Techmeme
January 31, 2021, 6:25 PM

Top News

Kashmir Hill / New York Times:
How one disgruntled person destroyed the online reputations of 145+ people, aided by “complaint sites” in the US and platforms like Google that rarely intervene  —  Outrageous lies destroyed Guy Babcock's online reputation.  When he went hunting for their source, what he discovered was worse than he could have imagined.
Cat Ferguson / MIT Technology Review:
VAMS, a CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M to manage rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine, has been abandoned by states due to bugs and problems  —  The CDC ordered software that was meant to manage the vaccine rollout.  Instead, it has been plagued by problems and abandoned by most states.
Dave Lee / Financial Times:
More than 2,000 police and fire departments in the US have now partnered with Amazon's Ring, with 1,189 new departments added over the past year  —  Controversial surveillance network has doubled in size in the country in the past year  —  More than 2,000 police and fire departments in the US …
Corbin Davenport / Android Police:
Google has reinstated federated chat app Element on the Play Store after briefly pulling it over abusive content, which is now removed, on Element's servers  —  Element is a popular client for the federated chat protocol Matrix, and we highlighted it in our roundup of the best open-source alternatives …
Kellen Browning / New York Times:
League of Legends teams in the US recruited 40+ superstar players from Asia since 2016, with an average salary of $460K for a player in a team's starting five  —  League of Legends teams in the U.S. lag behind their competitors in Asia, so they recruit the world's best players by offering huge salaries.
Evelyn Douek / Lawfare:
Analysis of the first Oversight Board rulings, which in the long term may influence Facebook moderation rules more than the upcoming decision on Trump ban  —  After seemingly endless announcements heralding the arrival of the Facebook Oversight Board (FOB) over the past 18 months, the board has …
Under the Hood:
John Herrman / New York Times:
Christine Hall / Crunchbase News:
Analysis: investors have pumped $7.3B into ~730 US-based fitness apps and services over the past five years, with $2.4B coming just in 2020 across 187 deals  —  Sometimes the best way to know something works is by trying it out yourself.  —  Health and fitness-related goals are commonly …
Zeyi Yang / Protocol:
A look at Bilibili, the “YouTube for China”, as it balances competition and cooperation with Alibaba and Tencent, both of which invested in the video platform  —  “Should Bilibili keep expanding and become a larger player, their relationship with Tencent will surely deteriorate.”
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
Canalys: a record 11.2M Chromebooks were shipped in Q4 2020, up 287% YoY, with Lenovo Chromebooks up 1,766%; in 2020, 30.7M Chromebooks were shipped, up 109%  —  COVID-19 has had a lot of negative effects on the market, but it's been great for the PC market as millions of people transitioned to working and learning from home.

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Catherine Shu / TechCrunch: