CNN – Social Media/Technology

By Brian Fung, CNN T-Mobile has agreed to pay $350 million to settle multiple class-action suits stemming from a data breach disclosed last year affecting tens of millions of people. In the proposed settlement announced Friday, T-Mobile also agreed to spend an extra $150 million on cybersecurity through the end of 2023. Court documents outlining

By Rachel Metz and Rishi Iyengar, CNN Business This week, two of the most passionate communities online — gamers and cat lovers — collided with the release of a new video game that lets you play as an adorable orange tabby cat. “Stray“, created by indie French game company BlueTwelve Studio and published by Annapurna

By Clare Duffy, CNN Business Snap’s rough year continues. Shares of Snapchat’s parent company tanked more than 25% in after-hours trading Thursday after it posted even worse sales growth results for the three months ended in June than it had expected. Snap last month warned investors that the economy had worsened faster than it expected,

By Catherine Thorbecke Amazon on Thursday said it has entered an agreement to acquire primary healthcare company One Medical in an all-cash deal valued at approximately $3.9 billion. One Medical is a membership-based primary care service that promises customers “24/7 access to virtual care.” The company operates in a dozen major US markets, according to

By Jackie Wattles, CNN Business Two astronauts — one European and one Russian — exited the airlock on the International Space Station for a spacewalk on Thursday, marking the first time in more than 20 years such a joint endeavor has taken place. Samantha Cristoforetti, an Italian astronaut with the European Space Agency, and Russian

By Catherine Thorbecke, CNN Business Weeks after Daily Harvest announced the voluntary recall of its French Lentil and Leek Crumbles, the company said on Tuesday that it had identified the ingredient suspected to be causing the mysterious illness reported by hundreds of customers. “At this time, we have identified tara flour as the cause of

By Brian Fung, CNN Amazon said Tuesday it has sued the administrators of more than 11,000 Facebook groups allegedly responsible for facilitating the purchase and sale of fake reviews on Amazon’s marketplace in seven countries. The group operators are accused of recruiting people to write fake or misleading product reviews in exchange for money or

By Brian Fung, CNN Business The Biden administration is pushing to fill hundreds of thousands of cybersecurity jobs in the United States as part of a bid to close a talent shortage US officials describe as both a national security challenge and an economic opportunity. On Tuesday, the administration announced a multi-agency plan to create

By Kara Scannell, CNN Business The US attorney’s office in Manhattan has opened a civil investigation into workplace safety at Amazon warehouses and possible “fraudulent” conduct to hide worker injuries from federal regulators, a spokesperson for the prosecutor’s office said. Investigators with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Monday morning went to warehouses around

By Clare Duffy, CNN Business In an early victory for Twitter, a judge on Tuesday ruled that the company’s lawsuit against Elon Musk over their $44 billion acquisition agreement should go to a five-day trial in October. The decision came at the end of the first hearing in the case over whether to expedite the

By Brian Fung, CNN Business Two Democratic senators are planning to reopen a high-stakes battle over internet access in the coming weeks, with a bill aiming to restore net neutrality regulations for broadband providers that a Republican-led Federal Communications Commission gutted in 2017. The draft bill from Sens. Ed Markey and Ron Wyden would explicitly

By Brian Fung, CNN Amazon has offered to change its business practices in Europe to resolve two ongoing antitrust investigations targeting the company in the EU, according to European Commission officials. Under the proposed changes affecting the EU market, Amazon has offered not to use data gathered from third-party sellers for its own retail decisions,

By Catherine Thorbecke, CNN Business If you’ve ever wanted to high-five someone in your group texts, you may soon be in luck. A new “Pushing Hand” gesture that looks like a high-five is on the shortlist of potential new emojis to be released later this year. Also included: a shaking face, a knob of ginger,

By Brian Fung, CNN Amazon’s smart-doorbell company, Ring, has provided surveillance footage to law enforcement without a warrant or the consent of doorbell-owners 11 times this year alone, according to a letter Amazon (AMZN) sent to Congress earlier this month. The disclosure highlights the degree of Amazon’s control over data generated by the doorbells’ cameras

By Rachel Metz, CNN Business It only took Matt Laming, a 19-year-old from the United Kingdom, about a month to hit a million followers on Twitter. And all it required was sharing a steady stream of the most outlandish computer-generated images that he and a bunch of internet strangers could think up. In recent weeks,

By Catherine Thorbecke, CNN Business Google plans to slow its pace of hiring for the remainder of the year in the latest sign of tech companies rethinking staffing amid a market downturn that has hit Silicon Valley particularly hard. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and parent company Alphabet, announced the news on Tuesday in an

By Jackie Wattles, CNN Business An explosion on the launch pad during a test of a massive SpaceX rocket prototype was “actually not good” and the company is assessing the damage, company CEO Elon Musk said on Twitter. The rocket, an early version of the vehicle SpaceX is calling Starship, could be seen lighting its

By Brian Fung, CNN Tech companies and data brokers that misuse or misrepresent how they handle Americans’ personal data, including reproductive health information, may find themselves on the hook with the Federal Trade Commission, the agency warned this week. On Monday, the FTC renewed its vow to investigate or sue companies that use Americans’ digital

By Clare Duffy, CNN Business Elon Musk wants to cancel his deal to buy Twitter, but the social media company is having none of it. On Friday, Musk moved to terminate the $44-billion acquisition agreement, alleging that Twitter breached the deal by failing to hand over data he says he needs to evaluate the number

By Brian Fung, CNN Business Hundreds of thousands of leaked Uber documents obtained by The Guardian and shared with a consortium of news outlets show how during its most aggressive period of growth, the ride-hailing company reportedly employed secret technology to thwart police investigations, sought favors from high-ranking government officials and even perceived a silver

By Jordan Valinsky, CNN Business Bad news for Twitter could turn out to be good news for former President Donald Trump. Shares of Digital World Acquisition Corp., the special purpose acquisition company that has agreed to merge with Trump Media & Technology Group, surged 15% in premarket trading Monday morning after Elon Musk said he

By Chris Isidore, CNN Business Elon Musk mocked Twitter’s efforts to force him to purchase the company — in a tweet, of course. Early Monday, Musk tweeted four images of him laughing next to captions that read: “They said I couldn’t buy Twitter. Then they wouldn’t disclose bot information. Now they want to force me

By Catherine Thorbecke, CNN Business In the two decades since it was first included in products available to the general public, Bluetooth has become so widespread that an entire generation of consumers may not be able to remember a time without it. ABI Research estimates that 5 billion Bluetooth-enabled devices will ship to consumers this

By Clare Duffy, Brian Fung and Rachel Metz, CNN Elon Musk moved Friday afternoon to terminate his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter — the latest twist in a whirlwind process in which the billionaire Tesla CEO became the company’s biggest shareholder, turned down a board seat, agreed to buy the social media platform and

By Sara Ashley O’Brien, CNN Business Four years after the top two Theranos executives, Elizabeth Holmes and Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, were first indicted together on a dozen federal fraud charges stemming from their time heading up the failed blood testing startup, both have been convicted by juries. Holmes, the founder and former CEO of Theranos,

By Sara Ashley O’Brien and Rishi Iyengar, CNN Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, the former COO of failed blood testing startup Theranos and ex-boyfriend of founder Elizabeth Holmes, was found guilty of defrauding investors and patients. Jury deliberations stretched for four full days following a lengthy trial that got underway in March with opening statements. A jury

By Sara Ashley O’Brien, CNN Business Elon Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO and world’s richest man, welcomed twins last year with an executive at one of his other companies, Neuralink, Insider reported on Wednesday. Musk, who posted a tweet on May 24 saying “USA birth rate has been below min sustainable levels for ~50

By Catherine Thorbecke, CNN Business Amazon Prime members in the United States can now get free meal deliveries through Grubhub as part of a growing business partnership between the two companies. The deal, announced Wednesday, will give Amazon’s paying subscribers the option to sign up for a free one-year Grubhub+ membership (normally $9.99 a month)

By Brian Fung, CNN Top lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee called for a Federal Trade Commission probe of TikTok on Tuesday, amid allegations the social media company has made “repeated misrepresentations” to Congress and others on its data security practices. In a letter to FTC Chair Lina Khan, Sens. Mark Warner and Marco Rubio,

By Brian Fung, CNN The UK competition regulator on Wednesday announced the launch of an antitrust investigation into Microsoft’s proposed $68.7 billion acquisition of video gaming giant Activision Blizzard. The probe into what would be Microsoft’s biggest acquisition in its history will focus on whether the deal may substantially lessen competition — or create expectations

By Diksha Madhok, CNN Business Twitter has mounted its first legal challenge to the Indian government over official orders to take down content. The social media company has had a tough time in India since last year, spending months locked in a high-stakes standoff with the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi over freedom of

By Jackie Wattles, CNN Business SpaceX’s satellite-based internet business, Starlink, now has approval from the US government to expand its service to planes, ships, automobiles, RVs and other mobile vehicles. The move sets the company up to expand its customer base, which so far has been focused solely on providing roughly $100-per-month internet services to

By Brian Fung, CNN US Android app developers will be able to claim money from a new $90 million fund Google will establish as part of a wider settlement with app makers over the tech giant’s app store practices, the company said Thursday. The proposed settlement is designed to address app developers’ years-long allegations that

By Sara Ashley O’Brien, CNN Business Even as its ridership was decimated by the pandemic in 2020, Uber recorded 141 reports of rape on its platform in the United States, the company disclosed in its safety report released Thursday. The 78-page report, which covers 2019 and 2020, is the second-ever Uber has released regarding safety

By Jackie Wattles, CNN Business Lori Garver spearheaded the NASA program that paved the way for SpaceX to return human spaceflight to the United States after a decade-long wait. In her new book and in a recent interview she reflects on that success, the controversial cast of characters driving this new space race, and the

By Rachel Metz, CNN Business A million bears walking on the streets of Hong Kong. A strawberry frog. A cat made out of spaghetti and meatballs. These are just a few of the text descriptions that people have fed to cutting-edge artificial intelligence systems in recent weeks, which these systems — notably OpenAI’s DALL-E 2

By Clare Duffy, CNN Business In the wake of the Supreme Court’s controversial decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, people have flooded social media platforms with information about how to access in-person or medication abortions to help those in states that have outlawed the procedure or could soon do so. But the situation could create