CNN – Social Media/Technology

By Clare Duffy and Brian Fung, CNN Business When Russia moved to “partially restrict” Facebook access in the country last week, drawing the social network deeper into an international conflict, it prompted a defiant response from the company’s most visible representative on the world stage. Not Mark Zuckerberg, but Nick Clegg. “Yesterday, Russian authorities ordered

By Jackie Wattles, CNN Business Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, will no longer deliver Russian-made rocket engines to the United States, Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin said on state television, ending a decades-long relationship between US and Russian rocket makers. “Today we have made a decision to halt the deliveries of rocket engines produced by NPO Energomash

By Rishi Iyengar, CNN Business Google is giving its employees one more month of being fully remote before requiring them back in the office at least three days a week. The tech giant will “end the voluntary WFH period” on April 4 that it gave its employees at the start of the coronavirus pandemic in

By Sara Ashley O’Brien, CNN Business First, Amazon killed traditional bookstores. Then it opened its own. Now, Amazon is doing away with its bookstores. The e-commerce giant confirmed Wednesday that it is closing 68 retail locations, including all of its Amazon Books stores, as part of a broader shift in its bricks-and-mortar retail strategy. In

By Brian Fung, CNN Business Over the past week, Ukraine’s government has pressured major tech platforms to rethink how they operate with Russia, and it has been pretty successful. Social media companies have reduced the reach of Russian state-backed media outlets, for example, and Apple has stopped selling its products and limited some services in

By Catherine Thorbecke Fitbit is recalling 1.7 million smartwatches due to a potential burn hazard, the Consumer Product Safety Commission said Wednesday. The voluntary recall exclusively involves Fitbit Ionic smartwatch models, which contain a lithium-ion battery that can potentially overheat and pose a burn hazard to consumers, according to the CPSC. The agency said the

By Sara Ashley O’Brien, CNN Business In recent years, Ukraine has increasingly positioned itself as a tech hub, with a number of global companies leveraging its formidable IT outsourcing industry or setting up their own operations in the country. But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has forced companies to scramble to get workers out. Some tech

By Brian Fung, CNN Business As hacking by nation-states has grown more pervasive in recent years, Microsoft has long called for the creation of a new Geneva Convention governing cyberspace. But now, for the first time, the tech giant appears to be suggesting that cyberattacks tied to the war in Ukraine could potentially be considered

By Jackie Wattles, CNN Business Steve Wozniak has a new — and potentially lucrative — passion: Space junk. But the money, according to Wozniak’s co-founder in this new venture, couldn’t be further from the point. “I don’t think Steve [Wozniak] gives a damn about making another 10 cents, and I really couldn’t care less,” Alex

By Brian Fung, CNN Business Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are all taking tougher stances on content from Russian state media amid intensifying pressure from European officials for the Big Tech platforms to act against pro-Russian propaganda and address the escalating information war in Ukraine and across the internet. But there are concerns that cracking down

By Jennifer Korn, CNN Business Airbnb is offering free short-term housing for up to 100,000 Ukrainians who have been displaced by the war with Russia, the company announced Monday. The stays will be funded by donations to the Airbnb.org Refugee Fund as well as with help from hosts on the platform. Brian Chesky, Airbnb’s cofounder

By Sara Ashley O’Brien, CNN Business Amazon will no longer require its US warehouse employees to wear face masks in states where local laws do not require them, regardless of whether the employees are vaccinated or not. The company informed workers of the updated policy over the weekend, according to an internal memo viewed by

By Clare Duffy and Brian Fung, CNN Business Ukraine’s official Twitter account wants @Russia to be removed from the platform. YouTube is facing scrutiny for allowing a Russian broadcaster who is widely viewed as part of the country’s propaganda machine to continue making money from ads on the video site. And TikTok, a service that

