latest small company to see gains based tied to bitcoin mania
Kurt Wagner / Recode:
RBC: 44% of US teens chose Snapchat as the one social network they would keep if trapped on deserted island, ahead of 24% for Instagram and 14% for Facebook  —  Good news, Snap investors.  —  Some good news for Snap: Despite its sluggish business and slumping stock price …

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