Techmeme: Turkey bans ads on Twitter and Pinterest for not appointing local representatives as mandated by social media law, says their bandwidth will be cut 50% in April (Reuters)

Top News

Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:

Qualcomm unveils Snapdragon 870 with a similar design to the 865 and 865 Plus, clocked at 3.2GHz, making it about 10% faster than the 865 — A slightly faster refresh of last year's Snapdragon flagship — Qualcomm has announced a new mobile phone processor: the Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 …

More: Qualcomm, 9to5Google, PCMag, XDA Developers, Android Authority, Android Authority, Android Police, AnandTech, CNET, Engadget, ZDNet, Droid Life, TechPP, and Gizchina

Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch:

Electric autonomous vehicle startup Cruise raises $2B at a $30B valuation from Microsoft, GM, Honda, and others — Cruise has raised $2 billion in a new equity round that has pushed its valuation up to $30 billion and delivered Microsoft as an investor and partner.

More: Wall Street Journal, The Verge, Cruise, Forbes, Bloomberg, Protocol, Axios, Reuters, Financial Times, CNBC, Electrek, MSPoweruser, SlashGear, and Slashdot. Tweets: @kirstenkorosec

Reuters:

Turkey bans ads on Twitter and Pinterest for not appointing local representatives as mandated by social media law, says their bandwidth will be cut 50% in April — ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Ankara has imposed advertising bans on Twitter, Periscope and Pinterest after they failed …

More: Tech Xplore. Tweets: @rasmus_kleis, @neerajka, and @b9ace

See also Mediagazer

Manish Singh / TechCrunch:

India asks WhatsApp to withdraw the planned change to its privacy policy over “grave concerns” and questions why users in the EU are exempt from it — India has asked WhatsApp to withdraw the planned change to its privacy policy, posing a new headache to Facebook-owned service …

More: Android Police, The Economic Times, ANI News, Tech in Asia, Inc42 Media, TechRadar, TechCircle, and Firstpost Tech

Tweets: @alexbrooks and @alex

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

PPRO, which offers e-commerce players tools to support a variety of payment models, raises $180M at a $1B+ valuation — The pandemic hastened a shift of most commerce becoming e-commerce in the last year, and that has brought a new focus on startups that are helping to enable that process.

More: The Paypers, Finextra, and PPRO. Tweets: @alex

Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan / Financial Times:

Research: GDPR fines have risen ~40% to €159M in the past year vs. the first 20 months the law was in force; €272M has been levied since its introduction — Data protection penalties climbed 40% in the past year, according to research — Fines imposed under the General Data …

More: ZDNet and PYMNTS.com

Tweets: @paultang and @hoofnagle

Los Angeles Times:

Amateur digital sleuths have joined massive crowdsourcing efforts on social media to track violent Capitol rioters, passing the evidence to authorities — The digital sleuths take to their computers in the moments when they can peel away from their real-world responsibilities — jobs …

More: The Independent, Ars Technica, ProPublica, FlowingData, Security Boulevard, The Verge, 9to5Mac, and Boing Boing

Tweets: @trump_ton, @bostonjoan, @nils_gilman, @mathewi, @schwanksta, and @dicktofel

Paul Sawers / VentureBeat:

Citrix acquires SaaS collaborative work management service Wrike for $2.25B in cash — Citrix has confirmed reports from earlier this week that it is buying enterprise-focused work management platform Wrike, in an all-cash deal worth $2.25 billion. — Founded in 2006, San Jose-based Wrike …

More: TechCrunch, Crunchbase News, Business Wire, Reuters, and SiliconANGLE. Tweets: @giano

Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:

Swimlane, which develops security operations management software, raises $40M led by EIP, bringing its total raised to $80M+ — Swimlane, a Denver-based security operations management software provider, today announced it raised $40 million. The funding will be put toward accelerating partnerships …

More: FinSMEs, Security Boulevard, and SecurityWeek

Meagan Simpson / BetaKit:

Cloud backup service Rewind raises $15M Series A led by Inovia Capital — Ottawa-based Rewind has closed a $19 million CAD ($15 million USD) Series A round of financing as it looks to capitalize on and expand its “backup-as-a-service” business. — The almost six-year-old startup has developed …

More: VentureBeat and SiliconANGLE. Tweets: @mikepotter

David Cohen / Adweek:

Content discovery platform Taboola rolls out Stories in beta, letting publishers add the format directly to their websites or mobile articles — Content can be added directly to publishers' websites or mobile articles — Content discovery platform Taboola became the latest platform …

More: PR Newswire. Tweets: @kerrymflynn and @adamsingolda

Sponsor Posts

Google:

Try Gemini 3 Pro — Google's newest and most intelligent AI model that helps you bring any idea to life

Shopify:

Shopify's new AI commerce stack — Their VP of Product digs into just-launched products to help entrepreneurs and developers build with the latest AI and tech.

Zoho:

Enhancements to Zoho Writer's automation flow designer: New PDF operations, password protection, and more — Once we rolled out the automation flow designer in Zoho Writer's merge templates …

IDrive:

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.

Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:

2025 In Review, 2026 Predictions — With Reed Albergotti

The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.

Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.

Channels with Peter Kafka:

Podcast Pioneer PJ Vogt's Second Act: Less Budget, More Control

Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.

Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.

BG2 Pod:

AI Enterprise - Databricks & Glean

Open-source podcast on all things tech, markets, investing, and capitalism, hosted by Brad Gerstner.

Subscribe to BG2 Pod.

Great Chat:

The stories we told ourselves in 2025

A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.

Subscribe to Great Chat.

Grit:

How Brands Stay Visible When AI Decides | Profound CEO James Cadwallader

Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.

Subscribe to Grit.

Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:

Ted Sarandos: Netflix and how tech changed storytelling

Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.

Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.

Add your podcast here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 10:15 AM ET, January 19, 2021.

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.