Techmeme
September 4, 2020, 11:30 PM

Top News

Financial Times:
Sources: unusually large purchases of call options by SoftBank over the past month partly fueled the latest tech stock rally  —  Japanese conglomerate has been snapping up options in huge amounts over past month  —  SoftBank is the “Nasdaq whale” that has bought billions of dollars' worth …
Jeremy B. Merrill / ProPublica:
Facebook's ban on political ads in the week prior to the election applies to election officials, who use Facebook to inform voters about the voting process  —  ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.  Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published.
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Facebook says it will stop accepting new political ads a week before the US presidential election, as part of steps to protect against election interference  —  Striking a compromise to prevent election misinformation  —  Facebook will stop taking new political advertising in the United States …
Ashley Gold / Axios:
Steve Kovach / CNBC:
Amazon Web Services:
Amazon responds to JEDI decision, calling it a “politically corrupted contract award” and attacks Trump's role in steering the award away from AWS  —  Earlier today, the DoD announced it had concluded its corrective action and affirmed its prior JEDI contract award to Microsoft.
Aaron Gregg / Washington Post:
Pentagon reaffirms its controversial decision to give JEDI cloud contract to Microsoft; Amazon is likely to continue its legal challenge  —  The Pentagon reaffirmed its controversial decision to give its largest-ever cloud computing contract to Microsoft instead of to market-leader Amazon …
Patrick McGee / Financial Times:
Under shareholder pressure, Apple quietly publishes its human rights policy based on UN guiding principles, but will follow national law if the two conflict  —  iPhone maker approves new policy after shareholder pressure  —  Apple has for the first time published a human rights policy …
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Facebook is testing displaying Instagram Stories directly in the main Facebook app; the test requires users opt in and link their accounts together  —  Only your Instagram followers can see your stories in Facebook  —  Some Facebook users have recently noticed that they can now watch …
Dave Lee / Financial Times:
Amazon deleted 20,000 reviews by 7 of its top 10 UK contributors after an FT analysis found they appeared to profit from posting thousands of five-star ratings  —  FT investigation finds suspicious behaviour by 9 of top 10 UK contributors on feedback  —  Amazon has deleted approximately …
Russell Brandom / The Verge:
FCC report estimates that removing Chinese equipment will cost small carriers as much as $1.8B, with around $1.6B of the cost eligible for federal reimbursement  —  ‘Rip and replace’ won't be cheap  —  Removing Chinese equipment will cost small carriers as much as $1.8 billion …
Carolyn Said / San Francisco Chronicle:
Uber and others have added $70M more to their California ballot campaign to keep gig workers as independent contractors, bringing total campaign funds to $181M  —  Gig companies have poured another $70 million into their ballot campaign to keep drivers and couriers as independent contractors …

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More News

Alex Weprin / Hollywood Reporter:
Electronic Frontier Foundation:
More: Techdirt.  Tweets: @shailjapatel, @asemota, @eff, @eff, and @eff

Earlier Picks

TechCrunch:
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Alex Heath / The Information:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: