Techmeme
September 17, 2021, 8:50 AM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
Internal docs show Facebook's weak response after staff flagged human traffickers and drug cartels using its platform for recruitment in developing countries  —  Employees raised alarms about how the site is used in developing countries, where its user base is already huge and expanding
Reuters:
Apple and Google remove jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny's tactical voting app from their stores, bowing to Russian pressure  —  Alphabet's Google (GOOGL.O) and Apple (AAPL.O) have removed jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny's tactical voting app from their stores, his team said on Friday …
Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
Adam Mosseri faces criticism after comparing social media to cars, saying “cars create way more value than they destroy”, even though people die in accidents  —  - Facebook Instagram chief Adam Mosseri came under a flurry of criticism after comparing the value of social networks to society to that of cars.
Karen Hao / MIT Technology Review:
Internal Facebook report: Eastern European troll farms reached 140M US users/month before the 2020 election; 75% of these users didn't follow any of their Pages  —  In the run up to the 2020 election, the most highly contested in US history, Facebook's most popular pages for Christian …
Haroon Siddique / The Guardian:
Sir Clive Sinclair, the creator of the landmark ZX Spectrum who helped popularize the home computer, dies at age 81  —  Creator of the landmark ZX Spectrum and the less commercially successful C5 died after a long illness  —  Sir Clive Sinclair, the inventor and entrepreneur who was instrumental …
Byron Tau / Wall Street Journal:
How law enforcement's ability to track people via commercially available data blurs the line between investigative due diligence and warrantless surveillance  —  Agencies' growing use of purchased data without warrants raises new legal questions  —  In January 2020, a 14-year-old girl …
Politico:
DHS: American extremists used TikTok in the lead-up to the Jan. 6 riots to recruit new members and share “tactical guidance” for terrorist and criminal activity  —  Extremists foreign and domestic have used the video platform, DHS says.  The app says it has “absolutely no place” for violence and hate.
Aaron Mak / Slate:
Inside the r/aznidentity subreddit, an unofficial hub of “Men's Rights Asians” subculture, which has gained notoriety by harassing Asian women  —  They became notorious for trying to harass Asian women off the internet.  The racial trauma of the past year has only emboldened them.
Kenrick Cai / Forbes:
Glean, an enterprise search engine startup cofounded by Google and Facebook veterans, emerges from stealth with $55M in funding across two rounds  —  When Arvind Jain left his cushy tech job to cofound cloud data management company Rubrik, he ran into a familiar problem: search.
Reuters:
Facebook says it will use the same tactics that it uses to remove bot networks to target real-user accounts engaging in tactics like mass reporting  —  Facebook (FB.O) is taking a more aggressive approach to shut down coordinated groups of real-user accounts engaging in certain harmful activities …

Sponsor Posts

Google:
Try Gemini 3 Pro  —  Google's newest and most intelligent AI model that helps you bring any idea to life
Shopify:
Transform ML Experimentation with Tangle  —  Save months of compute time with Tangle, built by Shopify.  Try this open-source platform to simplify ML workflows, ensure reproducibility, and seamlessly share with collaborators.
Zoho:
Contract Signed.  Project Ready.  Tasks Created.  —  Every project begins with a promise; a contract that outlines the deliverables, the timelines, and the terms.  But for most businesses …
Bitrix24:
Bitrix24 powers the next generation of high-performing businesses  —  Chat, projects, CRM, and automation — all in one place.  Replace dozens of tools so your team moves faster, collaborates smarter, and grows effortlessly.
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.

Featured Podcasts

Hard Fork:
OpenAI Calls a 'Code Red' + Which Model Should I Use? + The Hard Fork Review of Slop
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
Access:
Is Roblox making the internet better or worse? We asked the CEO
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
Lenny's Podcast:
Why LinkedIn is turning PMs into AI-powered "full stack builders" | Tomer Cohen (LinkedIn CPO)
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Great Chat:
Code red: our favorite tech rivalries
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.
Big Technology Podcast:
How An AI Model Learned To Be Bad — With Evan Hubinger And Monte MacDiarmid
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 8:50 AM ET, September 17, 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.

More News

Financial Times:
Mitchell Clark / The Verge:

Earlier Picks

Joanna Ossinger / Bloomberg:
Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
Sarah McBride / Bloomberg:
Makena Kelly / The Verge: