Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
SAN FRANCISCO — Left-leaning political activists accused Facebook of suppressing free speech when the social media giant removed an event listing this week that it said was part of a new disinformation campaign with ties to Russia. Facebook said it had to act quickly to disclose that inauthentic operators were behind an upcoming event in Washington to…
Image wrap box Free blurb with Takeaway Last fall, on a flight back from China, Evan Spiegel decided to remake Snapchat. Inspired by apps he’d seen in that country, Mr. Spiegel wanted to create a new version separating users’ friends’ content from the professional media. Each category would be sorted by an algorithm rather than…
storytext MoviePass is on life support. Helios and Matheson, the parent company of the popular movie subscription service, said that it had a service outage on Thursday because it couldn’t afford to pay for movie tickets. The company borrowed $5 million in cash Friday to pay its merchant and fulfillment processors, according to a regulatory…
The shift towards audio and voice-based digital user interfaces forces publishers to develop new tools, adapt workflows and ensure new ways of monetization. This week, Google DNI has approved to co-fund a €1.2 million open-source project with a collaborative approach we now will be working on until the end of 2020. It is called VAMP — pun…
Image wrap box Free blurb with Takeaway In the run-up to Snap’s second quarter earnings due Aug. 7, several Wall Street analysts have lowered their estimates for what the company has already warned will be a weak quarter. The after-effects of Snap’s troubled app redesign earlier this year hurt user growth, which is expected to…
SAN FRANCISCO — Microsoft employees questioned the company’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, on Thursday, presenting him with a petition signed by more than 300,000 people that called on the software maker to cancel its contract with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, according to two people who attended the event. Mr. Nadella was attending an…
You really, really shouldn’t give your DNA to genomics companies like 23andMe or Ancestry. As the recent arrest of the Golden State Killer reminded us, these genetic databases are a goldmine for law enforcement. Catching serial killers isn’t bad, of course, but problems start to arise when, say, these genetic databases are used to target…
It’s harder and harder to have an honest debate on the internet. Social-media platforms like Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook Groups are rife with trolls; forums are plagued by archaic layouts and spambots. Teenagers who are looking to talk about big issues face additional frustrations, like the fact that most adults on these platforms don’t take…
Home DNA test results from the 5 million customers of 23andMe will now be used by drug giant GlaxoSmithKline to design new drugs, the two companies announced Wednesday. It’s the biggest partnership yet aimed at leveraging the increasingly popular home genetic testing market, in which customers pay for mail-in saliva tests that are analyzed by…
When Facebook moves into its new offices in Mountain View this fall, a signature Silicon Valley perk will be missing — there won’t be a corporate cafeteria with free food for about 2,000 employees. In an unusual move, the city barred companies from fully subsidizing meals inside the offices, which are part of the Village…