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The Markup: Sources: Life360, a family safety app with 33M users, has sold users' precise location since 2016 and is one of the location data broker industry's top sources -
Jon Porter / The Verge: WhatsApp now lets users set all one-to-one chats to disappear by default after 24 hours, seven days, or 90 days — Its disappearing messages feature is getting an upgrade -
Ben Smith / New York Times: A document from TikTok's engineering team in Beijing details the app's addictive algorithm, which pursues DAUs by optimizing for “retention” and “time spent” -
Emma Roth / The Verge: Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile all have programs that collect additional customer data, like app usage, location, and web history, and they are generally opt-out -
Lucas Matney / TechCrunch: Lyft CFO Brian Roberts, who joined the company in 2014 and took it public, leaves to become CFO at NFT marketplace OpenSea — Lyft's long-time CFO Brian Roberts … -
Bloomberg: Investigation: Swiss company Mitto, which offers text message services to companies in 100+ countries, helped governments surveil phones; Mitto denies the claim -
Andrew E. Kramer / New York Times: US investigators traced ransomware payments back to companies in the Moscow skyscraper Federation Tower East, suggesting Russia tolerates ransomware operators -
Julian E. Barnes / New York Times: The head of US Cyber Command says the US military has “taken actions” against ransomware groups, the first public acknowledgement of the offensive measures -
Ben Thompson / Stratechery: Amazon's extensive supply chain investments, mostly focused on domestic US logistics, make it increasingly attractive to third-party merchants and customers -
25 minutes ago Catalin Cimpanu / The Record: Microsoft seizes 42 domains allegedly used by a Chinese cyber espionage group that targeted organizations in the US and 28 other countries -
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat: Facebook Gaming announces a Play with Streamer feature that lets creators invite audience members to join a game, debuting alongside Pac-Man Community's launch -
Financial Times: Researchers detail Meta's roadblocks, like pre-publication review and restrictive contracts, and how it stifles research that might cast it in a negative light -
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Many customers complain that T-Mobile and Verizon are denying promised rebates for promoted Apple products — Some customers are finding that wireless carriers … -
Dave Lee / Financial Times: DoorDash shifts from its gig worker model and hires 60 couriers as full-time employees, starting at $15/hour, to launch sub-15-minute grocery deliveries in NYC -
Chainalysis Insights: Analysis: users have spent $26.9B+ on NFTs in 2021, most transactions are under $10K, and CryptoPunks is the most popular collection with $3B sales since March -
Joseph Williams / Bloomberg: Call center software provider Genesys raises $580M at a $21B valuation led by Salesforce Ventures — - Salesforce Ventures led $580 million round joined by Zoom -
Mia Sato / The Verge: YouTube publishes its first Copyright Transparency Report, showing H1 2021 had 2.2M+ videos hit with incorrect copyright claims and 729M total copyright claims -
Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch: Hometap, which lets homeowners get cash by taking on an investor in their house, raises $60M led by American Family Ventures, bringing its total funding to $95M -
Jordan Novet / CNBC: MongoDB reports Q3 revenue of $227M, up 50% YoY, a net loss of $81.3M, up from $72.7M YoY, and Atlas cloud database revenue up 84%; stock up 17%+ -
Natasha Mascarenhas / TechCrunch: Platzi, which offers classes to Latin American professionals on coding, design, and more raises a $62M Series B, says 60% of its students spend $300 annually