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Today we celebrate a bit of oversight over an industry that has been allowed to prey on those less fortunate for way too long — Devin reports that the FCC is taking a more firm hand in overseeing the prison phone system in a simple bill, giving the regulatory body the power “to ensure just and reasonable charges for telephone and advanced communications services in correctional and detention facilities.”

In other captivating news, the Daily Crunch will be back next week in a slightly diminished form, as both Christine and Haje disappear for the holidays. The full newsletter will be back soon, and the two of us wish you a very happy Christmas if you celebrate, a very peaceful holiday if you do not, and a magnificently prosperous 2023, in either case. Much love, Christine and Haje

The TechCrunch Top 4

Meta settles: After years of pushing back against a lawsuit, Meta has agreed to a $725 million settlement to resolve a class-action lawsuit over Cambridge Analytica harvesting data from Facebook users. Paul has more.
Breathe in that fresh air: Mila, the maker of a smart air purifier that came from humble beginnings on Kickstarter, scored $10 million in a round led by Electrolux. This gives it a $52 million valuation and the backing to add some smarts to a new product — a humidifier, Haje writes.
Charge it up: It looks like Tesla is #winning in a space that Apple couldn’t make work. The automaker unveiled its $300 charging mat that can recharge three devices at once, Matt reports.
The results are in: Dominic-Madori surveyed three Black investors about what they are prepping for in 2023. Read the full version on TechCrunch+.

Holiday shipping is easier this year, but the tech is still lagging

Global supply lines are in better shape than they were this time last year, but that doesn’t bode well for the future, writes Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen.

“This year’s improvements in shipping largely reflect a pullback in consumption rather than any improvement in the underlying infrastructure,” he says, noting that labor shortages, global instability and high fuel prices have created persistent bottlenecks.

“Fortunately, the data available today is rich beyond measure, and we also have the tools to leverage it in ways that can boost efficiency.”

Three more from the TC+ team:

Cloud money makes it rain: While Amazon had a rocky year, AWS remains a reliable cash cow, by Ron.
Big, clean stacks of money: Clean energy investments may close 2022 hitting new heights, setting stage for lofty 2023, by Tim.
Tearing down the Card Blanch: Pitch Deck Teardown: Card Blanch’s $460K deck for its angel round, by Haje.

TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription!

Big Tech Inc.

We enjoyed Ingrid’s in-depth look at how decentralized social media player Mastodon is scaling as Twitter users decamp to search for other ways to post everything they are thinking. TechCrunch+ subscribers — if you’re not one, you can be easily — can also read her Q&A with Mastodon creator Eugen Rochko.

If you are a LastPass user like many of us here at TechCrunch, you might want to check your email if you haven’t already. LastPass says hackers stole some customers’ password vaults. Zack says it’s time to change your passwords.

Google isn’t taking India’s latest fine lying down. Manish reports the search engine giant is appealing the hundreds of millions of dollars in fines ordered against it over business practices on Android.

And we have four more for you:

Can there be a fair election in social media land?: Annie writes that “botched content moderation” during Kenya’s elections last year leaves other countries with questions about what social media companies, like Facebook, Twitter and TikTok, will do to uphold election integrity in Africaas their elections happen.
Persistence or annoyance?: @ElonJet creator Jack Sweeney has a new Twitter handle now, still following Elon Musk’s jet, but now delayed, writes Connie. Meanwhile, if you’re Twitter Blue, you can now upload 60-minute videos, Ivan reports. Not sure any of us will stay long enough to watch one, so good luck with those new view counts.
Separated: India’s e-commerce giant Flipkart no longer owns a stake in PhonePe, Manish writes.
This move has Tesla investors shaking their heads: Tesla’s $7,500 discount feels desperate and is “giving investors the ick,” writes Rebecca, causing one to cut its price target for the automaker.

Daily Crunch: Meta to pay $725M settlement in Cambridge Analytica data access case by Christine Hall originally published on TechCrunch

Eugen Rochko came up with the idea for and built Mastodon some six years ago during another one of Twitter’s dips. A developer who had already been interested in and was working with open source software, he got the idea for Mastodon from a federated version of a forum he’d built in high school.

That project was called Zeon Federated, and it’s no longer active. While developing that, he also built and sold a platform to manage escrow for artists around commissions.

Mastodon’s success has somewhat taken its creator by surprise. Rochko didn’t jump into this project as a power user of social media, nor is he prone to sharing much about himself. When we spoke, he dialed into our video chat from an undisclosed location. He’s never even used Instagram. If growth hackers look at building audience or revenue as an end in itself, Rochko seems to be the opposite when it comes to development.

This week we spoke with Rochko about the early days of Mastodon, its recent surge in users and how advertising may or may not factor in its future.

TechCrunch: You’ve probably seen significant growth in the last six weeks or so. Has the rate of growth maintained pace, increased or tailed off since the first days of the handover to Elon Musk? How many users and servers do you have now?

Eugen Rochko: If you look at it on the graph, we had a huge spike around the news of Elon Musk buying Twitter. And there was another spike when Musk fired most of the employees at Twitter. It’s trailed off now, but the rate is way higher than it was before October. We now have 2.5 million monthly active users across Mastodon, across 8,600 servers.

We don’t chart the growth rate, but right now, app downloads on iOS and Android are about 4,000 each per day. The highest spike we saw was when Musk fired employees — we had 149,000 downloads on Android and 235,000 on iOS. Over the last 90 days, the iOS app has had 1.8 million downloads. Android provides different figures, but in October, the installed audience for the Android app was 53,000 devices. Now, it is 907,000 devices.

I can’t give you much on whether mobile is more popular than desktop: I don’t track it. We haven’t built dashboards for that.

TC: You say “we,” but how many people do you have at Mastodon?

Rochko: I’m the only full-time employee, and the rest — five people — are contractors at the moment. I’m looking to expand the full-time team and have been working on some job listings. It’s kind of a slow process; I wish I could do it a lot faster. But it’s a new frontier for a company that has been a one-person venture for six years. It has been fine so far, but now we need more people.

TC: Is Patreon the only vehicle you’ve been using to fund it so far?

Rochko: Patreon is the main one. We built a custom sponsorship platform as well for when a business wants to sponsor us to save on Patreon fees. We also got a public grant this year from the European Commission to finance some of the work on features. But mainly, it’s Patreon.

TC: So the bulk of it is coming from around 8,500 backers on there…

Rochko: Yeah, that brings in $31,000 per month. That number has risen dramatically over the past month — it was only $7,000 last month. That’s the only reason we can even think about getting new employees.

This is the kind of scary part of running a non-profit based on donations. I’m responsible for myself if the donations dry up, but if you hire other people and the donations stop, suddenly you’re responsible for other people’s livelihoods. That’s been the stopper for getting other people as employees before now.

I think now there is some buffer, so we want to get a few more people involved.

Mastodon creator Eugen Rochko talks funding and how to build the anti-Twitter by Ingrid Lunden originally published on TechCrunch