~techmeme | Bookmarks (999)

Jack Nicas / New York Times: Starlink, which has 250K customers in Brazil, told Brazil's telecom agency that it would not comply with orders to block X until its frozen assets were released  —  The satellite internet service controlled by Elon Musk is refusing to comply with a court order to block his social network, X, regulators said.

Daniel Carvalho / Bloomberg: A majority of Brazilian judges on a Supreme Court panel vote to confirm an order to ban X in Brazil and fine those who don't comply with it by using a VPN  —  - Top court panel backs order by Moraes against social network  — Justices also uphold fine for those who use VPN for access

Wall Street Journal: Netflix is trying to improve dubbing and translations of non-English content, particularly South Korean reality TV shows, to drive international viewership  —  Using South Korea as a testing ground, the streaming giant offers culture classes to voice actors to nail the nuances of translation

Daniel Lippman / Politico: Sources: LobbyMatic, which offers AI tools for lobbying, is covertly run by far-right conspiracy theorists and convicted felons, Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman  —  Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman are operating under the pseudonyms Jay Klein and Bill Sanders.  —  A Washington startup pitched …

Chien Mi Wong / Bloomberg: Sources: ByteDance is tapping Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan for a $9.5B loan, the biggest dollar-denominated corporate loan in Asia, excluding Japan  —  - Loan carries greenshoe option that allows size to increase  — Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan are the loan coordinators

Bloomberg: OKX says the Monetary Authority of Singapore granted OKX SG a Major Payment Institution license, and appoints former Grab executive Gracie Lin as OKX SG's CEO  —  - CEO Lin to focus on products, seeks MAS nod for adding tokens  —  Crypto exchange OKX named former regulator Gracie Lin as CEO …

Wall Street Journal: Apple and Meta both lobby to avoid responsibility for verifying users' ages in teen social media bills; Apple lobbied Louisiana to kill a device-level rule  —  Earlier this year, freshman Louisiana legislator Kim Carver got a close look at Apple's AAPL -0.34%decrease; red down pointing triangle formidable lobbying machine.

Amitoj Singh / CoinDesk: Filing: the US SEC seeks changes in FTX's bankruptcy plan and says it “reserves its rights to challenge distribution transactions involving crypto assets”  —  The SEC said that it may challenge any transactions of distributions involving crypto assets to creditors.

Gabriel Stargardter / Reuters: A look at France's J3 cybercrime unit behind Sky ECC and Encrochat prosecutions, which now leads the case against Telegram's Pavel Durov  —  The investigation into Telegram boss Pavel Durov that has fired a warning shot to global tech titans was started by a small cybercrime unit within …

Stephanie Stacey / Financial Times: Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, and Grindr are building or testing AI tools and chatbots to generate icebreakers, coach users, and more, in a bid to bring back users  —  Tinder, Hinge, Bumble and Grindr are racing to create chatbots that can coach Gen Z users to flirt

Wall Street Journal: Big YouTube shows including Hot Ones and Good Mythical Morning attract large audiences but aren't yet getting Primetime Emmy nominations and ensuing ad revenue  —  ‘Hot Ones,’ ‘Chicken Shop Date’ and ‘Good Mythical Morning’ draw big audiences but aren't getting the kind of ad dollars and accolades TV shows do

New York Times: How Brazil's experiment to fight fake news during the 2022 elections, giving a justice broad power to order social media content removal, led to the ban on X  —  To combat disinformation, Brazil gave one judge broad power to police the internet.  Now, after he blocked X, some are wondering whether that was a good idea.

Eric Newcomer / Newcomer: A look at the farcical situation at Bolt as it insists in a letter that Silverbear is on the hook to invest $200M; source: Bolt lost $310M on $27M 2023 revenue  —  I've got the company's financial performance, a letter to investors, and a statement from Ashesh Shah at The London Fund.

Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority: In a lawsuit, OSOM's ex-chief privacy officer alleges that the CEO of the smartphone startup misused funds to pay for his racing hobby and lavish lifestyle  —  Lawsuit alleges that OSOM's founder misused company funds to pay for Lamborghinis and his racing hobby

New York Times: Bluesky reports a record spike in usage as many X users in Brazil move to Bluesky and Threads; Brazil is X's fifth-largest international market, with 20M+ users  —  The platform went dark across Brazil on Saturday, sending online commentators to new digital town squares.

The Information: Coatue founder Philippe Laffont has left the board of ByteDance following a report that Coatue was considering selling a portion of its ByteDance stake  —  Coatue Management founder Philippe Laffont has left the board of ByteDance, the parent of TikTok, according to the company's website.

Nick Burns / Americas Quarterly: A profile of Alexandre de Moraes as even some supporters wonder if the Brazilian Supreme Court judge has become too powerful and gone too far by banning X  —  An escalating clash with Elon Musk and damaging revelations in the press are intensifying a long-running debate about whether Alexandre de Moraes is too powerful.

Mike Masnick / Techdirt: X is right to stand up to Brazil's unjust “hostage laws,” but Musk's fight highlights his cynical free speech stance after he caved to Modi's censorship demands  —  In the battle between Elon Musk and Brazil, there are no heroes — only two sides engaged in an epic display of hypocrisy and overreach.

Kevin Roose / New York Times: A reporter tries fixing his reputation with AI chatbots, including by adding a “strategic text sequence” to data sources, and via an AI optimization startup  —  When I set out to improve my tainted reputation with chatbots, I discovered a new world of A.I. manipulation.

Wall Street Journal: How the Israeli army's Unit 8200 became an incubator for cybersecurity startups, with its alumni starting Wiz, Palo Alto Networks, and other companies  —  Unit 8200 has become an incubator for cybersecurity startups defending the world's biggest companies against hackers

Ed Newton-Rex / Music Business Worldwide: It's time for audio services like Spotify to deal with AI by using labels and banning or downweighting music made with AI tools that don't license training data  —  The following MBW Views op/ed comes from Ed Newton-Rex (pictured inset), CEO of the ethical generative AI non-profit, Fairly Trained.

Matt Stoller / BIG: Social media companies' reliance on Section 230 protections is in jeopardy after a US court ruled TikTok's algorithmic curation is not protected by Section 230  —  “TikTok reads 230 of the Communications Decency Act to permit casual indifference to the death of a ten-year-old girl.”  - Judge Paul Matey

Taylor Soper / GeekWire: Amazon hires the founders of industrial robot maker Covariant and ~25% of its staff, and signs a non-exclusive license to Covariant's robotic foundation models  —  Amazon is hiring three of the founders from Covariant, a Bay Area startup that develops AI for advanced warehouse robotics systems.

Takashi Mochizuki / Bloomberg: Sources: Tencent and NetEase reconsider or scale back Japanese game studio investments, after the strategy yielded few hit games and the Chinese market revived  —  - China's biggest game publishers are rethinking expansion plans  — ‘Wukong’ success also encouraged looking domestically for hits