(Axios) Google is joining Microsoft, Meta and Adobe in supporting a standard for labeling media that can describe who created an image or video, when and how it was created, and the credibility of its source, the company announced today. Why it matters: With Android smartphones holding a 70% global market share, and 2.5 billion YouTube users, Google’s move gives…

(TechCrunch) The Oversight Board, the external advisory group that Meta created to review its moderation decisions on Facebook and Instagram, issued a decision on Monday concerning a doctored seven-second video of President Biden that made the rounds on social media last year. The original video showed the president accompanying his granddaughter Natalie Biden to cast her ballot during early voting…

(NYT) After a series of tense exchanges between senators and tech executives that clocked in at just under four hours, the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on online child safety came to an end on Wednesday with no clear resolutions in sight. The audience included several family members of victims, who cheered as senators berated the…

(TechCrunch) Tech layoffs are accelerating, according to the data. The surge in staff cuts comes after reductions in human capital slowed so much in the back half of 2023 that we wrote that “tech layoffs are all but a thing of the past.” At the time, reported layoffs had been trending down for months and…

(Bloomberg) Startups typically depend on serial infusions of funding from backers to get through their early years, and a so-called down round—raising money at a lower implied valuation than before—is a big black eye. So lately, companies have gotten increasingly creative at trying to avoid being considered less valuable, particularly when investors seek to unload…

(NYT) Here at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the most revealing discussions often happen not on the main stage, but at the myriad side events that transform this Swiss ski town into a high-minded networking event. Case in point: the annual luncheon hosted by Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff, who is plowing some of…

(Verge) Climate change disinformation on YouTube has morphed into a misleading new narrative, according to a report published today. With compounding disasters making it harder to deny that climate change is happening, creators spreading disinformation have pivoted to content that targets clean energy. In the past, content that falsely claimed that climate change was either not happening or not…

(Wired) “It might be the best time for any kind of business in any industry to raise money for all of history, like since the time of the ancient Egyptians,” an excitable Stuart Butterfield, CEO of Slack, told Farhad Manjoo in The New York Times in 2015. This was no exaggeration. While interest rates remained close to…

(Washington Post) Instagram and Facebook unveiled further limits on what teens can see on the apps, a move their parent company Meta says will reduce the amount of potentially harmful content young people encounter. Already, teens could opt to have Instagram’s algorithm recommend less “sensitive content” — which includes bare bodies, violence, drugs, firearms, weight-loss…

(WSJ) What are venture fund portfolios worth now? There is little agreement on that question today, an issue that is slowing down an already sedate venture fundraising market.  Once all the data is tallied, 2023 is expected to be the worst year for venture fundraising globally since 2015, according to both research firms Preqin and…