CNN – Social Media/Technology

By Diksha Madhok, CNN Business Uber wants to make booking a ride in India as easy as sending a WhatsApp message. The San Francisco-based company has partnered with Meta to launch a ride booking ability via its WhatsApp service in India, the two tech firms said in a statement on Thursday. The integration — the

By Sara Ashley O’Brien, CNN Business When Elizabeth Holmes got wind that then-Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou was working on a damning expose that would publish in October 2015 about her blood testing startup Theranos, she went straight to the top in an effort to get the story killed. Holmes, who is on trial

By Walé Azeez, CNN Business Google will ban political advertising on its platforms in the Philippines as the country prepares for elections in May. The company said on Wednesday that it will stop ads running “during an election campaign period or a silence period” in the run-up to the vote. Google considers election ads as

By Mark Thompson, CNN Business Regulators have long threatened to break up Facebook (now called Meta) because of its huge market power. Now one group of officials has followed through and ordered the company to unwind its acquisition of Giphy because the deal could hurt competitors. The UK Competition and Markets Authority said on Tuesday

By Sara Ashley O’Brien and Rishi Iyengar, CNN Business Elizabeth Holmes, flushed and holding back tears, testified Monday that she left Stanford to launch Theranos in part because she had been raped, and said she later entered into what she alleged was an abusive relationship with the person who would become her startup’s chief operating

By Hannah Ryan, CNN When people think of artificial intelligence, the images that often come to mind are of the sinister robots that populate the worlds of “The Terminator,” “i, Robot,” “Westworld,” and “Blade Runner.” For many years, fiction has told us that AI is often used for evil rather than for good. But what

By Jill Disis and Kylie Atwood, CNN Business The Biden administration is piling more pressure on Chinese companies it claims could undermine US national security. The US Commerce Department on Wednesday added a dozen Chinese companies to a trade blacklist, saying that some of the firms have supported the modernization of China’s army. US officials

By Sara Ashley O’Brien, CNN Business For 11 weeks, the only words from Elizabeth Holmes in her criminal trial came from old TV interviews, an audio recording of an investor call and text messages presented to the jury. But over the course of two days this week, and a brief appearance the week prior, Holmes

By Yoonjung Seo, CNN Business Samsung is planning to build a $17 billion semiconductor manufacturing facility in Texas as part of efforts to tackle a global shortage of chips. Announcing its largest ever investment in the United States, the South Korean electronics giant said Tuesday that the factory would create 2,000 high-tech jobs directly, and

By Michelle Toh, CNN Business Xiaomi stumbled in the third quarter as it grappled with fallout from the global chip shortage and fiercer competition. The Chinese company, which only recently became the world’s second-biggest smartphone maker, fell back to third place behind Apple in the three months ended September, according to Counterpoint Research and Canalys.

By Jackie Wattles, CNN Business Astra, a startup building small rockets that launch out of rural Alaska, notched its first successful test flight on Friday night, putting a dummy satellite into orbit. The flight sent the company’s stock price on a tear — soaring more than 30% at one point after trading hours opened Monday

By Parija Kavilanz, CNN Business Trendy soaps brand Lush Cosmetics is quitting Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat on Friday in a radical move to draw attention to how those platforms are damaging people’s mental health. The company said Monday that its accounts will be deactivated on Nov. 26, the day after Thanksgiving, when most other

By Sara Ashley O’Brien, CNN Business For months, Elizabeth Holmes sat silently, masked, in a San Jose federal courtroom as the government mounted its case to jurors that she knowingly lied about the capabilities of her blood-testing company, Theranos, in order to get money. Now, Holmes wants jurors to hear her story in her own

By Jill Disis, CNN Business China is bringing the regulatory hammer down yet again on some of the country’s largest tech firms. Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu and other companies were all slapped with fines over the weekend for violating antitrust laws, the State Administration of Market Regulation (SAMR) said in a statement. SAMR listed 43 separate

