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 …
More: Sifted

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Baseten's CEO on why every company will want to own its AI
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
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Box's Aaron Levie: On Reinventing Yourself in the AI Age and Enterprise Diffusion
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UPI:
Kate Krader / Bloomberg:
Reuters:
Kim Lyons / The Verge: