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Instagram suddenly chokes off developers as Facebook chases privacy
Without warning, Instagram has broken many of the unofficial apps built on its platform. This weekend it surprised developers with a massive reduction in how much data they can pull from the Instagram API, shrinking the API limit from 5,000 to 200 calls per user per hour. Apps that help people figure out if their…
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Grindr sends HIV status to third parties, and some personal data unencrypted
Hot on the heels of last week’s security issues, dating app Grindr is under fire again for inappropriate sharing of HIV status with third parties (not advertisers, as I had written here before) and inadequate security on other personal data transmission. It’s not a good look for a company that says privacy is paramount. Norwegian…
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Facebook launches bulk app removal tool amidst privacy scandal
Following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, users have flocked to their Facebook privacy settings to sever their connection to third-party apps that they no longer wanted to have access to their data. But deleting them all took forever because you had to remove them one by one. Now Facebook has released a new way to select…
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COSMIQ maker Deepblu launches a booking platform it calls the “Airbnb of diving”
After it took James Tsuei a month of research and emails to plan a dive in Indonesia, he decided it was time for his startup, Deepblu, to launch a booking platform for divers. Planet Deepblu bills itself as “the Airbnb for diving” and is the latest piece of the diving ecosystem the Taipei-based startup is…
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Arbtr wants to create an anti-feed where users can only share one thing at a time
At a time when the models of traditional social networks are being questioned, it’s more important than ever to experiment with alternatives. Arbtr is a proposed social network that limits users to sharing a single thing at any given time, encouraging “ruthless self-editing” and avoiding “nasty things” like endless feeds filled with trivial garbage. It’s…
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Google’s on-by-default ‘Articles for You’ leverage browser dominance for 2,100 percent growth
When you’ve got leverage, don’t be afraid to use it. That’s been Google’s modus operandi in the news and publishing world over the last year or so as it has pushed its AMP platform, funding various news-related ventures that may put it ahead, and nourished its personalized Chrome tabs on mobile. The latter, as Nieman…
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The CW goes live on Hulu with Live TV
Hulu has added the live, linear version of the CW to its Hulu with Live TV platform. Hulu has had a deal with the CW to offer streaming on-demand content from the network, but this is the first time that the CW will be available live on Hulu. The company first launched Hulu with Live…
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New federal rules blamed in disappearance of Kindle erotica titles
The upcoming Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, in addition to making Microsoft move to reduce obscenity on its platform, has hit erotica authors on Amazon. After many authors saw their rankings stripped on the Kindle store, essentially reducing their availability and visibility, while forcing others in the romance category to recategorize or get dinged as…
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Google Play audiobooks get Smart Resume, bookmarks and Assistant routines support
Google Play Audiobooks is getting a major update today that adds a number of new features to the service that were sorely missing when it launched earlier this year. None of these are groundbreaking, but they’ll help Google reach feature parity with some of its competitors while injecting a bit of its proprietary smarts into…
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Security flaw in Grindr exposed locations to third-party service
Users of Grindr, the popular dating app for gay men, may have been broadcasting their location despite having disabled that particular feature. Two security flaws allowed for discovery of location data against a user’s will, though they take a bit of doing. The first of the flaws, which were discovered by Trever Faden and reported…