Reuters El Salvador plans to build the world’s first “Bitcoin City”, funded initially by bitcoin-backed bonds, President Nayib Bukele said on Saturday, doubling down on his bet to harness the crypto currency to fuel investment in the Central American country. Speaking at an event closing a week-long promotion of bitcoin in El Salvador, Bukele said

By Clare Duffy, CNN Business Apple posted a statement to its employees Friday evening reminding them of their rights to speak up about their pay and working conditions. The move comes after months of employee organizing in a movement that’s come to be known as #AppleToo. “Apple is deeply committed to providing employees with a

By Sara Ashley O’Brien, CNN Business Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder and former CEO of Theranos, is taking the stand in her own criminal trial. Holmes began testimony on Friday afternoon in the San Jose courtroom during the first day of the defense’s case. She is also expected to testify on Monday and Tuesday next

By Clare Duffy, CNN Business A bipartisan group of 10 state attorneys general have launched an investigation into Meta, the social media company formerly known as Facebook, focused on the potential harms of its Instagram platform on children and teens. The announcement follows extensive reporting on a trove of internal documents leaked by whistleblower Frances

By Clare Duffy, CNN Business Entering the new Amazon Web Services Skills Center is a bit like walking into a high-tech museum. Among its exhibits are a rotating, globe-shaped screen that displays images of planets or weather patterns, an interactive “smart home” model and a table full of small robot vehicles trained by machine learning.

By Yoonjung Seo, CNN Business Tim Sweeney is on a mission. The Epic Games CEO has been mounting a relentless attack on Apple, after the tech giant kicked his company’s hugely popular video game Fortnite off the App Store. Apple said at the time that Epic flouted rules on digital payments by establishing its own

By Rishi Iyengar, CNN Business Activision Blizzard confronted its second employee walkout in less than six months after a report raised new questions about CEO Bobby Kotick’s knowledge of longstanding and widespread sexual harassment and discrimination allegations at the video game company. More than 100 Activision Blizzard employees staged a walkout on Tuesday calling for

By Michelle Toh, CNN Business Google is making its largest-ever investment in Australia, after a clash with the government that saw the tech giant threaten to shut down search there earlier this year. CEO Sundar Pichai announced Monday that the company would devote 1 billion Australian dollars (about $736 million) to the country over the

By Michelle Toh, CNN Business China’s leading chipmaker is going through another massive leadership shake-up. Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) announced a wave of resignations in stock exchange filings Thursday evening. As many as four directors stepped down effective immediately, including Vice Chairman Chiang Shang-yi, who had joined the company just barely a year ago

By Jackie Wattles, CNN Business A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying four astronauts approached the International Space Station, which orbits more than 200 miles above Earth, and made a gentle in-orbit meet-up, kicking off the astronauts’ six-month stay at the space station. This mission, called Crew-3, is the fourth mission in a partnership between SpaceX

By Samantha Murphy Kelly, CNN Business Just weeks after WeWork’s much-anticipated public offering, its infamous co-founder and former CEO Adam Neumann opened up about the lessons he’s learned after he all but ran the company into the ground. “I’ve had a lot of time to think, and there’ve been multiple lessons and multiple regrets,” said

By Clare Duffy, CNN Business Tim Cook is a cryptocurrency owner. But don’t call him a bitcoin bull. “I don’t want to put any labels on me, it’s just that it’s something, from a personal point of view, I’m interested in,” the Apple CEO told journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin at the New York Times DealBook

By Jack Guy, CNN Business One of Apple’s first computers is up for auction and it could sell for as much as $600,000. The Apple-1 that is going under the hammer on Tuesday is one of the few surviving examples of Apple’s first computer in the world, according to John Moran Auctioneers. The lot includes

By Matt Egan, CNN Business Robinhood said Monday it was hit by a data breach earlier this month that exposed information on millions of customers and that hackers later demanded an extortion payment. The trading platform said in a statement that the November 3 attack allowed the unauthorized party to obtain a list of email

