- Big tech whistleblowers describe the severe emotional toll that standing up to gigantic companies takes and how it sets them on the path to advocacy (Issie Lapowsky/Protocol)
- Internet blackouts following a military coup have shut down swathes of the online economy in Myanmar, where internet penetration had surged to around 43% (Rest of World)
- As the EU considers new regulations for AI, 60+ NGOs ask the EC to ban automatic gender recognition systems, which rely on outmoded understandings of gender (James Vincent/The Verge)
- How Weibo helps Chinese authorities quash the feminist movement by deleting activist accounts, while also profiting from their nationalist harassers (Shen Lu/Protocol)
- As Spotify turns 15, a look at the ways in which it changed how people listen to music, like breaking down boundaries between genres through "mood playlists" (Kristin Robinson/Variety)
- Sources: at least four types of equipment vital to chip production are in short supply and lead times for wire bonding machines have grown to 10-12 months (Nikkei Asia)
- Google is moving FeedBurner to a "more stable, modern infrastructure" later this year, but is shutting down email subscriptions and other non-core features (Abner Li/9to5Google)
- Outschool, a marketplace for online after-school classes, raises $75M Series C led by Coatue and Tiger Global at a $1.3B valuation, up from $320M in Sep. 2020 (Natasha Mascarenhas/TechCrunch)
- Interview with Initialized Capital's Garry Tan on the firm's seed investment in Coinbase, Ohanian's departure, building a presence on social media, and more (Alex Konrad/Forbes)
- Andrew Bosworth says Facebook will not release an Oculus Quest Pro in 2021 and expects the Quest 2 to be in the market "for a long while" (Ian Hamilton/UploadVR)
- Sources detail Amazon's tactics during the Alabama union campaign, including "captive audience meetings", as workers explain why the union was unconvincing (Annie Palmer/CNBC)
- Looking at payment per stream metrics for music streaming services can be misleading when considering artist pay, as many factors determine streaming royalties (Jem Aswad/Variety)
- Internal memo: ByteDance seeks to increase China-based ad revenue from ~$28B in 2020 to $39.8B in 2021; TikTok's Chinese twin Douyin had 610-620M DAUs in March (Zheping Huang/Bloomberg)
- NYC-based Level, which helps companies offer customized employee benefits plans and touts the ability to process claims in four hours, raises $27M Series A (Mary Ann Azevedo/TechCrunch)
- Source: Dapper Labs, maker of NFT-focused NBA Top Shot, is raising a new round at a $7.5B+ valuation, just a few weeks after raising $305M at a $2.6B valuation (The Information)