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Tech NewsCurrent Status of WallStreetBets’s GameStop Run: 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
The current scoreboard on the Reddit meme stock war here. Reddit: 1, Hedge Fund Antagonists: 0. Citron Capital and Melvin Capital—the latter, the main loser in the massive inflation of GameStock prices, thanks to the subreddit WallStreetBets—have reportedly pulled out of their short positions in GameStock. Meaning that the hedge funds have accepted the losses … Continued
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Tech NewsPrivacy & SecurityHacker Group Reportedly Leaks Sensitive Data of 2.28 Million People Registered on Dating Site MeetMindful
Millions of users of the dating site MeetMindful got some unpleasant news on Sunday. ZDNet reported that the hacker group ShinyHunters, the same group who leaked millions of user records for the company that listed the “Camp Auschwitz” shirts, has dumped what appears to be data from the dating site’s user database. The leak, which … Continued
By Jody Serrano -
Tech NewsAngry Reddit ‘Mob’ and Shortsellers Clash Over Gamestop’s Ridiculous Stock Market Jump
Video game retailer GameStop, that store you stumble into at the mall while trying to figure out why you’re at a mall, is having quite a moment on Wall Street. The company went on a rollicking market run Friday, skyrocketing nearly 70 percent before trading was briefly halted due to online drama involving its stock. … Continued
By Lucas Ropek -
Tech NewsThis Genius Bot Turns Reddit Drama Into Face-Offs From Ace Attorney
Drama is no stranger to Reddit, as many of you all might know. And while more than a few have snickered or giggled at Reddit arguments that have exploded or taken strange twists and turns, there’s now a new way to check out what’s happening in the comments. Micah Price, a software engineer from Cape … Continued
By Jody Serrano -
Tech NewsSocial MediaSan Francisco Prepares For Potential Pro-Trump Protest at Twitter HQ on Monday
San Francisco police are preparing for a potential pro-Trump protest at Twitter’s headquarters on Monday morning, despite the fact that most Twitter employees are currently working from home due to the covid-19 pandemic. The protest, which is being organized online at the website TheDonald.win and in private Facebook groups, was sparked by President Trump’s recent … Continued
By Matt Novak -
Tech NewsReddit Bans r/Conspiracy Moderator and r/DonaldTrump
Amid a hardening consensus that conspiracy theories emboldened this week’s Capitol Building rioters—many adorned with “Q” garments, waving Q flags, screaming about election fraud—Reddit is quietly weeding out spreaders of election-related conspiracies. As the Daily Dot first reported, Reddit admins on Thursday permanently suspended the account for r/conspiracy’s head moderator, axolotl_peyotl. He recently posted about … Continued
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Tech NewsSome BODY Put All of Shrek onto a 1.44 MB Floppy Disk
In a time when you have to go out of your way to buy a new TV with less than 4K resolution, one Redditor has decided that their eyes don’t need such luxuries as 4K, 2K, HD, or even standard def videos, and have created a custom VCR that plays full-length movies on floppy disks … Continued
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Tech NewsFar-Right Reddit Clone Voat Has Shut Down, for Real This Time
Voat, the abhorrent Reddit clone that became a home for toxic communities and conspiracy theories like QAnon, has shut down. Although the site has claimed to be closing before, this time it appears to be legit. When you type in its address in your browser, you are not able to access the site, and instead … Continued
By Jody Serrano -
Tech NewsPrivacy & SecurityFTC Orders Amazon, YouTube, Discord, and 6 More to Explain What the Hell They’re Doing With Your Data
The Federal Trade Commission on Monday announced it was issuing orders to nine of the most popular social media and streaming platforms in the U.S., requiring them to offer up intel on business practices ranging from data collection to advertising, to the way that user engagement gets tracked overtime. The orders issued to Amazon, Discord, … Continued
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Tech NewsReddit Swallows Dubsmash, TikTok’s Closest Competitor
Reddit is buying up TikTok’s biggest competitor in the U.S., Dubsmash, in a deal with undisclosed terms, the company announced on Monday. In the announcement, Reddit wrote that Dubsmash has a “beautiful and fun product that enables their users to create unique, dynamic, interactive content” and “is aligned with Reddit’s own mission of bringing community … Continued
By Tom McKay -
