India’s antitrust watchdog has approved Google’s proposed investment of $4.5 billion in the nation’s largest telecom platform Jio Platforms, it said in a tweet on Wednesday. Google announced in July that it would be investing $4.5 billion for a 7.73% stake in the top Indian telecom network. As part of the deal, Google and Jio […]
Facebook today announced its new Snapchat-like feature for disappearing messaging, Vanish Mode, is arriving on Messenger and Instagram. The feature, meant for more casual conversations, allows users to set chats to automatically delete after the message is seen and the chat is closed. In Vanish Mode, Messenger and Instagram users can send text chats, emoji, […]
The election is settled, but the nation is far from it. Before Election Day in the U.S., Facebook hit pause on all political and social issue ads. At the time, the company made it clear that the precautionary measure designed to turn off one potential faucet of misinformation would be temporary, but it couldn’t say […]
TikTok’s upward trajectory is expected to continue in 2021, according to a new forecast from mobile data and analytics firm App Annie, which estimates the short-form video app will surpass the 1 billion monthly active user mark next year. The expanded forecast also looked into future trends around mobile ad spending and the growth in […]
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the TechCrunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all. The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 204 billion downloads and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019. People are now spending three hours and 40 minutes per day […]
Polls closed in the U.S. presidential election on Tuesday without any significant or disruptive cyberattacks, according to cybersecurity officials and experts. Election Day wasn’t without its problems. Some voting machines in Nevada and Texas went down but were quickly back up and running, some voters in Georgia and Ohio had to use paper ballots after […]
Facebook today began to block select hashtags that were being used to share misinformation related to the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Now, searches for the hashtags #sharpiegate are being blocked on the social network. Another election conspiracy hashtag #stopthesteal is also blocked on Facebook, with a note saying some of its content goes against the […]
The DOJ challenges Visa’s acquisition of a fintech startup, Apple releases the latest version of iOS and goPuff acquires an iconic alcohol retailer. This is your Daily Crunch for November 5, 2020. The big story: DOJ files suit to stop Plaid acquisition The Department of Justice is challenging Visa’s $5.3 billion acquisition of financial services […]
Facebook has taken down a group that had amassed more than 300,000 members and was sharing misinformation and organizing around false allegations of impropriety during the 2020 elections. The group, called “Stop the Steal 2020,” was organizing protests targeting the election officials currently counting ballots cast in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Phoenix and Las Vegas. “In line […]
You may have heard that the United States had a presidential election yesterday, with plenty of implications for the tech world, particularly with social media as one of the battlegrounds in the fight over the results. Meanwhile, major tech-relevant ballot measures, like California’s Proposition 22, also passed. I’ll do my best to cover it all […]