TikTok says fake account removal increased 61% to 33.6M in Q2 2022

TikTok is continuing its PR offensive to convince the world that it takes its content moderator responsibilities seriously, as the Bytedance-owned social video platform today published its latest Community Guidelines Enforcement Report. Covering the period from April 1 to June 30 this year, the report spans a wide gamut of self-reported data points around video … Read more

This new app is helping Gen Z invest in cars, food, video games and other ‘themes’

Michael Haddix Jr. is a former college basketball player who was pre-med until he discovered investing once finishing undergrad. After being exposed to it, Haddix  says he got “really excited” about investing and went on to get an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School so that he could work in the field. Upon completing graduate school, … Read more

Flora poised to bloom as sustainable brand marketplace launches this year

E-commerce roll-up startup Flora emerged from stealth mode with $9 million in seed funding from an investor group that included Lux Capital, Correlation Ventures, Climate Capital and Gokul Rajaram. Also known as an aggregator, the company acquires and grows brands — in Flora’s case, focused on offering sustainable products and reducing carbon emissions. Co-founders and … Read more

Scale Venture Partners closes $900M for fund to back software startups

Money continues to flow into new venture capital funds. For example, in the past month, Runa Capital, Lerer Hippeau, Razor’s Edge Ventures, First Star, OurCrowd, Northzone, Janngo Capital and Kapor Capital all announced new funds. Now it’s Scale Venture Partners’ turn, announcing it secured $900 million in committed capital for its eighth fund, also its … Read more

May Mobility, Via launch wheelchair-accessible autonomous shuttle service

Autonomous ride-hail and shuttle service May Mobility and transit tech provider Via are launching a small fleet of wheelchair-accessible autonomous vehicles in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. Via, which started as an on-demand shuttle service before acquiring Remix, and May have been partnering for years to bridge the gaps in public transit systems with AVs. They have … Read more

Crypto trading-focused blockchain Sei launches $50M ecosystem fund

While many layer-1 blockchains out there were built for a pretty general purpose, other networks were designed around very specific use cases. Sei, a layer-1 blockchain designed for trading, has launched a $50 million ecosystem and liquidity fund to support new decentralized finance (DeFi) applications on its platform, its co-founders Jeff Feng and Jay Jog … Read more

Coalesce lands fresh capital to transform data at ‘enterprise scale’

Coalesce is a startup that offers data transformation tools geared mainly toward enterprise customers. Today the company closed a $26 million Series A funding round led by Emergence Capital with participation from 11.2 Capital and GreatPoint Ventures, bringing the company’s total raised to $31.92 million. Co-founder and CEO Armon Petrossian tells TechCrunch that the cash … Read more

Cloudflare wants to replace CAPTCHAs with Turnstile

Ahead of its Connect conference in October, Cloudflare this week announced an ambitious new project called Turnstile, which seeks to do away with the CAPTCHAs used throughout the web to verify people are who they say they are. Available to site owners at no charge, Cloudflare customers or no, Turnstile chooses from a rotating suite … Read more

Turnstile is Cloudflare’s latest attempt to rid the web of CAPTCHAs

Image: Cloudflare Cloudflare is testing a new kind of CAPTCHA that tests your browser instead of you. The company calls it Turnstile, and it’s designed to spare us from performing those mundane click-the-traffic-light kinds of tasks to verify you’re a human and not a bot. Turnstile is being presented as “a user-friendly, privacy preserving alternative” … Read more

What to expect from Tesla’s AI Day event

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge On September 30th, Elon Musk will kick off Tesla’s AI Day to outline the company’s path to fully autonomous vehicles. But this year, Tesla’s cars are expected to take a backseat to a robot named Optimus. Continue reading…

India’s Enforcement Directorate Freezes $1.5M in Bitcoin in Gaming App E-nuggets Case

The ED alleges the accused was transferring part of the money overseas by using “cryptocurrency exchange,” the ED said. One dummy account was opened in Indian exchange WazirX from where crypto purchased was transferred to an account in Binance. A balance of as many as 77.6 Bitcoins worth Rs 128 million ($1.5 million) approx. have … Read more

Amazon is about to announce a bunch of new products

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon has some new products on the way. The company is holding an invite-only, virtual event today, where it’s expected to introduce products from across its lineup of brands. Chances are, there’s going to be a lot to see. Amazon is unusually good at keeping its upcoming releases … Read more