Techmeme
April 2, 2019, 5:25 PM

Top News

Mark Bergen / Bloomberg:
Sources: YouTube execs ignored internal warnings, concerns about the spread of toxic videos, and proposals to change recommendations, in favor of engagement  —  A year ago, Susan Wojcicki was on stage to defend YouTube.  Her company, hammered for months for fueling falsehoods online …
Emily Birnbaum / The Hill:
Google will require contracting firms to give US workers health care benefits, parental leave, $15/hr min. wage, more, by 2022, following activism from Googlers  —  Google said on Tuesday it will require its contracted and temporary workforce to receive full benefits, including comprehensive health care …
Alex Konrad / Forbes:
a16z raises new $2B fund and says the firm's 150 employees are being registered as financial advisors, so they can go deeper on riskier bets, like buying crypto  —  Emerging from the financial crisis in 2009, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz laid out their campaign to take on Silicon Valley.
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Google has officially started the process of shutting down and deleting all consumer accounts on its failed social network platform Google+  —  The deletion of personal accounts starts today  —  Google has officially started the process of shutting down and deleting all consumer accounts …
Matthew Boyle / Bloomberg:
Walmart will let customers order groceries by voice through Google Assistant beginning this month, expanding the service to other platforms in the coming months  —  - Prior purchase data will help identify preferred brands, size  — Retailer to expand service to more platforms in coming months
Paul Thurrott / Thurrott:
Microsoft closes the Microsoft Store's book category, offering full refunds on ebook purchases and a $25 credit to those who annotated their ebooks  —  I guess the only surprise here is when this would happen.  But Microsoft is indeed shutting down the ebook functionality in its Edge web browser and in the Microsoft Store.
Ian Cutress / AnandTech:
Intel announces its second-generation Xeon Scalable processor, Cascade Lake, new Optane memory modules, Intel-developed Agilex FPGAs, and more  —  Today is the big day in 2019 for Intel's Enterprise product announcements, combining some products that should be available from today …
Pranav Dixit / BuzzFeed News:
Facebook says it removed over 800 Indian and Pakistani Pages, accounts, and Groups for spreading misinformation and propaganda, ahead of India's election  —  NEW DELHI — Facebook and Instagram removed more than 800 political pages, accounts, and groups in India and Pakistan for spreading misinformation …
Manish Singh / VentureBeat:
Rajan Anandan, Vice President of Google's Southeast Asia and India operations, is leaving to join Sequoia Capital India as a managing director  —  Rajan Anandan, the Vice President of Google's Southeast Asia and India operations, is leaving the company after more than eight years with the firm, the company said on Tuesday.
Abhimanyu Ghoshal / The Next Web:
WhatsApp debuts a fact-checking tip line in India to combat fake news, will work with startup Proto to help review text, photos, links, and video sent by users  —  WhatsApp has launched its next weapon in the fight against misinformation on its platform in India: a tip line to which you can send forwards …
Adrian Zmudzinski / Cointelegraph:
Report: data provided by TokenData shows about $118M has been raised via ICOs in Q1 2019, compared to $6.9B raised during the same period in 2018  —  About $118 million has been raised via initial coin offerings (ICOs) in Q1 of 2019, over 58 times less than $6.9 billion …
Mark Di Stefano / BuzzFeed:
YouTube is removing UK far-right activist Tommy Robinson's videos from search results and prohibiting him from live streaming, stopping short of an outright ban  —  The video platform is removing the far-right activist's videos from search results and stopping him live-streaming.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Microsoft teams up with BMW on the Open Manufacturing Platform, a new initiative for collaborative IoT development in manufacturing  —  Car companies are making big investments in technology to help ensure that they are not cut out of the next generation of transportation and automotive manufacturing …

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Earlier Picks

Jon Fingas / Engadget:
Colin Lecher / The Verge:
Peter Kafka / Recode:
Paul Sawers / VentureBeat: