Austin in January: Cash rich and maturing

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Facebook warned over privacy risks of merging messaging platforms

Facebook’s lead data protection regulator in Europe has asked the company for an “urgent briefing” regarding plans to integrate the underlying infrastructure of its three social messaging platforms. In a statement posted to its website late last week the Irish Data Protection Commission writes: “Previous proposals to share data between Facebook companies have given rise to significant data protection concerns and the Irish DPC will be seeking early assurances that all such concerns will be fully taken into account by Facebook in further developing...

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Startups Weekly: Even Gwyneth Paltrow had a hard time raising VC

I spent the week in Malibu attending Upfront Ventures’ annual Upfront Summit, which brings together the likes of Hollywood, Silicon Valley and Washington, DC’s elite for a two-day networking session of sorts. Cameron Diaz was there for some reason, and Natalie Portman made an appearance. Stacey Abrams had a powerful Q&A session with Lisa Borders, the president and CEO of Time’s Up. Of course, Gwyneth Paltrow was there to talk up Goop, her venture-funded commerce and content engine. “I had no idea what I was getting into but I am so fulfilled...

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Snopes and AP leave Facebook fact-checking partnership

Two of Facebook’s four fact-checking partners in the U.S. have left the program as of the beginning of this year: Snopes, which recently rebuffed reports that its relationship with Facebook was strained, and the Associated Press. Both confirmed they are leaving the program, but left the possibility of future collaboration open. Snopes joined Facebook’s group of third-party fact checkers in 2016, at first volunteering its services and the next year accepting a lump $100,000 payment for their work. But the company said in a statement that it’s rethinking...

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Twitter bug makes it look like random retweets are appearing in your timeline

A number of Twitter users have been complaining that tweets that were retweeted by people they don’t follow are now showing in their timeline. The issue, thankfully, is not related to a new Twitter algorithm or recommendation system, as some had feared. Instead, the company confirmed that a bug affecting Android users was mislabeling the “social proof” tag on Retweets. This is the part of the Retweet that tells you who, among the people you already do follow, had retweeted the post in question. The company says that the social proof label is wrong,...

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The next big bet for former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick may be cloud kitchens — in China

Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick may have been nudged out of one of the world’s most highly valuable private companies by investors frustrated over its troubled culture, but his moves remain of great interest given how far he’d driven the ride-share giant. One such move, according to a new report in the South China Morning Post, looks to be to help foster the growing concept of cloud kitchens to China. We’ve reached out to Kalanick for more information, but per the SCMP’s report, Kalanick is partnering with the former COO of the bike-sharing startup...

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Daily Crunch: Facebook fallout continues

{rss:content:encoded} Daily Crunch: Facebook fallout continues https://tcrn.ch/2GgZJ8G https://tcrn.ch/2BYQuGw February 01, 2019 at 06:41PM The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here: 1. We dismantle Facebook’s memo defending its ‘Research’ The fallout continues following TechCrunch reporting about a Facebook app that was paying people to collect a huge swath of data from their phones. For one thing,...

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Daily Crunch: Facebook fallout continues

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here: 1. We dismantle Facebook’s memo defending its ‘Research’ The fallout continues following TechCrunch reporting about a Facebook app that was paying people to collect a huge swath of data from their phones. For one thing, a new memo from Facebook’s VP of production engineering and security provides more detail about exactly what data Facebook was trying to collect...

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Facebook removes hundreds of accounts linked to fake news group in Indonesia

Facebook said today it has removed hundreds of Facebook and Instagram accounts with links to an organization that peddled fake news. The world’s fourth largest country with a population of more than 260 million, Indonesia is in an election year alongside Southeast Asia neighbors Thailand and the Philippines. Facebook said this week it has set up an “election integrity” team in Singapore, its APAC HQ, as it tries to prevent its social network being misused in the lead-up to voting as happened in the U.S. This Indonesia bust is the first move...

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Juul Labs hires former Apple employee to lead the fight against counterfeits

Juul Labs, the e-cig company under fire for its product’s popularity with young people, has brought on a new VP of Intellectual Property Protection with Adrian Punderson, formerly of PwC and Apple. Punderson’s job is all about working alongside government agencies, retailers, etc. to combat the sale of counterfeit and infringing products. These can range from copycat vapes and pods that are actually marketed as Juul products all the way to products that are designed specifically to be Juul compatible without using the trademark. These counterfeit...

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We dismantle Facebook’s memo defending its Research data-grab

Facebook published an internal memo today trying to minimize the morale damage of TechCrunch’investigation that revealed it’d been paying people to suck in all their phone data. Attained by Business Insider’s Rob Price, the memo from Facebook’s VP of production engineering and security Pedro Canahuati gives us more detail about exactly what data Facebook was trying to collect from teens and adults in the US and India. But it also tries to claim the program wasn’t secret, wasn’t spying, and that Facebook doesn’t see it as a violation of Apple’s...

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Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s artist-collaboration platform HitRecord raises $6.4M

In the early 2000s, actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt was frustrated with the roles he was being offered. Instead of starring in critically acclaimed indies, he was typecast as the “the funny kid on TV” due to roles like Tommy from “3rd Rock from the Sun.” So like anyone who matured alongside the internet, he created a website where he could ideate, produce and share his work. More than 10 years later, he wants to turn that pet project, called HitRecord, into a full-fledged technology company. Onstage at Upfront Venture’s annual summit outside of Los...

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Apple reactivates Facebook’s employee apps after punishment for Research spying

After TechCrunch caught Facebook violating Apple’s employee-only app distribution policy to pay people for all their phone data, Apple invalidated the social network’s Enterprise Certificate as punishment. That deactivated not only this Facebook Research app VPN, but also all of Facebook’s internal iOS apps for workplace collaboration, beta testing and even getting the company lunch or bus schedule. That threw Facebook’s offices into chaos yesterday morning. Now after nearly two work days, Apple has ended Facebook’s time-out and restored its...

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Kleiner Perkins gets back to early stage with its $600M 18th fund

“KP used be a small team doing hands-on company building. We’re moving away from being this institution with multiple products and really just focusing on early stage venture capital” Kleiner Perkins partner Ilya Fushman tells me. 47 years after its founding, the storied venture fund is going “back to the future” with today’s announcement of a 18th fund — a $600 million fund for seed, Series A, and Series B financings. It’s investing across consumer, enterprise, hard tech, and fintech, looking for high-potential teams to help mold into unicorns. Kleiner...

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Twitter cuts off API access to follow/unfollow spam dealers

Notification spam ruins social networks, diluting the real human interaction. Desperate to gain an audience, users pay services to rapidly follow and unfollow tons of people in hopes that some will follow them back. The services can either automate this process or provide tools for users to generate this spam themselves, Earlier this month, a TechCrunch investigation found over two dozen follow-spam companies were paying Instagram to run ads for them. Instagram banned all the services in response an vowed to hunt down similar ones more aggressively. ManageFlitter’s...

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