By Jennifer Korn, Pete Muntean and Gregory Wallace, CNN The Russian invasion of Ukraine has already killed hundreds, sent thousands of refugees fleeing, and sent ripples throughout the entire world. With closed airspaces in and around the conflict leaving some stranded and flights rerouted, impending fuel price jumps, airlines and countries cutting off Russia and

By Brian Fung, CNN Business The Russian government moved to “partially restrict” Facebook access in the country on Friday after Russia’s ministry of communications accused the social network of unlawful censorship. In a statement, ministry officials said Facebook had committed human rights violations and “violated the rights and freedoms of Russian citizens” when the social

By Sara Ashley O’Brien, CNN Business In the early days of the pandemic, as households around the country went into lockdown, shoppers for Instacart had a seemingly limitless amount of grocery orders to fulfill. Their earnings were, at times, bolstered significantly by generous tips in recognition of the personal health risk workers were taking. But

By Brian Fung, CNN Google is relaxing Covid-19 policies at its headquarters and other offices in the San Francisco Bay Area and bringing back some of its famous office perks as it fully opens some of its facilities. Gone are Google’s mask mandates in all Bay Area offices, except for those in Santa Clara County,

By Rachel Metz, CNN Business The Internal Revenue Service will continue using controversial facial recognition software for the rest of the current tax-filing season to verify taxpayers’ identities before they can log on to its website. But after facing a backlash, the agency is now offering an alternative, too. The IRS announced Monday that people

By Clare Duffy, CNN Business Slack went down for many users Tuesday morning, throwing off companies that rely on the popular workplace communication platform just as workers returned from the extended holiday weekend. “We’re investigating the issue where Slack is not loading for some users,” the company said on its status page around 9:30 am

By Ramishah Maruf, CNN Snapchat on Friday announced a buddy system-like feature that allows its users to share their real-time location with friends for a period of time. The safety feature is being rolled out as more people are returning to school campuses, traveling, going out on dates and otherwise resuming what they did before

By Jennifer Korn, CNN Business Eviation, the company behind what is supposed to be the world’s first all-electric passenger airplane, has undergone an unexpected change in leadership just before the plane’s projected first flight — and the company and the now-former CEO are offering different takes on the situation. Eviation, an Israel-based company, has said

By Clare Duffy, CNN Business Google plans to develop new privacy measures that remove the ability to track users across apps on Android devices, potentially rattling digital advertising-based businesses like Facebook that have already been disrupted by app tracking changes introduced by Apple last year. Google said Wednesday that it is launching a multi-year effort

By Brian Fung, CNN Two US senators are pushing to curb the potentially harmful impacts of social media on young people with a new bill targeting tech platforms’ handling of content surrounding issues such as eating disorders, substance abuse and suicide. The new bipartisan legislation, known as the Kids Online Safety Act, was introduced Wednesday

By Jackie Wattles, CNN Business Virgin Galactic is reopening sales of its $450,000 tickets that get customers a 90-minute joyride aboard an air-launched rocket that brushes the edge of space. The company already has about 600 reservations from its first round of ticket sales, which priced a trip to suborbital space at about $200,000 to

By Rachel Metz, CNN Business Mark Zuckerberg stares at a cartoon version of himself in a virtual world and tries to pick an outfit for his avatar to wear. Zuckerberg flicks his hand to change the avatar’s apparel, switching from a black shirt, slacks and white sneakers to a skeleton costume to an astronaut suit.

By Brian Fung, CNN Texas is suing Facebook’s parent company, Meta (FB), over allegations the social media giant illegally harvested the facial recognition data of tens of millions of state residents for a decade. The lawsuit, filed Monday in Texas’s Harrison County District Court, argues that a now-shuttered Facebook photo-tagging feature failed to get Texans’

By Jackie Wattles, CNN Business Jared Isaacman — the billionaire CEO of payments processing company Shift 4 — is buying three more flights with SpaceX, the first of which is scheduled for this year and could put Isaacman and SpaceX on track to travel deeper into space than any human has traveled in a half

By Brian Fung, CNN Business Amazon will no longer require its fully vaccinated warehouse employees to wear face masks at work in states that have eased up on mask mandates, the company said in an internal memo Thursday. The announcement comes as a string of states, including California, Delaware and Oregon, have said they plan

By Sara Ashley O’Brien, CNN Business Late Monday night, some Peloton staffers noticed they were unable to access work productivity apps like Slack and Okta, which they used regularly on the job. Peloton’s employees had been told about a scheduled maintenance window that might cause service outages, according to one employee, but that didn’t stop

By Jackie Wattles, CNN Business SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is expected on Thursday to give the most thorough update in two years about SpaceX’s plans for Starship, the gargantuan rocket at the heart of Musk’s interplanetary travel ambitions. Starship is a 400-foot tall, steel rocket and spacecraft combo that looks like a massive, elongated silver

By Reuters Google Analytics, the world’s most widely used web analytics service developed by Alphabet’s Google (GOOG), risks giving U.S. intelligence services access to French website users’ data, France’s watchdog CNIL said on Thursday. In a decision targeting an unnamed French website manager, the data privacy regulator — one of the most vocal and influential

By Sara O’Brien, CNN Business Uber’s business is showing signs that it’s moving past the pandemic slowdown. The company reported Wednesday that its revenue grew 83% year-over-year to $5.8 billion in the final three months of 2021, as people increasingly turned to its ride-hail platform to get around and ordered food through its delivery service.

By Brian Fung, CNN Microsoft is trying to persuade regulators to approve its $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard with a series of new app store commitments that it says will put the company “on the right side of history” as policymakers worldwide debate new laws to force competition open in digital marketplaces. The 11-point

By Danielle Wiener-Bronner, CNN Business Gaming is big business. And snack makers want in. Beverage brands have long been advertising directly to gamers. Red Bull has been active in the esports world for years, Monster Energy made waves when it appeared prominently in the game Death Stranding and PepsiCo has even developed a product, Mountain

By Clare Duffy and Brian Fung, CNN Business Peter Thiel, the controversial billionaire tech founder and investor, has used his fortune to encourage kids to skip college, to back a lawsuit that bankrupted Gawker Media and to donate to the presidential campaign of Donald Trump when many in Silicon Valley were strongly opposed to him.

By Samantha Murphy Kelly, CNN Business Samsung’s Galaxy Note smartphone line appears to be discontinued. But for those who miss it, the Note lives on in one of Samsung’s new flagship devices. The company announced during a virtual event on Wednesday its next-generation flagship Galaxy S smartphones: the Galaxy S22, Galaxy S22 Plus and the

By Rachel Metz, CNN Business On Monday, the Internal Revenue Service halted a plan that would have forced taxpayers to verify their identities with facial recognition software before signing on to its website. A day later, the company behind that software, ID.me, said it will make it possible for people to skip the controversial technology

By Jennifer Korn, CNN Business TikTok announced Tuesday that it will strengthen efforts to regulate dangerous content, including harmful hoaxes and content that promotes eating disorders and hateful ideologies. The platform plans to use creators to spread awareness of negative hoaxes, broaden the scope of banned eating disorder content and add clarity on prohibited speech

By Jennifer Korn, CNN Business Apple on Tuesday said it plans to introduce a contactless payment option later this year that will let businesses use iPhones to process transactions in stores without any additional hardware, competing with services like Square. The new “Tap to Pay” feature will allow US merchants of all sizes to accept

By Rachel Metz, CNN Business The Internal Revenue Service is halting a plan that would have required taxpayers to verify their identities with facial recognition software before signing on to its website following backlash from lawmakers and privacy groups. The IRS said in a statement Monday that it will “transition away from using a third-party

By Brian Fung, CNN Business Amazon is dramatically increasing salary caps for its US-based technology and corporate workforce, in a nod to how the pandemic has exacerbated an already fierce competition for talent nationwide. The e-commerce and cloud computing giant announced in an internal blog post Monday that the company’s maximum base pay in the