Techmeme
November 3, 2022, 10:15 PM

Top News

New York Times:
Sources: Elon Musk is weighing adding paid DMs to let users privately message “Very Important Tweeters”; docs: Twitter Blue checks won't require ID verification  —  The billionaire and his advisers have discussed adding paid direct messages, fees to watch videos and other features to the service.
Faiz Siddiqui / Washington Post:
In an email to its employees, Twitter says that layoffs across its global workforce will begin on Friday to “place Twitter on a healthy path”  —  Employees said the layoffs came across teams, as Twitter broadly reduced its workforce.  Musk originally pitched investors on cutting Twitter's staff up to 75 percent.
Will Oremus / Washington Post:
Sources: Twitter staff have yet to receive a single official message since Elon Musk took over, relying instead on his tweets, media reports, and private chats  —  Workers follow new boss's tweets and share rumors on anonymous apps amid silence from leadership on firings, staff cuts and product changes.
Casey Newton / Platformer:
Sources: Twitter plans to shut down newsletter platform Revue, acquired in January 2021, by the end of 2022, and has paused its four-month-old Notes product  —  A new Vine camera is in.  Notes and Revue are out  —  With massive layoffs expected to hit Twitter tomorrow …
Wall Street Journal:
General Mills and Audi paused Twitter ads, and sources say Pfizer and Mondelez have as well, as concern over content moderation grows  —  Advertisers are concerned about a flurry of executive departures at Twitter and new owner Elon Musk's plans for content moderation
Jennifer Surane / Bloomberg:
Memo: Stripe plans to lay off 14% of its staff this week, reducing its headcount by 1,000+ to almost 7,000, to trim expenses in preparation for “leaner times”  —  Stripe Inc., one of the world's most valuable startups, will cut more than 1,000 jobs as it seeks to rein in costs ahead of any economic downturn.
Annie Palmer / CNBC:
Amazon pauses hiring for roles in its corporate workforce, after announcing in October plans to freeze hiring for corporate roles in its retail business  —  KEY POINTS  — Amazon is pausing hiring for roles in its corporate workforce, the company announced in a memo to staff Thursday.
Wall Street Journal:
Dan Milmo / The Guardian:
TikTok plans to update its privacy policy on December 2 to confirm that its staff outside of Europe, including in China, can access the data of European users  —  Privacy policy update confirms data of continent's users available to range of TikTok bases including in Brazil, Israel and US
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge:
Amazon plans to roll out the Matter over Wi-Fi standard to 17 Echo devices in December, starting with Android phones, covering smart plugs, bulbs, and switches  —  Amazon will start its Matter journey slowly, bringing support for the new smart home standard to 17 Echo devices in December.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
WhatsApp launches Communities, a structured discussion group feature for of up to 1,024 people, in testing since August 2022, worldwide over the next few months  —  WhatsApp today is officially launching Communities, the new feature offering larger, more structured discussion groups that first entered into testing earlier this year.
James Vincent / The Verge:
Google unveils an AI model trained on 400+ languages with the largest “coverage seen in a speech model” and plans to support the 1,000 most spoken languages  —  Google has announced an ambitious new project to develop a single AI language model that supports the world's “1,000 most spoken languages.”
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Substack announces Chat, an opt-in feature letting writers host discussions with their subscribers, available in the Substack iOS app and coming soon to Android  —  Another company hoping to capitalize on Twitter's upheaval in the wake of Elon Musk's takeover is the newsletter platform Substack.
Thomas Brewster / Forbes:
Police and other sources say Block's Cash App has become a primary payment tool for adult and children sex traffickers due to lax monitoring and user ID rules  —  The Twitter and Block billionaire made Cash App into a $700 million monster.  Now police officers, nonprofit critics and current …
TechCrunch:
Ajit Mohan, the head of Meta India who joined the company in January 2019, has left to become the president of Snap's Asia Pacific business  —  Ajit Mohan, the head of Meta in India, has left the firm and joined rival Snap, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Jennifer Surane / Bloomberg:
PayPal reports Q3 revenue up 12% YoY to $6.85B, vs. $6.81B est., and payments volume up 14% YoY to $337B, vs. $343.2B est.; stock drops 8%+ on lower FY forecast  —  PayPal Holdings Inc. trimmed its forecast for annual revenue amid a slowdown in spending growth on its platform.  The shares fell as much as 14%.
More: The Block, Reuters, and CNBC

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference  —  Stop preparing for agents.  Start running them.  100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.
Zoho:
Generate Sample Data the Way You Want It Using AI, for Free  —  Finding good sample data is harder than it should be.If you've ever tried to test a dashboard, build a demo, or train a team on an analytics tool, you know the drill.
IDrive:
IDrive Autonomy: low-cost L2+ driver assistance with AI  —  L2+ driver assistance with a scalable AI stack built for automotive companies and laying the foundation for the autonomous future.

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
Cloudflare CEO: We're Ready To Block Millions of Websites From AI — With Matthew Prince
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Data Centers, Elon Musk, and the New Politics of Tech, with David Weigel
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.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Access:
Sam Altman on OpenAI's next model and the AI backlash
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
Uncapped with Jack Altman:
Brian Singerman from GPx
Conversations with people I admire about things I'm genuinely interested in.
Subscribe to Uncapped with Jack Altman.
Training Data:
Making Cities Awesome: Peregrine's Nick Noone & Ben Rudolph
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
Subscribe to Training Data.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 10:15 PM ET, November 3, 2022.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Nelson Wang / CoinDesk:
Chloe Chaplain / The i Paper:

Earlier Picks

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Kate Irwin / Decrypt: