Facebook removes accounts, groups, and Pages tied to China that posted about US politics; the network was followed by fewer than 3K US accounts  —  The social media campaign was small but targeted all sides of the debate.  Officials said Beijing had not decided whether to wade more directly in the American presidential race.

Interview with Satya Nadella and Phil Spencer on buying more game companies, investing in Xbox Game Pass, and Microsoft's rejected TikTok bid  —  In an interview, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Xbox head Phil Spencer discuss further acquisitions, how to keep making hits and what happened with TikTok.

Overview of the state of bundles in 2020 across Netflix, Disney, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft  —  If the famous Jim Barksdale quote is to be believed — the one about there only being two ways to make money in business, bundling and unbundling — then I am long past due for a follow-up to 2017's The Great Unbundling.

Samsung is launching its ad-supported streaming service Samsung TV Plus, available on Samsung TVs since 2016, on some of its latest mobile phones  —  Samsung is doubling down on free, ad-supported streaming: After turning Samsung TV Plus into a massive success story on smart TVs …

The Swift Project announces its language tools are now available for Windows 10  —  Swift is taking flight on Windows.  —  What you need to know  — Swift is seeing its initial release on Windows.  — Developers can now download Swift toolchain images for Windows 10.

Microsoft says it will exclusively license OpenAI's GPT-3 language model, which will continue to be offered via the Azure-hosted API launched in June  —  Microsoft today announced that it will exclusively license GPT-3, one of the most powerful language understanding models in the world, from San Francisco-based AI startup OpenAI.

Papa, which connects elderly Americans with virtual and physical companions, raises $18M Series B led by Comcast Ventures, bringing its total raised to $31M  —  The Miami-based startup Papa has raised an additional $18 million as it looks to expand its business connecting elderly Americans …

Authorities from the US, UK, Germany, Europol, and others arrest 179 during Operation DisrupTor, targeting the sale of illicit goods on the dark web  —  ‘Operation Disruptor’ involved agencies from nine countries and the seizure of over $6.5m in cash and cryptocurrencies as criminals warned law enforcement will track them down.

An in-depth look at Mike Speiser's investment playbook at Sutter Hill Ventures, who as a founding investor incubated Snowflake Computing as an interim CEO  —  In Formula 1 racing, you can win a world championship as a driver with one team but then not even make the top 10 without that team's car and infrastructure.

How TikTok's UI, focused on just one auto-playing video at a time, generates clean user-driven data thanks to its “algorithm-friendly design”  —  In my previous post on TikTok I discussed why its For You Page algorithm is the connective tissue that makes TikTok work.

YouTube says it will use AI-powered moderation to automatically age-restrict certain content  —  AI moderation measures will be used to automatically age-restrict certain content  —  YouTube is rolling out more artificial intelligence-powered technology to catch more videos …

Morgan Beller, one of the founders of Facebook's Libra digital currency, has left the company to become a partner at VC firm NFX  —  - One of the co-founders of Facebook's libra digital currency and Novi payments wallet has left the company before the release of either technology.

Manticore, a Roblox-like startup that enables users to quickly build multi-player desktop games, raises $15M led by Epic, bringing its total raised to $60M  —  Manticore, a new gaming startup with software that enables users to quickly build high-resolution multi-player desktop games …

Microsoft debuts new Teams features, including virtual commute, Headspace integration, breakout rooms, and virtual coffee shops for meetings  —  Microsoft today announced a slew of Teams features available now, coming later this year, and even arriving in 2021.

PagerDuty to buy Rundeck, whose open source software can help IT admins automatically fix issues, for $100M; Rundeck had raised $3M, according to Crunchbase  —  PagerDuty Inc. today said that it will spend about $100 million to acquire Rundeck Inc., the maker of a popular software tool …

Google says it will pull the plug on paid Chrome extensions over the next year, after temporarily banning them due to fraudulent transactions  —  Earlier this year, Google announced some changes to the Chrome Web Store in an effort to curb malicious extensions.

How Spotify's UX decisions have encouraged the growth of adjective-laden generic artist names, enabling a kind of SEO spam for music  —  The platform is filled with search-optimized spammers, and there's no end in sight  —  Welcome to The Cheater's Guide to Spotify, a series about the schemes …

Apptopia and Sensor Tower data shows Pinterest recently broke its daily download record as users sought inspiration for iOS 14 homescreen customization ideas  —  The excitement around the ability to customize your iPhone homescreen following the release of iOS 14 has been paying off for Pinterest.

Sources: GoodRx, a price comparison app for prescription drugs at local pharmacies, raises $1.14B in its IPO at $33 per share, valuing the company ~$12.7B  —  GoodRx, a price comparison app for prescription drugs at local pharmacies, on Tuesday raised $1.14 billion in its IPO, Axios has learned.

Carrd, Linktree, and Bio.fm have capitalized on link sharing limits in apps like Instagram, creating entire businesses around simple link sharing websites  —  The link-in-bio side hustles are moving to full-time  —  If you want to learn more about an influencer, there's one place you always know to look: that link in bio.