Techmeme
November 20, 2021, 9:30 AM

Top News

Kelly Crow / Wall Street Journal:
ConstitutionDAO, which crowdfunded over $40M, loses Sotheby's US Constitution auction to a $43.2M bid from Citadel CEO Kenneth Griffin  —  The 53-year-old billionaire paid $43.2 million for the historic document, plans to lend it to Crystal Bridges museum in Arkansas
Matt Burgess / Wired UK:
DuckDuckGo launches App Tracking Protection for Android, a beta feature that blocks third-party trackers from Google and Facebook  —  The privacy-focused tech company's latest update promises to block invasive data collection across your whole phone.  —  At the end of April …
CoinDesk:
Square's TBD division releases a white paper detailing tbDEX, a new decentralized protocol for exchanging digital and other assets  —  Payments giant Square released a white paper on Friday detailing a new decentralized protocol for exchanging digital and other assets known as tbDEX.
Dustin Volz / Wall Street Journal:
DOJ says Iranian hackers breached a media company in fall 2020 and tested how to create false news content; sources say Lee Enterprises was targeted  —  Computer systems of Lee Enterprises, which owns dozens of daily papers, were targeted in disinformation campaign
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
The Apple Podcasts app's review score went from 1.8 to 4.6 stars as Apple began prompting users to rate the app, confusing some into rating individual podcasts  —  Apple Podcasts rises above bad reviews, but at what cost?  —  You pissed off people by somewhat breaking your app, and they're leaving angry reviews.
Reuters:
Internal documents describe how Amazon's lobbying helped it kill or undermine privacy protections in more than three dozen bills across 25 US states  —  The governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam, speaking in 2018 after Amazon picked the state as the site of its new headquarters.
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Defense Department solicits bids from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle for cloud contracts; DoD canceled its $10B JEDI contract in July  —  - The U.S. Defense Department expects to dole out cloud contracts to multiple companies.  — The new push comes after Pentagon scrapped its plans …
Zoe Schiffer / NBC News:
Internal memo: Apple affirms that employees have the right to discuss working conditions and pay internally and externally  —  Following months of internal controversy about how much workers make at one of the highest valued companies in the world, Apple has announced that employees …
Kaitlyn Tiffany / The Atlantic:
A writer created a politically bland Facebook profile to test the app's algorithm for extreme content, and ended up being shown low-quality, clickbait posts  —  In 2019, a researcher at Facebook conducted an experiment to see whether the platform really has a tendency to send users …
Ryan Broderick / Garbage Day:
Thinkarete Lifestyle, cited by Facebook as Q3's most widely viewed Page in the US, seems to be a barely active drop-shipping scheme with stolen content  —  Read to the end for a fascinating thread about why music sucks now  —  Unmasking The Most Viral Page On Facebook

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Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
AI Device Wars Heat Up, RIP Metaverse?, Netflix Acquires Warner Brothers
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Channels with Peter Kafka:
"Hollywood is Truly Freaked Out." Inside the Netflix/WBD Deal with Lucas Shaw
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.
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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.
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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.
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Lenny's Podcast:
Why LinkedIn is turning PMs into AI-powered "full stack builders" | Tomer Cohen (LinkedIn CPO)
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