By Noah Sheidlower and Radhika Marya, CNN In 2006, before the advent of augmented reality games like Pokémon GO, artist Mary Flanagan wanted to find a way to get random people to play a game together. Her solution? Create a 9-foot-tall video game joystick — which made it into the Guinness World Records 2022 as

By Clare Duffy, CNN Business In August 2019, when a Facebook employee typed “climate change” into the platform’s search bar, the auto-fill suggestions that popped up included “climate change debunked” and “climate change is a hoax.” The results prompted the employee to ask in a post on the company’s internal site: “Do our policies combatting

By Sean Lyngaas, CNN Business The US Commerce Department on Wednesday blacklisted Israeli firms NSO Group and Candiru, accusing the companies of providing spyware to foreign governments that “used these tools to maliciously target” journalists, embassy workers and activists. Commerce officials added the Israeli firms to its so-called “entity list,” effectively banning the companies from

By Clare Duffy, CNN Business A former Apple employee who helped form the #AppleToo movement against alleged harassment and discrimination inside the company told the National Labor Relations Board in a complaint on Tuesday that she believes she was fired in retaliation for her organizing efforts. Janneke Parrish, who told CNN Business last month she’d

By Wayne Chang and Jill Disis, CNN Business The Chinese version of hit video game “Fortnite” is shutting down this month. The game stopped accepting registrations for new players and was no longer available for download as of Monday, according to a statement on its website. Its servers will be shut down November 15, meaning

By Michelle Toh, CNN Business ByteDance co-founder Yiming Zhang has stepped down as the company’s chairman and left the board, according to a person close to the matter. Zhang, one of China’s most successful entrepreneurs, has exited the board of TikTok’s owner, and is succeeded by Rubo Liang, ByteDance’s current CEO, the person said. The

By Jordan Valinsky, CNN Business Yahoo has shut down access to its services in China, becoming the latest American tech company to exit the country. It pulled the plug “in recognition of the increasingly challenging business and legal environment,” a Yahoo spokesperson said in a statement. “Yahoo remains committed to the rights of our users

By Michelle Toh and Yong Xiong, CNN Business Elon Musk is known for setting the internet ablaze with his cryptic tweets. Now he’s doing it in another language. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO tweeted an ancient Chinese poem Monday night. It’s not clear what reference Musk intended, but the tweet, which was titled “Humankind,” included

By Clare Duffy, CNN Business Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen said Monday she believes the company would be “stronger” if founder Mark Zuckerberg stepped down as chief executive. “I think it is unlikely the company will change if he remains CEO,” she said during an on-stage interview at the Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon. “I

By Michelle Toh, CNN Business Kuaishou, the Chinese short video-sharing app that’s known as a popular alternative to TikTok, has replaced its CEO — the latest leadership reshuffle in Chinese tech. The Beijing-based company announced late Friday that co-founder Su Hua was stepping down from the role, while staying on as chairman of the board.

By Sana Noor Haq, CNN Social media users in Israel are mocking Facebook’s company name change to Meta, as it sounds similar to the Hebrew word for “dead.” Many Twitter users scoffed at the social media company’s rebrand — revealed by founder Mark Zuckerberg earlier this week — using the hashtag #FacebookDead. “Somebody did not

By Sara Ashley O’Brien, CNN Business This week in the criminal trial of Elizabeth Holmes, jurors heard how the billionaire family of former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos eagerly poured nearly $100 million into failed blood-testing startup Theranos after a visit to its Palo Alto headquarters. The DeVos family, whose fortune stems from multilevel-marketing company Amway,

By Rishi Iyengar, CNN Business In early 2019, a team of Facebook’s researchers spent two weeks interviewing 30 users across two Indian cities, Jaipur and Hyderabad. The goal: to learn about their experiences with misinformation and fact-checking on its platforms. The fact-finding mission, which was described by one of the researchers in an internal document