Techmeme
March 20, 2021, 10:15 AM

Top News

Sean Coughlan / BBC:
London police warn students about using Sci-Hub, calling the self-described “pirate” site for research papers “a threat to their personal information and data”  —  Police have warned students in the UK against using a website that they say lets users “illegally access” millions of scientific research papers.
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
Coinbase will pay a $6.5M fine to settle with the CFTC, over allegations that it self-traded cryptocurrencies between 2015 and 2018  —  Coinbase will pay a $6.5 million fine to settle allegations it self-traded cryptocurrencies between 2015 and 2018.  —  Crypto exchange Coinbase …
Issie Lapowsky / Protocol:
Facebook's decision to crack down on NYU's Ad Observer highlights the increasingly fraught dynamic between tech companies and academics  —  Laura Edelson was in a state of panic, and I knew I was a little bit to blame for her freakout.  —  “If this is true,” Edelson told me this week during …
Wall Street Journal:
GroupM: Google, Facebook, and Amazon “triopoly” grew its share of US digital ad market from 80% in 2019 to 90% in 2020, and now collects 50%+ of all US ad spend  —  The three tech giants now collect more than half of all ad dollars spent in the U.S. The pandemic economy got them there.
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Facebook says it has resolved a major outage affecting Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and other Facebook services  —  The Facebook-owned social networks were down for many  —  Facebook has resolved a major outage affecting Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and other Facebook services on Friday …
Nilesh Christopher / Rest of World:
Lenders in India are using coercive loan apps that block features and shut down smartphones of customers who fall behind on payments  —  Lenders are turning to coercive loan apps that shut down smartphones if customers fall behind on payments.  —  • BANGALORE, INDIA
Sean Keane / CNET:
Twitter confirms it's testing an “Undo Tweet” feature, first discovered by Jane Manchun Wong, who suggests it could be part of Twitter's planned subscriptions  —  An app researcher's screenshot shows that among the options for subscribers of an unrevealed service.
Bobby Allyn / NPR:
Interview with CEO of SkySilk, the hosting company that helped bring Parler online, who says he did it to spite tech giants like Amazon who abuse their might  —  On Jan. 10, just days after pro-Trump rioters blitzed the U.S. Capitol, Amazon Web Services pulled the plug on the conservative social media site Parler.
Cat Ferguson / MIT Technology Review:
Experts discuss challenges of building government tech, including legacy systems, regulatory complexity, lack of data sharing between departments, and more  —  The pandemic has shown how difficult it can be for the US to succeed with major technology projects.  We asked leading thinkers what they would do to change that.
Gita Jackson / VICE:
As videos from court hearings on Zoom go viral, a look at the debate over the privacy of citizens in those videos and judicial transparency on the internet  —  'People's worst day, which is often why they're in court, shouldn't be monetized for a global audience's benefit.'
Ann-Marie Alcántara / Wall Street Journal:
After Citigroup erroneously sent $900M to lenders using Oracle's Flexcube, some are calling for simplified business software UX to match consumer-facing design  —  Citi's accidental payment makes a strong case for upgrading back-end technology to match consumer-facing design
Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
Mark Zuckerberg on Clubhouse says Facebook may be in a “stronger position” after Apple's IDFA changes and that Facebook Shops has 1M+ monthly active businesses  —  - Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday said he is confident the social media company “will be able to manage through” Apple's upcoming privacy changes.
Josh Constine / Josh Constine's PressClub:

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