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January 17, 2019, 5:40 PM
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Top News

Facebook:
Facebook takes down 471 Facebook pages and accounts, as well as 41 Instagram accounts, for coordinated inauthentic behavior originating in Russia  —  Today we removed multiple Pages, groups and accounts that engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior on Facebook and Instagram.
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
Facebook says it will ask its employees to take down their reviews of Portal devices on Amazon after three employees were caught leaving 5-star reviews  —  Whoops  —  Facebook's Portal smart displays have had an uphill battle, trying to convince people to willingly give …
Paul Lamkin / Wareable:
Google to buy Fossil's smartwatch IP, which Fossil developed following its acquisition of Misfit in 2015, for $40M  —  New smartwatch innovation is promised from the big deal  —  The Fossil Group and Google have exclusively revealed to Wareable that Google will pay Fossil $40 million …
Tim Cook / TIME:
Tim Cook calls on Congress to pass privacy legislation and on the FTC to create a “data-broker clearinghouse”, enabling users to track and control their data  —  We all deserve control over our digital lives.  That's why we must rein in the data brokers
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Mastercard says its updated policy to end automatic billing after free trials is only for physical products, not digital services  —  A misleading blog post is currently being updated  —  Ever sign up for a free trial, only to get slapped with a monthly fee when you forget to cancel in time?
Brian Barrett / Wired:
“Collection #1” database, which claims to contain records of ~773M unique email addresses and 21M passwords, some of them hashed, shows up on the web  —  THERE ARE BREACHES, and there are megabreaches, and there's Equifax.  But a newly revealed trove of leaked data tops …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Twitter says a bug led to the “Protect your Tweets” setting being disabled for some Android users for almost five years, making their tweets public  —  Twitter accidentally revealed some users' “protected” (aka, private) tweets, the company disclosed this afternoon.
Peter Kafka / Recode:
Netflix estimates it accounts for 10% of US TV screen time, shares audience numbers for some movies and TV shows, such as Bird Box's audience of 80M households
Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
In an internal post, Sophie Alpert, a Facebook manager who oversaw React, says she quit after being harassed for criticizing Facebook's lack of diversity  —  - A Facebook engineering manager who ran an open-source project left earlier this month after being harassed by her colleagues.
Ashley Feinberg / HuffPost:
A disorienting interview with Jack Dorsey on his Myanmar tweets, right-wing extremism, and what he'd do if Trump called on his followers to murder journalists  —  A Q&A with Twitter's CEO on right-wing extremism, Candace Owens, and what he'd do if the president called on his followers to murder journalists.
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Houseparty says the popular mobile game Heads Up will now be available inside its app with “packs” of words costing $0.99 or more  —  Building an ad-free social network through shared experiences  —  Houseparty, the group video chat that has carved out a niche among a segment …
More: Mashable
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Atlassian beats with Q2 revenue of $299M, up 39% YoY, and subscription revenue of $152.5M vs. $150M estimated by analysts; stock up 9%+ after hours  —  Atlassian shares rose more than 10 percent in extended trading on Thursday after the provider of collaboration software reported better …
More: Atlassian
Jordan Crook / TechCrunch:
Spell, a collaborative platform that lets anyone run machine learning experiments, raises $15M Series A led by Eclipse Ventures and Two Sigma Ventures  —  In 2016, Serkan Piantino packed up his desk at Facebook with hopes to move on to something new.  The former Director of Engineering …
More: VentureBeat.  Thanks:@brooke
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Pew survey of 963 US Facebook users: 74% didn't know the company compiles lists of their interests and traits to target ads; 51% were uncomfortable with this  —  A study by the Pew Research Center suggests most Facebook users are still in the dark about how the company tracks and profiles them for ad-targeting purposes.

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:40 PM ET, January 17, 2019.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

From Mediagazer

Sara Fischer / Axios:
CalMatters, a nonprofit focused on CA politics and policy, acquires tech news nonprofit The Markup; CalMatters has ~$12.5M in funding and The Markup has $5M

Neel Dhanesha / Nieman Lab:
Q&A with Erica Heilman, host of “Rumble Strip”, an independent podcast she created in 2013 that chronicles how Vermont changed over the years

Jessica Testa / New York Times:
A look at Highsnobiety, a creative consultancy and clothing line, as well as magazine and website led by EIC Willa Bennett covering fashion and youth culture

More News

The Seattle Times:
Microsoft pledges $500M to tackle housing crisis in Seattle: $475M for loans to housing developers over three years and $25M for resident services

Earlier Picks

Sarah Frier / Bloomberg:
Sources: Snap CFO Tim Stone resigned after a dispute with management over pay, going around CEO Evan Spiegel to ask Snap's board for a significant raise
Larry Dignan / ZDNet:
Google to raise prices globally for G Suite on April 2; G Suite Basic will go from $5 to $6, G Suite Business will go from $10 per user per month to $12
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft is planning to decouple Windows search and Cortana in the next major Windows 10 update, expected in April, so typed queries will be handled separately
Nick Summers / Engadget:
Unity updates ToS so that any third-party software, like Improbable's SpatialOS, can be used with its game engine, following last week's fracas
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