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Washington Post: Pregnancy app What to Expect says it invested significantly in content moderation, as vaccine misinformation rises in the community sections of pregnancy apps — How the What To Expect site managed to clean up its big anti-vaccine problem — For generations of parents …

Ron Miller / TechCrunch: Automation Anywhere says it will buy FortressIQ, a process discovery startup that uses AI to automate internal processes mapping; FortressIQ has raised $46M — Automation Anywhere, which is best known for its robotic process automation (RPA) software, plans to expand...

Jeff John Roberts / Decrypt: As Bakkt's stock drops from $50 to ~$9 two months after its SPAC merger, president and founding executive Adam White says he is leaving the company next week — Adam White, a founder and President of the digital assets and rewards platform Bakkt, took to Twitter on...

Ryan Mac / New York Times: In a note to employees, Bosworth envisions Meta's deep compatibility with blockchain, says it could have “profound impacts on our industry over the next decade” — Meta, Facebook's parent company, is aiming for “deep compatibility” with blockchain technology...

Reuters: Chinese state media says regulators suspended an info-sharing partnership with Alibaba Cloud over accusations it failed to promptly report a Log4j vulnerability — Chinese regulators on Wednesday suspended an information-sharing partnership with Alibaba Cloud Computing …

Shruti Srivastava / Bloomberg: India says it expects domestic chip production to start in the next 2-3 years; its $10B semiconductor incentive scheme begins taking applications on January 1 — - Government to accept applications from chipmakers from Jan. 1 — India currently imports 100% of its...

Cristina Criddle / Financial Times: The UK's National Centre for Gaming Disorders, opened in 2019 in London, says ~70% of those treated were aged 18 or under and ~90% were male — Over a third of patients stuck on waiting list after referrals double in a year — More than a third of patients...

Ivan Levingston / Bloomberg: Delivery Hero says it will exit its food delivery business in Germany after seven months and divest its Japanese operations — - Company scales back after re-entering home market this year — Japan business divestment planned for first quarter of 2022

Mathew Olson / The Information: Meta says it acquired ImagineOptix, a North Carolina-based startup specializing in liquid crystal lenses, which could help reduce the size of VR headsets — It's time to add another company to the list of Meta's acquisitions in the AR/VR industry. Meta has...

Mitchell Clark / The Verge: Meta says over half of its Bulletin newsletter platform's 115 creators have over 1,000 free subscribers, “with many having more than 5,000 or 10,000” — Six months in and there are 115 publications writing on it — A new blog post from Meta marks the six-month...

Creator monetization startups are cropping up left and right as the tech world embraces the fast-growing creator economy. But Patreon, founded in 2013, has been around since before words like “influencer” were in our vocabulary — back when “Tik Tok” was a Kesha song, rather than the social...

Obey Manayiti / Financial Times: Walmart, Target, and others are trying to stop bots from snapping up products before Christmas; research says bot traffic rose 73% between October and November — Fast software scours retailer websites for popular toys and games to resell at higher prices —...

chromeOS.dev: Google says the “number of users engaging with Android apps” on Chrome OS is up 50% YoY; in May, it said Chrome OS grew 92%+ YoY, 5X faster than the PC market — Large screens are getting a lot of love from Android users. Not only has Chrome OS grown 92% in the past year …

Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer: T-Mobile says it blocked 21B scam, spam, and unwanted robocalls in 2021 via its Scam Shield service, as scam call traffic rose 116%+ YoY to 425M calls per week — T-Mobile says it blocked 21 billion scam, spam, and unwanted robocalls this year through its free...

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Social gaming startup Rec Room raises $145M led by Coatue at a $3.5B valuation, up from $1.25B in March, and says it has 37M players, up from 2M in March — On the heels of Roblox hitting it big with its platform for user-created gaming content, another startup has...

Ezra Fieser / Bloomberg: Bogota-based buy now, pay later service Addi raises $80M in equity and $125M in debt at a $700M valuation and says it is used by 1,000 retailers — - Buy now, pay later startup Addi valued at more than $700m — GIC leads series C round that raises fresh equity and debt

In its latest (and last) pre-Christmas document reveal, European privacy advocacy group, noyb, has published details of an 86-page internal assessment by Facebook of its (continued) transfers of European’s personal data to the US — and the resulting conclusion can be best summed up as ‘The...

Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg: Spotify, Meta, and Netflix find Gen Z elusive in a way TikTok never has; Spotify says its Blend playlist feature is mostly used by Gen Z — Good afternoon from Puerto Rico. Hope you all are staying safe out there. Hollywood is celebrating the good news of a...

Nick Statt / Protocol: Microsoft's Phil Spencer says the success and growth of games like Minecraft show the ingredients required for the metaverse to shed its dystopian roots — When Phil Spencer thinks about the tech and gaming industries' newfound obsession with the metaverse, the Xbox...

Kate Park / TechCrunch: South Korea-based online grocery startup Kurly, which says it plans to IPO in H1 2022 at a ~$5.8B valuation, raises $210M at a $3.3B valuation — Just half a year after its last Series F round announcement, Korean online grocery startup Kurly has closed a $210 million in...