Techmeme
August 14, 2020, 7:20 PM

Top News

Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
Facebook launches paid online events in 20 countries with waived fees during COVID-19, says Apple is hurting SMBs by refusing to waive its 30% cut on iOS  —  Facebook Inc. joined a growing list of developers to publicly criticize Apple Inc. over its revenue-sharing policy for in-app purchases …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
By weaponizing Fortnite and with Apple as its primary target, Epic Games is well positioned to lead the fight for a change in app store policies  —  Epic Games executed its most ambitious Fortnite live event yesterday, leading both Apple and Google to remove one of the world's most popular games from their app stores.
Nick Statt / The Verge:
Austen Goslin / Polygon:
Nick Statt / The Verge:
Russell Brandom / The Verge:
Bloomberg:
VC firm Initialized raises $230M for its fifth fund and says the fund was “heavily oversubscribed” despite the departure of co-founder Alexis Ohanian  —  - Existing portfolio includes unicorns Instacart, Coinbase, Ro  — Fifth fund “heavily oversubscribed” despite co-founder exit
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Facebook didn't apply hate speech rules to at least four flagged individuals and groups in India, showing a pattern of favoritism to Modi's party  —  Company executive in vital market opposed move to ban controversial politician; some employees allege favoritism to ruling party
BuzzFeed News:
Jason Schreier / Bloomberg:
Ubisoft fires Ashraf Ismail, the creative director of its newest Assassin's Creed game, following an investigation into misconduct allegations  —  Ubisoft Entertainment SA has dismissed the creative director of the newest Assassin's Creed game, the latest result of a MeToo reckoning …
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Sources: Google is planning to eventually replace Duo with Meet, after placing its consumer communication services under G Suite head Javier Soltero  —  With classic Hangouts on the way out, Google today has two video calling apps.  However, that is one too many for the company …
New York Times:
Internal docs show TikTok classified more than a third of its 49M US DAUs in July as 14 years old or younger, raising concerns about safeguards for preteens  —  Three current and former employees expressed concerns about the Chinese-owned app's safeguards for preteen children.
Katyanna Quach / The Register:
Mozilla confirms a deal to keep Google as the default search provider in Firefox; source says the deal is worth $400M to $450M a year between now and 2023  —  $2.5m-a-year CEO set to take a pay cut, so that's all right, then  —  Mozilla has renewed its lucrative nine-figure deal with Google …
Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
US Court of Appeals rules Charter can charge Netflix, other streaming services for network interconnection, despite merger conditions prohibiting the practice  —  Court kills ban on interconnection fees because FCC didn't defend merger condition.  —  Charter can charge Netflix …
Eva Xiao / Wall Street Journal:
China says it will expand a pilot program of its digital currency, led by its central bank People's Bank of China, to include a number of large cities  —  Testing efforts are being led by the People's Bank of China  —  HONG KONG—China's Commerce Ministry said it would expand a pilot program …

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