| Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge: |
Lyft says it will suspend its service in California on August 20 after being ordered to classify drivers as employees — ‘This is not something we wanted to do’ — Lyft will suspend its ride-hailing operations in California at 11:59PM PT on August 20th, the company confirmed in a blog post.| Julia Carrie Wong / The Guardian: |
Facebook removes over 980 Groups, 520 Pages, and 160 ads for “US-based militia organizations” and those that identify as Antifa — Facebook has taken down or restricted more than 10,000 groups, pages and Instagram accounts associated with QAnon, in the latest effort … | Sheera Frenkel / New York Times: |
| Sam Shead / CNBC: |
Airbnb announces a global party ban at its listings and an occupancy cap of 16 people, saying some users took “bar and club behavior to homes” during COVID-19 — - Home-sharing platform Airbnb has introduced a global ban on parties as the coronavirus pandemic continues.| Kate Cox / Ars Technica: |
Police in NYC and Miami have reportedly used facial recognition software to arrest people who allegedly committed crimes during Black Lives Matter protests — Cops' use of the tech among the list of things protesters are demonstrating against. — Law enforcement in several cities … | DL Cade / PetaPixel: |
Latest update to Lightroom for iOS inadvertently wiped users' photos and presets not synced to the cloud; Adobe says there is no way to get them back — This morning, multiple readers wrote in to alert us to a major Adobe gaff. It seems the latest update to the Lightroom app for iPhone … | Jon Porter / The Verge: |
Gmail, Docs, Drive, Meet, and more Google services were hit by widespread disruption globally for a few hours Thursday — A number of Google services including Gmail, Drive, Docs, Meet, Groups, Chat, Keep and Voice are experiencing service disruptions, the company is reporting on its G Suite Status Dashboard.| Tom Warren / The Verge: |
Google's Pixel Buds get a new transcribe mode to translate long speeches, Attention Alerts to alert users of important events happening around them, and more — There's also a bass boost mode — Google is adding a number of new features to its Pixel Buds today.| Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch: |
A look at contact-tracing app Aura, which was a required download for students at a Michigan college and has faced criticism for its privacy and security issues — And students have no way to opt out — Schools and universities across the United States are split on whether to open for the fall semester … | Karissa Bell / Engadget: |
TikTok says it removed 380,000 videos and 64,000 comments, and banned 1,300+ users, in the US since the beginning of the year for breaking hate speech rules — TikTok is the latest social media platform to peel back the curtain on its efforts to fight hate speech.| Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet: |
Google fixed a Gmail bug, which could have let attackers send spoofed emails, months after being alerted by a researcher, and seven hours after she went public — Attackers could have sent spoofed emails mimicking any Gmail or G Suite customer. — Google has patched on Wednesday … | South China Morning Post: |
Alibaba posts quarterly revenue of $21.8B, up 34% YoY, and profit of $6.7B, up 124% YoY, on the back of its online retail and cloud computing businesses — Revenue hit US$21.8 billion in the June quarter, up 34 per cent from a year ago, on the back of its China online retail … | Christine Hall / Crunchbase News: |
Crypto lending and borrowing service BlockFi raises $50M Series C led by Morgan Creek Digital, bringing its total raised to around $160M — Financial services company BlockFi landed $50 million in Series C funding to develop products for cryptocurrencies. — Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily| Burt Helm / Fast Company: |
Investigation sheds light on Roblox's battle against “condo games”, digital sex parties where kids act like adults and adults may be posing as kids — Roblox is waging a technological shadow war against condo games: digital sex parties where kids act like adults.| Nick Statt / The Verge: |
DoorDash launches grocery delivery, starting with select chains in California and parts of the Midwest — Starting with select stores in California and parts of the Midwest — DoorDash is ramping up its on-demand delivery efforts with the launch of grocery delivery … | James Vincent / The Verge: |
Reddit says it has banned nearly 7,000 subreddits since June, resulting in an 18% drop in users posting hateful content — Reddit's new stance on hate speech shows early progress — In June this year, Reddit began a huge campaign to remove hateful content from its site … | Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: |
Netflix confirms it's been testing a “Shuffle Play” feature, which will randomly play content based on what a user watches or saves to a list, since July — Don't know what you're in the mood to watch? Netflix's new “Shuffle” feature could help.| Jeff Kauflin / Forbes: |
How Vladimir Tenev and Baiju Bhatt built the fee-free stock trading app Robinhood, which disrupted rivals by relying on selling customers' orders — It's just after midnight on Friday, July 31, and the Todd Capital Options Community, a $20-per-month subscription Slack channel favored … | Sujeong Lim / Counterpoint Research: |
Global smartwatch revenue grew 20% YoY in H1 2020, despite COVID-19 and shipments remaining flat; Apple accounted for 51.4% of revenue, up from 43.2% in H1 2019 — Seoul, Hong Kong, New Delhi, Beijing, London, Buenos Aires, San Diego — The top three brands contributed more than 69% of the total market revenue in H1 2020.
Try Gemini 3 Pro — Google's newest and most intelligent AI model that helps you bring any idea to life
Shopify: Revolutionizing Commerce with Winter Edition '26 — Over 150+ new features transform how merchants build, design, and grow—with technology that amplifies creative vision.
Give your projects a “signature” upgrade with the Zoho Sign extension for Zoho Projects — Well-orchestrated project management keeps people, priorities, and processes all working in sync toward a shared goal.
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data — Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.
This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 2:50 PM ET, August 20, 2020.
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.
| Sam Schechner / Wall Street Journal: |
| Stefanie Dazio / Associated Press: |
| Ed Sealover / Denver Business Journal: |
| Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC: |
| Dan Goodin / Ars Technica: |
| Jeremy Horwitz / VentureBeat: |