CNN – Social Media/Technology

By Sara Ashley O’Brien, CNN Business Editor’s Note: The jury has now returned a verdict in the trial of Elizabeth Holmes. Read the full story here. The jury tasked with determining the fate of Elizabeth Holmes, the former CEO and founder of failed blood testing startup Theranos in her criminal trial, said that it remains

By Samantha Kelly and Clare Duffy, CNN Business CES, typically one of the year’s biggest tech trade shows, is moving forward with plans to host an in-person component this week despite looming threats of the Omicron Covid-19 variant. Although the event will return to Las Vegas for the first time since 2020 — marking the

By Diksha Madhok, CNN Business The Indian government says it is investigating a website that purported to offer Muslim women for sale, the second time in less than a year that a fake online auction of this kind has sparked outrage in the country. The website was created on GitHub, an American coding platform which

By Samantha Murphy Kelly, CNN Business You soon won’t be able to use that old BlackBerry phone sitting at the bottom of your drawer somewhere. Starting Tuesday, January 4, the company will stop running support for its classic devices running BlackBerry 10, 7.1 OS and earlier. This means all of its older devices not running

By Diksha Madhok and Jill Disis, CNN Business Chinese tech stocks got a big boost in Hong Kong on the last day of the year, but it’s far from enough to make up for what has been a historically tumultuous time for the sector. Shares in tech and internet giants Alibaba, Baidu and Bilibili —

By Rishi Iyengar and Sara Ashley O’Brien, CNN Business The high-profile criminal trial of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes will officially stretch into a new calendar year Monday when the jury entrusted with determining her fate will continue deliberations after a short respite. The jury of eight men and four women concluded their deliberations for 2021

By Diksha Madhok, CNN Business Two of the world’s biggest chipmakers are warning that Covid-19 outbreaks and stringent lockdowns in a major Chinese industrial hub are hampering their operations. Samsung and Micron said this week that they’ve had to adjust operations in the northwestern city of Xi’an, which is experiencing one of China’s worst community

By Jordan Valinsky, CNN Business John Madden, the former Hall of Fame NFL coach, has died. But his name lives on in one of the world’s most popular video games. The football coach and broadcaster has been the face of Madden NFL for more than three decades. The pro football video game continues to be

By Diksha Madhok, CNN Business Waymo is teaming up with Chinese carmaker Geely to build electric, fully autonomous robotaxis for the United States. The self-driving arm of Google parent company Alphabet announced the partnership Tuesday, calling the deployment of the cars a big part of its commitment to “expanding access to sustainable transportation.” Both firms

By Jordan Valinsky, CNN Business Apple has closed all of its New York store locations to browsing because of a surge in Covid-19 cases. The roughly one dozen locations in the city will be limited to picking up online orders and walk-in services such as Genius Bar support. “We regularly monitor conditions and we will

By Jill Disis, CNN Business China is planning to tighten restrictions for Chinese companies that want to list overseas. And while Beijing won’t ban them from trading abroad altogether, life might be getting a lot tougher for firms hoping to score more foreign investment. China’s securities regulator proposed late Friday that any firm that wants

By Sara Ashley O’Brien, CNN Business Elizabeth Holmes’ fate in her criminal fraud trial will not be decided before Christmas as the jury failed to reach a verdict in its first week of deliberations. After more than 20 hours of deliberating across three days this week, the jury of eight men and four women concluded

By Laura He, CNN Business Tencent is dramatically cutting its stake in JD.com, China’s second largest e-commerce company, as it seeks to stay on the right side of Beijing, which has been cracking down on tech giants to rein in their growing power and influence. Tencent plans to distribute more than $16 billion worth of

By Clare Duffy, CNN Business One of the most closely-watched annual tech conferences, CES, is going ahead with plans to hold an in-person event in two weeks, even as a growing number of prominent technology companies are pulling the plug on their plans to attend in person amid a surge in Covid-19 cases. Amazon, Meta,

CNN Business Staff Supply shortages are everywhere. New smartphones have been hit by shipping delays and video game consoles are almost impossible to find. But as we do each year, the staff at CNN Business is reflecting on the tech, services and apps that made a big impact on our everyday lives in 2021 —

By Matt McFarland, CNN Business “Lord don’t let me die here. Don’t let me die like this. Not like this. I’d die any other way, but not like this.” Tim Ball, who delivered packages for Amazon until quitting this year, said he prayed the same prayer every time he walked up to a home that

