Techmeme
June 19, 2019, 11:45 PM

Top News

Casey Newton / The Verge:
Interviews with 12 former and current Facebook content moderators in Tampa, three on the record, describing appalling working conditions and, for some, PTSD  —  At Facebook's worst-performing content moderation site in North America, one contractor has died, and others say they fear for their lives
Washington Post:
Sources: after complaints about privacy practices around children's videos on YouTube, FTC is in late stages of a probe, causing YouTube to rethink its strategy  —  The U.S. government is in the late stages of an investigation into YouTube for its handling of children's videos …
Rob Copeland / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: YouTube is considering far-reaching changes to protect kids, including moving all children's content to the YouTube Kids app and turning off autoplay  —  Executives consider shifting children's content to a separate app, removing auto-play feature in an effort to protect young viewers
Pete Schroeder / Reuters:
Senate panel says it will hold a hearing on Facebook's Libra on July 16; source: David Marcus, who leads Facebook's blockchain efforts, is expected to testify  —  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate Banking Committee will discuss Facebook's proposed cryptocurrency at a July 16 hearing, the panel announced Wednesday.
Russell Brandom / The Verge:
While Facebook's Libra plays at decentralization, it is still entrenched in Facebook, and using it means trusting Facebook, which is a hard sell in 2019  —  Libra isn't as decentralized as a normal cryptocurrency  —  From the beginning, cryptocurrency was about trust.
Brendan Greeley / Financial Times:
Lily Hay Newman / Wired:
Google rolls out Private Join and Compute, a tool that lets organizations gain insights about other parties' confidential data, as an open source project  —  CERTAIN STUDIES REQUIRE sensitive data sets: the relationship between nutritious school lunch and student health, the effectiveness of salary equity initiatives, and so on.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
London-based Kano, which makes hardware to teach younger people about computing and coding, partners with Microsoft and launches a £300 11.6" touchscreen laptop  —  Kano, the London-based startup that builds hardware designed to teach younger people about computing and coding …
Terry Spencer / Associated Press:
A Florida city council votes to pay $600K ransom to hackers who, over three weeks ago, encrypted city records, disabled its email system, and more  —  FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — A Florida city agreed to pay $600,000 in ransom to hackers who took over its computer system …
James Fallows / The Atlantic:
Fresno-based Bitwise Industries, which offers training for developers, raises $27M Series A led by Kapor Capital  —  Four years ago, my wife, Deb, and I wrote about an ambitious and unusual tech startup called Bitwise Industries, in the gritty and long-struggling city of Fresno in California's Central Valley.
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Quibi says it has booked more than $100M in ad sales with launch partners including Google, P&G, PepsiCo, Walmart, and Anheuser-Busch, ahead of April 2020 debut  —  Quibi, the ambitious short-form video venture from Jeffrey Katzenberg and CEO Meg Whitman, has sold $100 million …

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Earlier Picks

Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
Christine Biederman / Wired:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet: