Techmeme
December 19, 2021, 12:55 PM

Top News

The Streamable:
Disney fails to reach a deal with YouTube TV, removing 17+ channels including ABC, Disney, ESPN, Freeform, and FX; YouTube TV drops its price to $49.99/month  —  After a year of bitter disputes with its partners, YouTube TV just took a gut-punch from one of the entertainment world's biggest titans.
Alex Pasternack / Fast Company:
How Chinese Wikipedia volunteers fighting censorship, threats, arrest, and violence expose the challenges to the Wikimedia Foundation's free-knowledge mission  —  This past July, before he was banned from Wikipedia, Techyan was one of dozens of volunteers preparing to speak at the free-knowledge movement's annual conference, Wikimania.
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Interview with Jameel Jaffer of the Knight First Amendment Institute on how Congress can regulate social media platforms while abiding by the First Amendment  —  One of the hardest problems at the intersection of tech and policy right now is the question of how to regulate social media platforms.
Melanie Mitchell / Quanta Magazine:
AI language models like GPT-3 can achieve up to 97% accuracy on some Winograd schemas, but understanding language doesn't equate to understanding the world  —  It's simple enough for AI to seem to comprehend data, but devising a true test of a machine's knowledge has proved difficult.
Wall Street Journal:
Investigation: a dozen automated TikTok accounts, registered as 13-year-olds, were shown tens of thousands of weight-loss videos within a few weeks of joining  —  The app's algorithm can send users down rabbit holes of narrow interest, resulting in potentially dangerous content such as emaciated images …
Patricia Allen / EU-Startups:
Madrid-based Playtomic, an app for booking tennis and padel courts and connecting 1M+ active players in 34 countries, raises a €56M Series C led by GP Bullhound  —  Leading tennis and padel social and booking app, Playtomic, has just raised €56 million in investment led by GP Bullhound …
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UPI:
Kate Krader / Bloomberg:
Reuters:
Kim Lyons / The Verge: