Techmeme
January 8, 2025, 9:40 PM

Top News

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Mastodon CEO Eugen Rochko says Meta's moderation changes are “deeply troubling”, and Mastodon will take action on Threads accounts violating Mastodon's policies  —  Mastodon CEO Eugen Rochko has spoken out about the significant moderation changes announced by Meta on Tuesday …
Cristiano Lima-Strong / Washington Post:
Meta's fact-checking overhaul is set to deepen a growing schism between how platforms handle content moderation in the US and in stricter regions like Europe  —  As platform scales back moderation in line with conservative demands in the United States, it still has to maneuver through stiffer regulations in Europe and elsewhere.
Philip Blenkinsop / Reuters:
EU rejects Zuckerberg's claim that “Europe has an ever increasing number of laws institutionalizing censorship”, saying it only requires illegal content removal  —  The European Commission rejected on Wednesday Meta (META.O) chief Mark Zuckerberg's assertion that European Union …
Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
Meta revamping its content moderation systems with Community Notes is good, but Zuckerberg pretending it's about free speech is bad, and the timing is stupid  —  from the misinformation-about-disinformation dept  —  When the NY Times declared in September that “Mark Zuckerberg is Done With Politics …
Richard Lawler / The Verge:
Adam Mosseri says Meta is adding political content recommendations to Instagram and Threads; Threads' political content control setting will have three options  —  It's been nearly a year since Instagram and Threads defaulted to blocking recommendations of “political” content from accounts …
Bloomberg:
Wall Street Journal:
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google rolls out Daily Listen, which uses AI to generate a five-minute personalized audio overview of stories and topics that a user follows, to its mobile app  —  Google is kicking off a new experiment in Search Labs today called “Daily Listen.”  It's a bit like NotebookLM's Audio Overviews, while there are also podcast parallels.
Samuel Stolton / Bloomberg:
Meta tests showing eBay listings on Facebook Marketplace in Germany, France, and the US, after the EU fined it €798M for abusing dominance; EBAY closes up 9.86%  —  - Company was fined €798 million by EU for abusing dominance  — Meta still challenging landmark fine through EU courts
Cheyenne Ligon / CoinDesk:
Do Kwon's criminal fraud trial in the US is scheduled for January 2026; prosecutors expect challenges accessing encrypted devices and translating communications  —  NEW YORK, NY — Terraform Labs co-founder and former CEO Do Kwon's criminal fraud trial in the U.S. has been tentatively scheduled …
Bernadette Christina / Reuters:
Indonesia says Apple still can't sell its iPhone 16 in the country, despite a deal to build a local production facility, as it hasn't met domestic content rules  —  Apple (AAPL.O) still cannot sell its iPhone 16 in Indonesia despite striking a deal to build a local production facility there …
Jeran Wittenstein / Bloomberg:
Major quantum computing stocks, up 300%+ in the past year, fell on January 7 after Jensen Huang said “very useful” quantum computers are likely decades away  —  The shares of IonQ Inc. and other companies linked to quantum computing tumbled in premarket trading on Wednesday …
Carl Franzen / VentureBeat:
Microsoft open sources its 14B-parameter AI model Phi-4 and its weights, available on Hugging Face under an MIT License, after releasing it in December 2024  —  Even as its big investment partner OpenAI continues to announce more powerful reasoning models such as the latest o3 series, Microsoft is not sitting idly by.
Leo Schwartz / Fortune:
Sources: Movement Labs, which is building a layer-2 Ethereum blockchain, is set to raise a $100M Series B at a ~$3B valuation, after raising $38M in April 2024  —  Movement Labs, a San Francisco-based software developing team building a layer-2 blockchain on Ethereum, is close to wrapping …
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge:
Google says Nest hubs, Chromecasts, Google TV devices on Android 14, and more can now control Matter devices locally, and opens its Home APIs to all developers  —  One of the key changes Matter is bringing to the smart home is a standardized way to enable local control of smart devices.
Reuters:
In a first, an EU court fines the EC €400 for breaching its own data protection rules by transferring a citizen's data to the US via “Sign in with Facebook”  —  In a first, the EU General Court ruled on Wednesday that the European Commission must pay damages to a German citizen …

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Earlier Picks

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