The Pope is a lot of things: a religious figurehead for the Catholic church, hat aficionado, and an apparent hater of cat owners. But now Papa Francis can add being a listener to game soundtracks to his wheelhouse as well. He’s apparently a big fan of …
Tumblr is at war with Apple over ‘mature’ content on its app again
Hide your “Tony the Tiger”/”Eugene Levy” fan fiction — those phrases, along with hundreds of others, are now banned from Tumblr’s iOS app. Now, any personal blog that flags itself as “mature” is not accessible on the iOS app — users will see a pop-up explaining that the content has been hidden because of “potentially […]
An Extremely Goofy Performance Of ‘Simple And Clean’
You don’t have to be a Kingdom Hearts fan to experience goosebumps running up your arm when you hear the first infectious notes of Hikaru Utada’s “Simple and Clean.” From its early appearance in commercials to its continued use in the series, “Simple a…
TechCrunch+ roundup: Automattic TC-1, federal startup grants, ‘getting s*** done day’
Our latest longform look at a notable tech company examines Automattic, “the leading commercial complement to the open-source WordPress publishing platform.”
The Automattic TC-1
Sixteen years in and now valued at $7.5 billion, Automattic has found a multitude of strides, even as it strives to own ever more of the media market.
Tumblr’s subscription product Post+ enters open beta after much scrutiny from users
Tumblr is entering open beta for its subscription product Post+, meaning that all U.S. users can now try out the monetization feature. The product launched in closed beta in July, allowing users hand-picked by Tumblr to place some of their content behind a monthly paywall. This marked the first time that Tumblr allowed bloggers to […]
“People like him love standard procedure”
Two short scifi/fantasy stories in which customer service folks get to reward customers who treat them well, or punish those who treat them badly. Dyce writes about an isolated refueling station: “Out-of-hours fuelling requires a prior appointment.” Ai…
OnlyFans’ policy change is a tale as old as the internet
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. For our Wednesday show this week, Natasha and Alex and Danny had colleague Amanda Silberling on the show to help us parse through OnlyFans‘ precedent-setting move to ban sexually explicit content on its service. The decision was a bolt from the blue for […]
OnlyFans’ explicit content ban should spark a conversation about a creators’ bill of rights
OnlyFans’ decision to ban sexually explicit content is reigniting an important and overlooked conversation around tech companies, content guidelines and sex work.
Twitter is testing a feature that puts users’ Revue newsletters on their profiles
This January, Twitter acquired the newsletter platform Revue, but until now its integration into Twitter has been minimal; sometimes when you write Twitter threads, you’ll be greeted with a “Hello, wordsmiths” message that tells you about its newsletter tools). Starting today, Twitter is testing a feature that brings Revue newsletters more prominently into the Twitter […]