Tech NewsHow Social Media Platforms Are Preparing for the Election, And the Aftermath
As stores run low on plywood barricades, guns fly off the shelves, and the president plans not to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, social media companies have begrudgingly developed contingency plans for election day and the confusion that’s sure to follow. Belying most of these policies are the likely scenarios that 1) a … Continued
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Tech NewsArtificial IntelligenceGPT-3 Bot Spends a Week Replying on Reddit, Starts Talking About the Illuminati
A Reddit user went on an impressive comment streak last week. The user stuck to the pages of the mega-popular AskReddit subforum, and their responses were relatively elaborate. But the length of the replies was especially unusual in that they were sometimes coming within a minute of the question first being asked. After an impressive … Continued
By Rhett Jones -
Tech NewsMajor QAnon Site Shutters After Operator Gets Outed
One of the internet’s largest hub of Qanon conspiracy theorists, QMap, abruptly went dark this week after a fact-checking group uncovered the identity of the developer behind it, Bloomberg reported Friday. An investigation by Logically.ai identified Jason Gelinas, a financial information security analyst based in New Jersey, as the “developer and mouthpiece” for the site, … Continued
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Tech NewsInternetMods? MODS!?: Facebook’s QAnon Ban Is Too Little Too Late
Content and moderation decisions by tech companies are increasingly the focus of unending kicking and screaming—to the point where it’s now essentially a campaign plank for at least one of the U.S.’s major political parties. The likes of Facebook, Twitter, and Google are also trying to convince the public how well they’re dealing with the … Continued
By Tom McKay -
Tech NewsPrivacy & SecurityReddit Gets Trumped: Hackers Vandalize Communities With MAGA Messages
Reddit got Trumped. On Friday, many users visited their favorite subreddits and found something unexpected: pro-Donald Trump Make America Great Again campaign banners and messages supporting the president. It was not a coincidence. Weeks after Twitter suffered an embarrassing hack that compromised influential accounts, attackers took aim at Reddit on Friday, specifically at a number … Continued
By Jody Serrano -
Tech NewsAbout the Wayfair Child Trafficking Conspiracy…
R/conspiracy never sleeps, every day on the internet is a zombie march through a waking nightmare, and as a result, there is a new Pizzagate. The elements: home furnishing e-commerce platform Wayfair, exorbitantly-priced cabinets, a human trafficking theory, and a string of letters you should never type into Yandex. This morning, less than 24 hours … Continued
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io9This Stop-Motion Build of the Lego Millennium Falcon Is Jaw-Dropping
Three years ago, I spent 34 hours building the biggest Lego set ever created: the Star Wars Ultimate Collectors Series Millennium Falcon, which clocks in at 7,541 pieces. You may have even seen the video (and if not, you can watch it here). It was a fun but tedious and grueling experience. I mention this … Continued
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Tech NewsReddit’s Solution to the Stress of Moderating 2020 Is a First-Come First-Served Mindfulness App Subscription
It’s been a very hard year, for a lot of reasons. If you’re one of the thousands of unpaid moderators of Reddit, you’ve likely had to deal with misinformation, harassment, conspiracy theories, hate speech: all the stuff that makes being online an intolerable nightmare. By means of showing gratitude, the site appears to be offering … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech NewsLinkedIn and Reddit Are the Latest Apps Found to be Snooping on Your Clipboards
iOS 14’s new privacy feature has been snitching on a lot of snooping apps in recent days, raising concerns from users and hopefully inspiring the companies behind the apps to do something about it. The latest apps caught snitching were LinkedIn and Reddit, although the companies want to assure users that they’re fixing it. LinkedIn … Continued
By Jody Serrano -
Tech NewsReddit Brings the Banhammer Down on r/The_Donald and 2,000 Other Subs
This weekend’s rumors were true: Reddit has swung its mighty banhammer, taking out 2,000 groups, including r/The_Donald and r/ChapoTrapHouse. A few hours later, the Verge reported that Twitch temporarily banned the Donald himself, namely over video of his racist rallies, with few additional details. Many have long wondered when Reddit would finally boot r/The_Donald, which … Continued