Techmeme
May 18, 2022, 8:45 PM

Top News

Brian Stelter / CNN:
Twitter's board says “Mr. Musk agreed to a transaction at $54.20 per share” and that it intends to “close the transaction and enforce the merger agreement”  —  Who wants to own Twitter?  Maybe Elon Musk doesn't.  Sure, maybe he is causing chaos to extract a lower price …
Bloomberg:
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Report: subscribers who have been with Netflix for over three years made up 13% of cancellations in Q1 2022; Netflix hit 3.6M total cancellations last quarter  —  Users subscribed to Netflix for more than three years represented 13 percent of total cancellations
Lauren Feiner / CNBC:
New York AG plans to investigate social media platforms “used to stream, promote, or plan” the Buffalo attack, including Twitch, Discord, 4chan, and 8chan  —  - New York Attorney General Letitia James will investigate social media companies in connection to the apparently racially motivated attack …
Mitchell Clark / The Verge:
Amazon refreshes its Fire 7 tablet with USB-C charging, better battery life, and a 30% faster processor, and raises the price from $50 to $60, coming June 29  —  And faster internals  —  Amazon is updating its small and inexpensive Fire 7 tablet for the first time in three years …
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Following years of complaints, TikTok announces its first crediting tools, letting creators link back to the videos of other creators and trend originators  —  TikTok is finally going to let users of the short-form app properly give credit where credit is due.
New York Times:
A profile of Do Kwon, the trash-talking founder of Terraform Labs, which raised $200M+ to build LUNA and UST; investors cashed out early, but traders lost big  —  Do Kwon, a South Korean entrepreneur, hyped the Luna and TerraUSD cryptocurrencies.  Their failures have devastated some traders …
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
TikTok launches Branded Mission, a product that lets advertisers crowdsource content from creators with 1K+ followers and turn top-performing videos into ads  —  TikTok announced today that it's launching a new ad product called “Branded Mission” that will allow creators to connect with brands and possibly receive rewards for videos.
Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:
In response to rivals' complaints, Microsoft begins relaxing its cloud licensing rules in Europe, which made running its software on other clouds more expensive  —  Microsoft is undoing in Europe some of the restrictive cloud-licensing policies it first announced in 2019 which made running …
Annie Palmer / CNBC:
New York accuses Amazon of discriminating against pregnant workers and those with disabilities; the state seeks civil fines and an end to discriminatory conduct  —  - New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Wednesday announced a state agency has filed a complaint against Amazon, alleging it discriminates …
Bloomberg:
Four Democratic senators ask the FTC to investigate whether ID.me illegally misled consumers and government agencies about its use of facial recognition tech  —  A group of Democratic senators has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether identity verification company ID …
Monica Chin / The Verge:
Acer refreshes the Swift 3 laptop, starting at $900 with a 14" OLED display, 12th Gen Intel Core H-series CPUs, and claimed 10-hour battery life, coming in July  —  A new 14-inch OLED for $899.99  —  It wasn't too long ago that the phrase “OLED laptop” implied a luxury product.
Sam Rutherford / Engadget:
Financial Times:
Filing: Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund bought a 5% stake in Nintendo worth $2.98B; the PIF disclosed 5%+ stakes in Nexon and Capcom in February 2022  —  Sovereign wealth fund has already bought into Japan's Capcom and Nexon  —  Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund has acquired …
Financial Times:
China's top economic official meets with dozens of tech execs and experts and pledges “support” for Chinese tech companies amid a deepening economic slump  —  Beijing's top economic official holds meetings with executives and industry experts  —  China's top economic official met dozens …
Zheping Huang / Bloomberg:

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Earlier Picks

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