Mob

Signal is testing a payments feature that lets you send cryptocurrency to friends

Signal announced on Tuesday it’s now testing a new peer-to-peer payments system in the beta version of its apps. Appropriately called Signal Payments, the new feature right now supports only one protocol: the MobileCoin wallet and its companion cryptocurrency MOB. MobileCoin has a close relationship with Signal co-founder and CEO Moxie Marlinspike, who advised the… Read more

Parler has dropped its hosting lawsuit against Amazon

Parler has withdrawn its antitrust lawsuit against Amazon, ending its two-month effort to legally compel the company to reinstate its hosting account. Parler made the decision in a motion filed late Tuesday night in federal court for the Western District of Washington. The company gave no explanation for the move, but reserved the right to… Read more

Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead is a big Vegas heist movie coming to Netflix — with zombies

Netflix’s next big-budget action movie is almost here: Army of the Dead from director Zack Snyder sees a squad of mercenaries battling their way into Las Vegas to pull off a massive heist. The catch is it’s set after a zombie apocalypse has ravaged the city, so instead of the usual Vegas barriers of casino… Read more

What did we learn from the GameStop mess?

On this week’s Decoder, I sat down with CNBC anchor Jon Fortt to talk about GameStop, how the media covered it, what happens next for the market, and what — if anything — we learned from it all. We also talked about his new online course, The Black Experience in America. This transcript has been… Read more

Clearview’s facial recognition tech is illegal mass surveillance, Canada privacy commissioners say

Clearview AI’s facial recognition amounts to mass surveillance and the company should delete the faces of Canadians from its database, Canada’s privacy commissioners said Wednesday. Commissioner Daniel Therrien said what Clearview does — scraping photos from social media and other public sites for use by law enforcement — is “illegal” and creates a system that… Read more

Reddit’s GameStop traders turn their attention to AMC stock

Reddit traders who have successfully profited off GameStop (GME) stock are now turning their attention to struggling movie theater chain AMC. Reddit board r/wallstreetbets has helped push GameStop stock to record levels in recent days, with the stock closing up 92 percent yesterday alone. It’s part of a chaotic, meme-fueled effort to create an organized… Read more

GameStop stock halts trading after Reddit drama

Trading in stock of video game retailer GameStop (GME) was halted briefly Friday, as it soared more than 70 percent, due partly to the enthusiastic support of a group of Reddit day traders. The stock is up more than 250 percent year to date, rising sharply last week after GameStop announced Chewy CEO Ryan Cohen… Read more

Unlike Airbnb, VRBO reportedly won’t cancel reservations in DC during inauguration week

Short-term rental site VRBO does not plan to cancel reservations in the DC area during the inauguration next week, even though competitor Airbnb has already done so. First reported by BuzzFeed News, VRBO said in a blog post Friday afternoon that it was “encouraging hosts to cancel bookings during this time,” if they believed a… Read more

Bumble disables politics filter after Capitol rioters spotted in app

Dating app Bumble has temporarily disabled a feature which allowed users to filter potential matches based on their political leanings, the service has announced. The feature allows users to identify and filter matches with options such as “Apolitical,” “Moderate,” “Liberal,” and “Conservative.” In a statement given to Mashable, Bumble said it had temporarily removed the… Read more

A Parler archive is being converted into an interactive map of the Capitol building attack

A developer going by the name of Patr10tic has created an interactive map using GPS metadata and videos from the app Parler to offer a glimpse of what was happening inside and around the Capitol building during the violent protest on January 6th (via Motherboard). The project is an expansion on similar maps like the… Read more

Twitch will change the face of PogChamp every 24 hours

Twitch removed its popular PogChamp emote a couple of days ago after the person on which it was based — Ryan “Gootecks” Gutierrez — posted some tweets encouraging more mob violence after the riot at the Capitol. The spirit of PogChamp, however, will live on: today, Twitch announced that it would cycle through different versions… Read more