Sylvia Varnham O’Regan / The Information: Sources: after its first-ever drop in ad sales, Meta ditched its brash tone with advertisers and is offering sweeteners, like up to a 25% discount for Reels ads  —  After suffering its first-ever drop in ad sales, Meta Platforms has abandoned its once-brash tone with advertisers in favor of a more flexible approach to winning business. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Andrew Tarantola / Engadget: Adobe announces Firefly generative AI tool upgrades to let video editors add effects, boost color levels, and more using natural language prompts later in 2023  —  Less than a month after debuting its new suite of Firefly generative AI editing tools, Adobe announced Monday that it is already working … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Max Tani / Semafor: Spotify plans to drop its paywall and change its exclusivity rules for some of Gimlet’s podcasts in the coming months; Spotify acquired Gimlet for $230M in 2019  —  Staff at the podcast studio Gimlet staff have been told in recent weeks that Spotify plans to drop its subscription wall around some of the studio’s shows. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Wall Street Journal: US attorneys charge 30+ staff at China’s domestic security agency who allegedly posed as US citizens by making thousands of fake profiles on Twitter, elsewhere  —  Complaint depicts vast effort to disguise criticism of U.S. policies as coming from Americans Lees verder op Tech Meme

Jenni Reid / CNBC: Sega acquires Rovio, best known for its Angry Birds franchise, for €706M  —  – The deal would be for the entirety of Rovio’s outstanding shares and options, valuing them at 9.25 euro per share, a roughly 19% premium to their closing price before the announcement, Sega said. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Ian Johnston / Financial Times: As Palantir vies for a £480M contract to build a “federated data platform” for the UK’s NHS, experts say the company’s Foundry tool is costly and hard to use  —  Internal opposition voiced over US company’s bid for lucrative expansion within British health service Lees verder op Tech Meme

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Razor Group, which buys and scales up e-commerce merchants, raised an €80M Series C, sources say at a $1.2B valuation and acquires its competitor Stryze Group  —  The business of being an e-commerce aggregator may be down but it is definitely not out.  —  Razor Group, one of the string … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Barcelona-based Innovamat, which makes tools for teaching math, raised a $21M Series A led by Reach Capital, after starting its first K-5 pilots in the US  —  When it comes to education, mathematics has long been considered one of the most challenging of subjects both to learn and to teach. Lees verder op Tech Meme