Techmeme
September 23, 2020, 10:55 AM

Top News

New York Times:
Facebook removes accounts, groups, and Pages tied to China that posted about US politics; the network was followed by fewer than 3,000 US accounts  —  The social media campaign was small but targeted all sides of the debate.  Officials said Beijing had not decided whether to wade more directly in the American presidential race.
Taylor Hatmaker / TechCrunch:
Ian Sherr / CNET:
Interview with Satya Nadella and Phil Spencer on buying more game companies, investing in Xbox Game Pass, and Microsoft's rejected TikTok bid  —  In an interview, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Xbox head Phil Spencer discuss further acquisitions, how to keep making hits and what happened with TikTok.
Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
Kuo: Apple's next 12.9-inch iPad Pro, coming at the end of 2020, will have Mini-LED displays  —  Following his report earlier this week indicating that Apple will be accelerating adoption of mini-LED displays in its iPad and Mac notebook lineups thanks to better than expected development …
Tony Romm / Washington Post:
DOJ, in a rare legislative proposal, asks Congress to adopt a law weakening Section 230, in an effort to hold Facebook, Google, and others liable for content  —  At issue is Section 230, which gives Facebook, Twitter and other social media legal protection for items their users post to the companies' websites
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Leaked audio recordings and internal posts show Mark Zuckerberg's balancing act, as employees demand a harder line against Trump but users want the opposite  —  In 2020, Facebook would be roiled by a global pandemic, internal protests over racial injustice, a deeply polarizing election …
Sarah Jeong / OneZero:
Q&A with Casey Newton on leaving The Verge to start a newsletter on Substack called Platformer, after many years as The Verge's Silicon Valley editor  —  Sarah Jeong talks to Newton about the details of his deal, subscription journalism, and the magic of email
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Eugene Wei / Remains of the Day:
How TikTok's UI, focused on just one auto-playing video at a time, generates clean user-driven data thanks to its “algorithm-friendly design”  —  In my previous post on TikTok I discussed why its For You Page algorithm is the connective tissue that makes TikTok work.
David French / Reuters:
Robinhood raises $460M from a16z, Sequoia, DST Global, and others as a extension to its $200M Series G, at a $11.7B valuation  —  NEW YORK (Reuters) - Robinhood Markets Inc, the financial technology startup credited with helping popularize trading among millennials, has increased …
Janko Roettgers / Protocol:
Samsung is launching its ad-supported streaming service Samsung TV Plus, available on Samsung TVs since 2016, on some of its latest mobile phones  —  Samsung is doubling down on free, ad-supported streaming: After turning Samsung TV Plus into a massive success story on smart TVs …
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
Overview of the state of bundles in 2020 across Netflix, Disney, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft  —  Manage your Stratechery subscription.  —  If the famous Jim Barksdale quote is to be believed — the one about there only being two ways to make money in business, bundling and unbundling …
Julia Alexander / The Verge:
YouTube says it will use AI-powered moderation to automatically age-restrict certain content  —  AI moderation measures will be used to automatically age-restrict certain content  —  YouTube is rolling out more artificial intelligence-powered technology to catch more videos …
Danny Palmer / ZDNet:
Authorities from the US, UK, Germany, Europol, and others arrest 179 during Operation DisrupTor, targeting the sale of illicit goods on the dark web  —  ‘Operation Disruptor’ involved agencies from nine countries and the seizure of over $6.5m in cash and cryptocurrencies as criminals warned law enforcement will track them down.
Peter Slattery / OneZero :
How Spotify's UX decisions have encouraged the growth of adjective-laden generic artist names, enabling a kind of SEO spam for music  —  The platform is filled with search-optimized spammers, and there's no end in sight  —  Welcome to The Cheater's Guide to Spotify, a series about the schemes …
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Microsoft says it will exclusively license OpenAI's GPT-3 language model, which will continue to be offered via the Azure-hosted API launched in June  —  Microsoft today announced that it will exclusively license GPT-3, one of the most powerful language understanding models in the world, from San Francisco-based AI startup OpenAI.
Financial Times:
Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter reach a deal with big advertisers for common standards on harmful content and to let external auditing of the system from H2 2021  —  External audits and common standards satisfy companies who were boycotting social media  —  Facebook, YouTube and Twitter …

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