Techmeme: Profile of Dongtu, a China-based Giphy-like service that is baked into some 3,000 apps with chatting features, including WeChat, Alibaba's Taobao, and Weibo (Rita Liao/TechCrunch)

Top News

Queenie Wong / CNET:

Facebook built a now discontinued internal app, report says between 2015 and 2016, that let employees identify colleagues and friends via facial recognition — The discontinued app could identify employees and their friends who had enabled facial recognition, Facebook said.

Source: Business Insider. More: Mashable, VentureBeat, and Seeking Alpha

Tweets: @robaeprice, @xeni, @robaeprice, @clarajeffery, @oknox, @pauldokas, @jkarsh, @tonyromm, @coreen_anne, @robaeprice, @brooklynmarie, and @dtunkelang

Monica Nickelsburg / GeekWire:

Amazon filed its formal protest over JEDI on Friday, citing a Fox News segment and a Trump rally as evidence of improper political pressure from the White House — Amazon filed its formal protest over Microsoft's victory in a $10 billion Pentagon cloud computing contract …

More: Washington Post, SiliconANGLE, Fortune, and Axios

Tweets: @keithboykin and @megawatts55. Thanks:@taylor_soper

Jon Fingas / Engadget:

FCC bans carriers from using federal subsidies to buy equipment from Huawei and ZTE, considers ordering subsidy recipients to replace current Chinese equipment — The FCC is acting on its vow to keep Chinese technology out of American wireless networks. Commissioners have unanimously approved …

More: Federal Communications …, Washington Post, Reuters, Axios, Reuters, MSPoweruser, Android Authority, Politico, Ars Technica, TechCrunch, CRN, PCMag, Telecompaper, Light Reading, Light Reading, Seeking Alpha, The Verge, CNET, GeekWire, and MacDailyNews

Tweets: @repjimbanks, @fcc, and @sentedcruz

Shannon Liao / CNN:

Facebook says it has signed Jeremy Wang, aka Disguised Toast, a Twitch streamer with 1M+ followers, to Facebook Gaming, its live game streaming platform — New York (CNN)Facebook (FB) just nabbed a major player for its gaming platform as it continues to ramp up efforts to compete in the video game streaming wars.

More: Washington Post, Engadget, Polygon, The Verge, Hollywood Reporter, and The Esports Observer

Tweets: @dotesports, @disguisedtoast, @comicbook, @thr, @daniel_duan, @mattnavarra, and @dotodoya

Mary Ann Azevedo / Crunchbase News:

REX, a real estate broker that claims its AI allows it to price homes more accurately and charge lower commissions, raises $40M, bringing total raised to $115M — REX, an Austin-based licensed residential real estate brokerage using AI and big data, has raised another $40 million in what it describes as a “C1” round.

More: Built In Austin, SiliconHills, HousingWire, and FinSMEs

Ernie Smith / VICE:

As Slack gets criticism from power users for its WYSIWYG editor and plans an option to revert, a look at the history of Markdown, used by Slack's old interface — Slack just updated its longtime editor for its primary interface—and the rich-text result hints at a longstanding tension …

More: MSPoweruser and Arthur O'Dwyer

Tweets: @shortformernie, @carnage4life, @katienotopoulos, @artemr, @alexislloyd, @vice, and @wongmjane

Katie Williams / Sensor Tower Blog:

There were 29.6B app downloads from 792K publishers globally in Q3 across App Store and Google Play; 1% of top publishers accounted for 80% of all downloads — New data from Sensor Tower's Store Intelligence platform reveals that the top-performing 1 percent of publishers globally accounted …

More: TechCrunch and iPhone in Canada Blog. Tweets: @deaconlf

Tarleton Gillespie / Slate:

Every ad, political or commercial, should reveal its provenance, and all advertisers should stand by their ads and be held accountable for them — On Oct. 30, Twitter announced it would now prohibit political advertising on its platform. On Friday, it tried its best to explain exactly what that would mean.

More: Electronic Frontier Foundation. Tweets: @bowlinearl and @frankpasquale

Natalie Jarvey / Hollywood Reporter:

Inside Spotify's plan to dominate audio by spending hundreds of millions on exclusive podcasts and recruiting Jordan Peele, Mark Wahlberg and the Obamas — Having helped transform the music industry, Ek and content chief Dawn Ostroff set their sights (and your ears) on spending hundreds …

More: Tubefilter. Tweets: @jimprosser, @john, @thr, and @trengriffin

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