Network Support Blog

Dan Milmo / The Guardian: Twitter's head of safety and integrity says the service has not changed content policies but was subjected to “an organized effort to make people think we have”  —  Platform says 300 accounts carried out 50,000-plus tweets in ‘organised effort to make users think firm has changed content policy’ https://bit.ly/3U9g2XH

Alex Stamos / @alexstamos: [Thread] Elon Musk made himself the global face of content moderation amid growing government pressures even as his Tesla wealth depends on China and others  —  I think @elonmusk has made a huge mistake, making himself the global face of content moderation at a critical moment of struggle with governments, while maintaining massive personal exposure to challenging countries. https://bit.ly/3U7EdWK

Ismail Shakil / Reuters: Court filing: Mark Zuckerberg, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth, Within CEO Chris Milk, and others to testify in the FTC case against Meta's acquisition of Within  —  Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg will testify in a case by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) … https://bit.ly/3DGyWzQ

Financial Times: eMarketer: US advertisers are on track to spend $65.3B on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks in 2022, up 3.6% YoY, which is ~10x slower than in 2021  —  A decade-long era of breakneck growth in social media advertising has come to an abrupt halt.  Who killed the boom? https://bit.ly/3zrwYRg

Yousef Saba / Reuters: Classera, a San Francisco-based edtech startup focused on the Middle East and Africa, raised a $40M Series A led by Sanabil, which is run by Saudi Arabia's PIF  —  Classera, an education technology company headquartered in San Francisco, said on Thursday it had raised $40 million from investors … https://bit.ly/3U5cMgc

Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch: Leaked data from TheTruthSpy stalkerware network reveals its Android apps tracked the calls, locations, and other information of hundreds of thousands of people  —  Leaked data reveals the apps tracked locations and recorded calls of Americans  —  A massive cache of leaked data reveals … https://bit.ly/3W1AZWB

Alex Heath / The Verge: Meta says Apple updated its App Store rules to require IAPs for social media “boosts” to grow its business “while undercutting others in the digital economy”  —  Just when I thought the relationship between Apple and Meta couldn't get more hostile, here we are. https://bit.ly/3DaPMW1

Bloomberg: Cerebral, a telehealth startup focused on mental health, is cutting 20% of its staff, impacting “all divisions”; Cerebral was valued at $4.8B in December 2021  —  Cerebral Inc., the telehealth startup focused on mental-health care, is cutting staff in a restructuring that will affect 20% … https://bit.ly/3TzN2su

Newley Purnell / Wall Street Journal: A profile of e-commerce company Meesho, which accounts for ~7% of India's online sales; Apptopia: Meesho was the world's most downloaded shopping app in H1 2022  —  Startup makes gains in world's biggest developing digital market, with users drawn to its prices on clothing, household goods https://bit.ly/3TviqIB

Monica Chin / The Verge: LG Gram 17 review: under three pounds, even with a huge 17", 2560 x 1600 display, but the graphics are weak, the chassis is flimsy, and it's pricey at $1,600+  —  If you want a Windows laptop with as large of a screen as possible, your options are basically the Dell XPS 17 or the LG Gram 17. https://bit.ly/3eXEWuE

Tom Warren / The Verge: Microsoft is working on PC Manager, a CCleaner-like app for Windows 10 and up with storage and startup app management, a way to quickly kill processes, and more  —  Microsoft is working on a PC Manager app that's designed to boost your computer's performance. https://bit.ly/3MQg18R

Washington Post: Docs: if Elon Musk buys Twitter, he plans to cut nearly 75% of staff; otherwise, Twitter aims to cut payroll by ~$800M by the end of 2023, ousting ~25% of staff  —  Previously unreported details shed new light on Twitter's motivations for selling the company — and Elon Musk's plans to transform it https://bit.ly/3yZULrw

The Information: Sources: OpenAI is in advanced talks to raise more funding from Microsoft, after a 2021 raise at an implied ~$20B valuation from Sequoia, Tiger, a16z, others  —  OpenAI, whose text- and image-generating artificial intelligence has become a mainstream hit, is in advanced talks to raise … https://bit.ly/3TD1bEP

Edward Ongweso Jr / VICE: Report: customers are using doorbell cameras like Amazon's Ring to monitor, control, and punish delivery drivers, such as sharing footage online to shame them  —  A Data & Society report interviewed doorbell camera users and delivery drivers to understand how surveillance is affecting both, for the worse. https://bit.ly/3MKDiJ4

Kaitlyn Tiffany / The Atlantic: A look at “gradient accounts” on Twitter that have color gradients as profile pictures, post viral “relatable” content, and are often accused of stealing tweets  —  Here's a very popular tweet: “she's a 10 but she cries on her birthday every year.”  —  Solid.  Concise. https://bit.ly/3SeXFzl

Todd Spangler / Variety: Netflix plans to stop sharing projected subscriber numbers in its earnings starting in Q4 2022, instead stressing new revenue streams like ads and paid sharing  —  Netflix will no longer share projected subscriber targets in upcoming earnings reports — a closely tracked metric among investors … https://bit.ly/3s902Ji

Noah Smith / Noahpinion: Analysis: why the Biden administration's sweeping export controls on China's chip sector happened now and how they could usher in a new global economic paradigm  —  Now it's on.  —  “You come at the king, you best not miss.” — Omar Little  —  In a post back in August … https://bit.ly/3eBHuyg

Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal: International Federation of Robotics: 517,385 industrial robots were installed in 2021, an all-time high, bringing the global total to an all-time high of 3.5M  —  Robots are spreading at a record pace, from their traditional strongholds like making automobiles into nearly every other human endeavor https://bit.ly/3EJBApp

Sam Reynolds / CoinDesk: Binance's mining service Binance Pool launches a $500M fund to provide 18-to-24-month loans for private and publicly listed Bitcoin miners  —  The entity is the latest to join the growing ranks of alternative lenders looking to provide capital to the distressed mining industry. https://bit.ly/3ETmzRU

Drew Harwell / Washington Post: A look at TikTok's rise, as US viewers spend longer in the video app than Facebook and Instagram combined, and ongoing issues with its Chinese ownership  —  The world's most popular app has pioneered a new age of instant attention.  Can we trust it?  —  On the night Shelby Renae … https://bit.ly/3D01iEZ

Ashley Gold / Axios: Meta files to dismiss the FTC's attempt to block its Within acquisition, arguing the agency's claims rely on “pure speculation of a hypothetical future state”  —  Meta filed to dismiss the Federal Trade Commission's attempt to block its acquisition of virtual reality fitness startup Within … https://bit.ly/3EKXdFV

Matthew Townsend / Bloomberg: Amazon, Shopify, Wayfair, and other big e-commerce sites scale back operations after erroneously betting that pandemic online shopping trends would be permanent  —  Did the pandemic forever change how we shop?  —  The answer seemed obvious in the first half of 2020, when retailers closed … https://bit.ly/3g1iFfx

Chance Miller / 9to5Mac: Kuo predicts that, in the next three to five years, Apple may be able to supply the US market, or ~25% of global shipments, from assembly sites outside of China  —  Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo is out today with some new predictions on how Apple can continue to reduce its reliance on China. https://bit.ly/3fZDE2i

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Endor Labs, which helps businesses select, secure, monitor, and maintain their open-source software dependencies at scale, emerges from stealth with a $25M seed  —  An increasing percentage of the code that companies use to develop software is open source.  In a 2018 survey by Tidelift … https://bit.ly/3fZTLwY

Financial Times: Experts paint a dire picture for China's semiconductor industry and AI development after the US announced new export controls on chips and chipmaking tech  —  Experts predict ‘tsunami of change’ for semiconductor industry as Washington wields tools tested on Huawei https://bit.ly/3egL14U

Nitasha Tiku / Washington Post: An interview with Character.ai's founders, who say they left Google's LaMDA project to let users experiment with the latest in language AI through chatbots  —  The creators of Google's LaMDA have launched the chatbot startup Character.ai, which is open for anyone to try https://bit.ly/3T5uyPR

Leah Nylen / Bloomberg: Filing: in its case against Meta's Within acquisition, the FTC asks a judge to remove some allegations of anticompetitive effects in the VR fitness app market  —  The US Federal Trade Commission is narrowing its case against Meta Platforms Inc.'s proposed acquisition of virtual reality app Within Unlimited, according to a court filing. https://bit.ly/3MdS2Ad

Julia Love / Bloomberg: NLRB complaints: the Alphabet Workers Union says some contract workers were fired for supporting a union or faced retaliation after pushing for better benefits  —  Contract workers at Google's data centers allege that they were fired for supporting a union and faced retaliation after pushing … https://bit.ly/3T2knvl

Jay Alammar: An illustrated guide showing how Stable Diffusion generates images from text using a CLIP-based text encoder, an image information creator, and an image decoder  —  AI image generation is the most recent AI capability blowing people's minds (mine included). https://bit.ly/3e94MLP

Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE: Google launches Medical Imaging Suite, a cloud service for health care professionals that uses AI to scan medical images for faster and more accurate diagnoses  —  Google Cloud is bringing its expertise in vision-based artificial intelligence to the healthcare industry with the launch of its new Medical Imaging Suite today. https://bit.ly/3Cb0jQy

Catarina Moura / The Block: Golden, which is building a Web3 data protocol expected to fully launch in Q2 2023, raised a $40M Series B led by a16z, bringing its total funding to $60M  —  - Golden has raised $40 million in a series led by a16z crypto.  — The Series B round included high-profile investors … https://bit.ly/3C7Epxz

Jeanny Yu / Bloomberg: Tencent is no longer China's most valuable company after its shares fell 64% since January 2021, wiping $623B in market cap, more than any other firm globally  —  Tencent Holdings Ltd. has lost its title as China's biggest company to liquor giant Kweichow Moutai Co., the latest sign … https://bit.ly/3CtRqmO

Cristina Criddle / Financial Times: Sources: TikTok plans to launch live shopping in the US with LA-based partner TalkShopLive; TikTok's in-house e-commerce experiments in the UK didn't take off  —  Partnership with TalkShopLive comes after in-house experiments with ecommerce in UK struggled to take off https://bit.ly/3SML1bn

Benj Edwards / Ars Technica: Report: Bruce Willis sold his “digital twin” likeness rights to Deepcake, for use in ads and possibly even movies; a Russian ad already used a Willis deepfake  —  Tech will allow Willis' doppelgänger to continue working despite language disorder diagnosis. https://bit.ly/3fut3w6