Techmeme
December 10, 2020, 12:10 PM

Top News

New York Times:
Legal experts say FTC and state AGs will find it challenging to prove their allegations against Facebook because the standards of proof are formidable  —  The U.S. and states cases against the social network are far from a slam dunk because the standards of proof are formidable.
Federal Trade Commission:
FTC, in coalition with 46 state AGs, plus Guam and DC, sues Facebook, alleging Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions were used to stifle competition  —  Agency challenges Facebook's multi-year course of unlawful conduct  —  The Federal Trade Commission today sued Facebook …
More: Federal Trade Commission, On my Om, AVC, Business Insider, Washington Post, The Guardian, Slate, CNBC, XDA Developers, The.Ink, BuzzFeed News, BIG by Matt Stoller, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, Protocol, TechSpot, The Verge, KnowTechie, news.com.au, CNN, Cointelegraph, Bloomberg, Tubefilter, MakeUseOf, and ABC News
Jennifer Newstead / About Facebook:
Facebook responds to the FTC and state AGs, saying the lawsuits they've brought forth are “revisionist history” and their antitrust case is unprecedented  —  Billions of people use Facebook's products every day.  To earn their time and attention, we compete fiercely against many other services across the world.
NY State Attorney General:
New York AG Letitia James leads a coalition of 48 AGs in suing Facebook, alleging the company uses a “buy or bury” approach toward its competitors  —  AG James Leads Bipartisan Coalition of 48 Attorneys General Charging Anticompetitive Conduct  —  Facebook Thwarted Competition, Reduced Consumer Privacy for Profits
The Verge:
Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
Dan Primack / Axios:
Airbnb raises $3.5B in its IPO at $68 per share, up from a previous $56-$60 range, giving it a fully diluted valuation of $47.3B  —  Airbnb on Wednesday raised $3.5 billion in its IPO at a fully diluted valuation of around $47.3 billion, and will begin trading Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange under ticker symbol ABNB.
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Germany launches an antitrust probe into Facebook tying Oculus use to possession of a Facebook account  —  Facebook's bad week just got worse: It's being investigated in Germany for linking usage of its VR product, Oculus, to having a Facebook account.  —  The tech giant raised the hackles …
Ryan Browne / CNBC:
Google launches knowledge panels in search results to show accurate information about coronavirus vaccines, starting with the UK  —  - Google has launched new knowledge panels to show people accurate information about coronavirus vaccines.  — The feature is only available in the U.K …
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Adobe has released its final scheduled Flash Player update for all regions outside of mainland China and will block Flash content from January 12  —  Adobe releases final Flash update with stronger language asking users to uninstall the app before its EOL.  —  Adobe has released on Tuesday …
Washington Post:
National Weather Service says it has an Internet bandwidth problem and proposes limiting users to 60 connections/minute, which could hurt weather apps and sites  —  Agency floats a solution to problems that could hobble private companies and affect popular weather apps.
D. M. Moore / Polygon:
AT&T has agreed to sell Japanese anime streaming service Crunchyroll to Sony's Funimation Global Group for $1.18B  —  The move consolidates the anime industry in a major way  —  On Wednesday, Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. announced that AT&T and WarnerMedia agreed to sell Crunchyroll to Funimation.
Kaitlyn Tiffany / The Atlantic:
Inside Ovarit, an invite-only Reddit-like site founded by members of the “trans-exclusionary radical feminists” subreddit r/GenderCritical that Reddit banned  —  Mary Kate Fain, a 27-year-old engineer and writer living in Houston, has always considered herself a feminist.
Charlie Warzel / New York Times:
Biden staffers say their experiences in dealing with Facebook during the election left them concerned that the company is a threat to the electoral process  —  Inside the battle between Biden and Facebook.  —  Opinion Writer at Large  —  In the days after the election …
Ina Fried / Axios:
Internal memo: Sundar Pichai apologizes over the handling of AI ethics researcher Timnit Gebru's departure and says he will investigate  —  Google CEO Sundar Pichai apologized Wednesday for the company's handling of the departure of AI ethics researcher Timnit Gebru and said he would investigate …
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
French data protection agency CNIL fines Google $120M and Amazon $42M for placing tracking cookies without consent  —  France's data protection agency, the CNIL, has slapped Google and Amazon with fines for dropping tracking cookies without consent.  —  Google has been hit with a total …
Steve O'Hear / TechCrunch:
Cleo, creator of an AI-powered financial assistance app and chatbot, raises $44M Series B led by EQT Ventures  —  Cleo, the London founded “financial assistant” that takes the form of an app and chatbot and now counts the U.S. as its largest market, has raised $44 million in Series B funding.
Byron Tau / Wall Street Journal:
Apple and Google to ban mobile apps that use location trackers from data broker X-Mode, after it was revealed X-Mode provided data to US government contractors  —  After the data broker came under scrutiny for national-security work, tech giants tell app developers to remove trackers or lose access to their operating systems

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