By Rachel Metz, CNN Business On a chilly December afternoon I played a heart-pounding game of laser tag, flew across town on a magical broom, killed zombies in an abandoned mall, and hung out with an old friend who lives roughly 2,000 miles away — all without leaving my home or, in fact, my living

By Diksha Madhok and CNN’s Beijing bureau Chinese live-stream shopping influencer Huang Wei, known as Viya, has been hit with a whopping $210 million penalty for tax evasion and kicked off social media. Viya — also known in China as the “live-streaming queen” — was ordered to pay 1.34 billion yuan in back taxes, late

By Sara Ashley O’Brien, CNN Business Elizabeth Holmes’ fate is now in the hands of a jury of eight men and four women. The jury is set to deliberate on Monday and is tasked with determining whether the onetime billionaire who claimed to have revolutionized blood testing knowingly misled investors, doctors, and patients about her

By Brian Fung, CNN Business The Federal Trade Commission says it’s considering drafting new rules for US businesses that would more strongly regulate how they can use data and algorithms, in the latest move to clamp down on technology companies run amok. The effort could lead to “market-wide requirements” targeting “harms that can result from

By Sara Ashley O’Brien, CNN Business After three months of testimony from 32 witnesses, the criminal fraud case of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes has made its way to the jury of eight men and four women who will decide her fate. In dueling closing arguments spanning two court days, the prosecution and defense put forth

By Brian Fung and Geneva Sands, CNN Business A vague and viral TikTok trend warning of nationwide school violence on Friday — which authorities have dismissed as not credible — has nevertheless prompted widespread school closures, stretched law enforcement resources and put families on edge ahead of a critical holiday travel season. A number of

By Samantha Murphy Kelly, CNN Business “We’re about to be joined by a very important customer,” said Christian Braun, CEO of collectible e-commerce company hobbyDB, during a recent Zoom meeting with his marketing team. “Over to you, Nick.” That’s St. Nick, actually. A jolly ho-ho-ho-ing Santa entered the virtual room ringing a bell and turning

By Sara Ashley O’Brien, CNN Business The government made its final case on Thursday that Elizabeth Holmes knowingly misled investors, doctors and patients about her startup’s blood testing capabilities in order to take their money. In its closing arguments, the prosecution attempted to undercut parts of Holmes’ defense by painting the Theranos founder as an

By Walé Azeez, CNN Business Black tech entrepreneurs in the United Kingdom say they have to rely on foreign investors to get their businesses off the ground. More than a year after the Black Lives Matter protests prompted the UK government to investigate discrimination against Black business owners, British venture capital firms continue to neglect

By Clare Duffy, CNN Business The US Department of Labor has launched a whistleblower investigation into Apple, in the latest sign of tensions between the famously secretive company and its current and former employees spilling over into public view. “We can confirm that there is an open whistleblower investigation at Apple,” a Department of Labor

By Rishi Iyengar, CNN Business Apple will once again require anyone inside its US retail stores to wear a mask as concerns mount over rising Covid-19 cases and the spread of the Omicron variant. “Amid rising cases in many communities, we now require that all customers join our team members in wearing masks while visiting

By Sara Ashley O’Brien, CNN Business A group of employees at the controversial real-time crime alert startup, Citizen, voted in favor of forming a union. The Communications Workers of America confirmed that “a strong majority” of roughly 70 eligible workers voted to join its union in a National Labor Relations Board election, according to its

By Brian Fung, CNN Individual users, not tech platforms, shoulder the responsibility for the spread of misinformation online, according to Andrew Bosworth, a top exec at Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook. In an interview over the weekend with Axios on HBO, Bosworth said it is not up to Meta to stifle the views

By Jennifer Korn Over the summer, an anonymous hacker stole roughly $600 million in cryptocurrency from Poly Network, a decentralized finance network many outside the crypto world had likely never heard of. Then the hacker gave it back. Four months later, hackers stole at least $150 million from crypto exchange Bitmart. According to one analysis,

By Jackie Wattles, CNN Business Jeff Bezos’ rocket company, Blue Origin, became the subject of a federal review this fall after a group of 21 current and former employees co-signed an essay that raised serious questions about the safety of the company’s rockets — including the rocket making headlines for flying Bezos and other celebrities

By Rachel Metz, CNN Business Meta is bringing its vision of a so-called metaverse closer to (virtual) reality. The company formerly known as Facebook said Thursday that Horizon Worlds, a free app for socializing in VR that has been long in the making, is now open to anyone 18 and older with a Quest 2

By Anna Cooban, CNN Business As many as four million European gig economy workers could become employees if new draft EU legislation becomes law. The European Commission proposed new rules for “digital platforms” on Thursday that could force ride-hailing and delivery firms such as Uber and Deliveroo to reclassify their contracted drivers as employees. The

By Michelle Toh, CNN Business Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, is further clamping down on content linked to Myanmar’s military amid pressure to step up safety controls in the country. The company announced Wednesday that it would ban military-controlled businesses from Facebook, wiping out their pages, groups and accounts. The move expands existing

By Rob McLean, CNN Business Lyft is giving its employees another year to work remotely, a dramatic step among major businesses that are continuing to delay a return to the office. The rideshare company said Wednesday that it won’t require its staff to return to the office until 2023. Lyft did not cite concerns about

By Samantha Murphy Kelly, CNN Business Instagram head Adam Mosseri testified for the first time before a Senate subcommittee on Wednesday as lawmakers question the app’s impact on the mental health of younger users. During his testimony, Mosseri said Instagram is planning to bring back a version of its news feed that would give users

By Sara Ashley O’Brien, CNN Business Elizabeth Holmes’ defense rested its case Wednesday, shortly after the founder and former CEO of Theranos concluded her seventh day on the witness stand in her own criminal trial. While the prosecution called 29 witnesses to testify, the defense’s case relied almost entirely on Holmes. During her testimony, she

By Brian Fung The Federal Aviation Administration announced a new rule on Tuesday that forbids pilots from using auto-landing and other certain flight systems at low altitudes where 5G wireless signals could interfere with onboard instruments that measure a plane’s distance to the ground. The rule, which affects more than 6,800 US airplanes and dozens

By Samantha Murphy Kelly, CNN Business Video by John General, Janelle Gonzalez & Sofia Barrett, CNN Business Last September, just a few weeks into the school year, Sabine Polak got a call from the guidance counselor. Her 14-year-old daughter was struggling with depression and had contemplated suicide. “I was completely floored,” said Polak, 45, who

By Jennifer Korn, CNN Business If 2020 was defined by a spike in people frantically Googling for everything related to the coronavirus, this year saw the old standards of sports and entertainment make a resurgence in online searches around the world. Google released its annual “Year in Search” list on Wednesday, offering a glimpse into

By Matt McFarland, CNN Business Elon Musk has described electric cars as critical to fighting climate change, which he’s said he believes could cause more displacement and destruction than all the wars in history combined. So you might think he’d support the federal government funding electric vehicle charging stations. But that’s not the case, at

By Jackie Wattles, CNN Business Yusaku Maezawa, a Japanese billionaire, arrived at the International Space Station this morning after soaring into outer space aboard a Russian-built Soyuz capsule, kicking off the first self-funded tourism mission to the International Space Station in a decade. The capsule took off from Russia’s Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 2:38 am

By Sara Ashley O’Brien, CNN Business Elizabeth Holmes’ marathon testimony is expected to conclude on Wednesday morning, capping six days on the witness stand considered the main event of one of the highest-profile Silicon Valley trials in decades. Each side sought to portray vastly different portraits of Holmes to the jury. Prosecutors tried to show

By Rachel Metz, CNN Business Drew, a 21-year-old in Irvine, California, needs help: He’s transgender, and after starting hormone replacement therapy he’s facing harassment from coworkers. It’s gotten so bad, Drew tells a crisis counselor via a text-based chat session, that he’s considering suicide. He can’t quit his job, however, because he needs the money.

By Samantha Murphy Kelly, CNN Business Just a day before the head of Instagram will face questions from lawmakers over its child safety practices, the company is rolling out a handful of new features aimed at making it harder for users, particularly teenagers, to fall down rabbit holes that could be harmful to their mental

By Donie O’Sullivan, CNN Business Facebook has sold ads promoting anti-vaccine messages, comparing the US government’s response to Covid-19 to Nazi Germany, casting doubt on the result of the 2020 election, and even pushing political violence. The ads have been run by merchandise companies that have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Facebook over

By Rishi Iyengar, CNN Business The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday sued to block US chipmaker Nvidia’s proposed $40 billion takeover of UK chip design firm Arm, saying it would stifle competition and give the combined company too much control over chip technology and designs. The lawsuit threatens to scuttle the world’s biggest ever semiconductor

By Jennifer Korn Like many gamers in recent weeks, Nicole DeSantis, 33, from outside Philadelphia, combed through social media sites trying to find insider information on where to get a PlayStation 5 this holiday season. Stemming from the global chip shortage, video game consoles this year are particularly hard to come by. After successfully scoring