Techmeme
November 20, 2021, 9:50 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.
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 …
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 …
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 …

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More News

Ryan Broderick / Garbage Day:
Michelle F Davis / Bloomberg:
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Earlier Picks

Steven Levy / Wired:
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Shannon Bond / NPR:
The Information:
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Wall Street Journal:
Mark Di Stefano / The Information: