CNN – Social Media/Technology

By Samantha Murphy Kelly and Clare Duffy, CNN Business The Facebook whistleblower who released tens of thousands of pages of internal research and documents indicating the company was aware of various problems caused by its apps, including Instagram’s potential “toxic” effect on teen girls, called on Congress to take action against the social media platform

By Donie O’Sullivan, Clare Duffy and Sarah Jorgensen, CNN Business “I have to be thin,” “Eternally starved,” “I want to be perfect.” These are the names of accounts Instagram’s algorithms promoted to an account registered as belonging to a 13-year-old girl who expressed interest in weight loss and dieting. Proof that Instagram is not only

By Rishi Iyengar, CNN Business Facebook is continuing to battle US regulators that are calling for the company to be broken up, this time asking a court to dismiss an amended antitrust complaint against it filed by the Federal Trade Commission. In a filing Monday to the US District Court for the District of Columbia,

By Rachel Ramirez and Clare Duffy, CNN The life cycle of a smartphone begins in mines around the world. There, raw materials and rare earth metals are extracted from the planet in an energy-intensive process. Those materials get transported to factories where they’re refined, often using high temperatures and significant energy, and turned into components

By Samantha Murphy Kelly, CNN Business A Facebook executive was grilled by Senators on Thursday about the impact its apps have on younger users, two weeks after an explosive report indicated the company was aware that Facebook-owned Instagram could have a “toxic” effect on teen girls. The hearing, featuring Facebook’s global head of safety, Antigone

By Rachel Metz, CNN Business Google Maps is making it easier to find the latest information about wildfires as part of a push to ensure the immensely popular app is more useful during emergencies. On Wednesday, Google said it’s adding a new wildfire layer to Google Maps, which users will be able to turn on

By Samantha Murphy Kelly, CNN Business Amazon is continuing its quest to cover our homes and bodies with Amazon devices. At a livestreamed media event on Tuesday, the company showed off a handful of new Amazon-branded products, including an Echo device that hangs on the wall and acts as a digital whiteboard for the home,

By Sara Ashley O’Brien, CNN Business The testimony of a former Theranos lab director is set to continue Wednesday in the criminal trial of the failed blood-testing startup’s founder and former CEO, Elizabeth Holmes. It will mark the third day that jurors will hear from the man who is now known to be the first

By Sara Ashley O’Brien, CNN Business For a time, Elizabeth Holmes was a media darling. The college dropout who started her blood-testing company Theranos at 19 graced the cover of magazines such as Forbes, Fortune, and Inc. in her signature black turtleneck to help cultivate her image as “the next Steve Jobs.” She was upheld

By Rishi Iyengar, CNN Business It was an eventful week in the closely-watched trial of Elizabeth Holmes, with witnesses who included scientists, medical professionals, a patient and even the former US Secretary of Defense laying out how the promise of Holmes’ blood testing company Theranos fell apart. Here’s what you need to know. The miscarriage

By Jackie Wattles, CNN Business As Jared Isaacman and his three fellow crewmates were freeflying through Earth’s orbit, shielded from the unforgiving vacuum of space by nothing but a 13-foot-wide carbon-fiber capsule, an alarm started blaring. The SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft’s systems were warning the crew of a “significant” issue, Isaacman said. They’d spent months

By Clare Duffy and Evan Perez, CNN Business Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou and the US Department of Justice on Friday entered an agreement to defer prosecution of US charges against her until late 2022, after which point the charges could be dropped. The deal, which allowed Meng to return to China, could bring to an

By Samantha Murphy Kelly, CNN Business The latest battle in office life may be over whether or not to keep the camera on during virtual meetings. One woman who works at a New York-based nonprofit told CNN Business she received an HR complaint in August for the first time in her career because she kept

By Matt Egan, CNN Business The shortage of computer chips is raising the price of new and used cars, delaying shipments of electronics and holding back the economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic. “It’s a huge problem,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told CNN ahead of leading a White House meeting with manufacturers and users of

By Laura He, CNN Business Alibaba is dumping its shares in one of China’s largest TV broadcasters just months after it bought them, as the company comes under growing pressure from a government campaign to rein in Big Tech’s power and influence. Alibaba plans to sell its 5% stake in Mango Excellent Media, according to

By Matt Egan, CNN Business From the climate crisis to Covid, Marc Benioff sees a common thread for what ails America today: deception that is allowed to spread like wildfire on Facebook. “This digital revolution really kind of has the world in its grip. And in that grip, you can see the amount of mistrust

By Sara Ashley O’Brien and Rishi Iyengar, CNN Business James Mattis, the former US Secretary of Defense and onetime Theranos board member, recounted how he lost confidence in the failed blood-testing startup during his testimony Wednesday in the criminal trial of the company’s founder and former CEO Elizabeth Holmes. Mattis, in a San Jose federal

By Rishi Iyengar, CNN Business Apple will not allow Fortnite back on its devices until its legal battle with the video game’s maker, Epic Games, has fully concluded, potentially delaying the game’s return to iPhones by several years. A lawyer for Apple said the company “has exercised its discretion not to reinstate Epic’s developer program

By Samantha Murphy Kelly, CNN Business When Microsoft closed its Redmond, Washington offices in March 2020 due to the pandemic, the Surface team grabbed what they could for their home offices. For a handful of engineers and product designers, that included The Frankenstein, a prototype for a versatile, transformable laptop built in concert with Windows

By Matt McFarland, CNN Business Ryan Schmutzer and Tracy Bloemer, owners of businesses that deliver packages for Amazon in Portland, Oregon, hit their breaking point this spring. Both had run technically independent businesses since 2019 that usually rent vans owned by Amazon, and are paid by Amazon to deliver its packages. The businesses are called

By Jordan Valinsky, CNN Business Google is dramatically expanding its office presence in New York City with a $2.1 billion purchase on Manhattan’s West Side. The move comes even as the company embracing a hybrid work model because of the pandemic. Google said Tuesday that the new office will be an “anchor” of its sprawling

By Sara Ashley O’Brien, CNN Business A longtime Theranos scientist depicted Elizabeth Holmes as prioritizing a business partnership over the possible well-being of patients in testimony capping off the first full week of witnesses taking the stand in the criminal trial of the disgraced founder. The witness, Surekha Gangakhedkar, a scientist who worked for Theranos

By Jackie Wattles, CNN Business Four people, all of whom just six months ago had no formal spaceflight training, strapped themselves into a SpaceX capsule atop a 200-foot-tall rocket and took a three-day spin around Earth. After splashing down off the coast of Florida on Saturday, the passengers emerged from their capsule, smiling and waving,

By Rachel Metz, CNN Business Employees at Telhio Credit Union are already used to having their internal communications monitored to ensure compliance with US financial rules. But Telhio, which is based in Columbus, Ohio, and has over 250 employees, recently began watching for something else, too: indications of unconscious and overt bias in emails, texts,

By Chris Isidore, CNN Business Elon Musk mocked President Joe Biden over the weekend after Saturday’s successful splashdown of SpaceX’s Inspiration4 flight carried four tourists on a three-day orbital mission. When someone asked Musk on Twitter why Biden hadn’t acknowledged the accomplishment, the SpaceX and Tesla CEO offered some choice words. “He’s still sleeping,” Musk

By Laura He, CNN Business Cheng Wei built a world-class ride-hailing app that not even Uber could keep up with in China. But Didi’s risky play for expansion and dominance — culminating in a disastrous IPO this summer — has caused it to run afoul of Beijing. And now, the company’s top executive faces a

By Jackie Wattles, CNN Business Four people returned to Earth from a three-day extraterrestrial excursion aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule on Saturday evening, marking the end of the first-ever flight to Earth’s orbit flown entirely by tourists or otherwise non-astronauts. “Thanks so much SpaceX, it was a heck of a ride for us,” billionaire

By Scottie Andrew, CNN Before computers were a staple of workplaces, schools, libraries and many homes, they were bulky, expensive and a luxury many couldn’t afford. Enter Clive Sinclair. The British inventor’s first personal computer, the ZX80, was a slim steal at $200. The invention and its more advanced successors helped bring computing to the

By Zahra Ullah, CNN A voting app created by allies of prominent Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny was removed from Google and Apple’s online stores in Russia just as polls opened for parliamentary elections, according to a series of tweets from Navalny’s team on Friday. Ivan Zhdanov, a key ally of the jailed dissident, tweeted an

Story by Clare Duffy, CNN Business Video by John General, CNN Business As the Taliban entered Kabul last month, the team behind the crowdsourced news alert app Ehtesab deserted their office in the city. But they continued their work of providing Afghans with critical information, such as which roads were congested and where outbreaks of

By Rishi Iyengar, CNN Business Microsoft has a solution for the familiar problem of needing to remember too many passwords: doing away with them altogether. The company announced Wednesday that it will introduce a “passwordless account” option for all users of several popular services such as Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft OneDrive in the coming weeks.

By Sara Ashley O’Brien, CNN Business Erika Cheung, a former Theranos lab worker turned whistleblower, testified Wednesday during the trial of founder Elizabeth Holmes about how she grew increasingly uncomfortable about the startup’s ability to accurately conduct blood tests on patients. In her testimony, Cheung detailed her growing concerns about the company’s devices failing quality

By Jackie Wattles, CNN Business A SpaceX rocket soared into orbit Wednesday evening, carrying four people — none of whom are professional astronauts — and kicking off the first-ever mission to Earth’s orbit crewed entirely by tourists. The launch pad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida was dramatically illuminated with spotlights against the night

By Jackie Wattles, CNN Business For centuries, a setting sun has signaled the end of fasting rituals on holidays such as Ramadan and Yom Kippur, a cue to tuck into a delicious meal after a full day of deprivation. But what if the sun’s clockwork were to suddenly change, as it does for astronauts riding

By Jordan Valinsky, CNN Business Apple is releasing iOS 15, its eagerly anticipated operating system for iPhone and iPads, on September 20. The release date was confirmed in an Apple press release about the newly announced iPhones that go on sale Friday. Per usual, the new iOS version will be available as a free download

By Charles Riley, CNN Business Instagram says it’s looking at new ways to discourage users from focusing on their physical appearance after The Wall Street Journal revealed that Facebook researchers have repeatedly found that the photo-sharing platform is toxic for teen girls. The newspaper reported on Tuesday that researchers at Facebook, which purchased Instagram in

By Sara Ashley O’Brien, CNN Business The criminal trial of Theranos founder and former CEO Elizabeth Holmes resumed Tuesday with the first full day of witness testimony. Two former employees, including Erika Cheung, who reported the company to regulators in 2015, took the stand. Cheung, a lab worker, joined Theranos in 2013 out of undergrad

By Rishi Iyengar, CNN Business Activision Blizzard employees have filed a complaint accusing the gaming company of unfair labor practices, alleging that it unlawfully cracked down on their organizing efforts that took place in the wake of widespread harassment and discrimination allegations. The California-based gaming company “threatened employees that they cannot talk about or communicate

By Jackie Wattles, CNN Business On Wednesday, four people — none of whom are professional astronauts — will strap themselves into a capsule atop a 200-foot-tall SpaceX rocket that will blast them past the speed of sound and up to 17,500 miles per hour. This mission, dubbed Inspiration4, is the first orbital mission in the

By Sean Lyngaas, CNN Business Moody’s is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to better evaluate the cybersecurity risks that face America’s largest corporations. The announcement from the company — whose credit ratings can influence global markets — comes as Biden administration officials are urging major firms to be more transparent about the security of

By Clare Duffy and Kerry Flynn, CNN Business Journalism is often considered the first draft of history, but what happens when that draft is written on a software program that becomes obsolete? Adobe ending support for Flash — its once ubiquitous multimedia content player — last year meant that some of the news coverage of

By Rishi Iyengar and Clare Duffy, CNN Business Apple can no longer prohibit app developers from directing users to payment options outside its App Store, a judge ruled on Friday. The decision, which followed a contentious court battle with the maker of the hugely popular Fortnite video game, is a major blow to Apple —

By Jordan Valinsky, CNN Business Yahoo has hired away Tinder’s top executive to become its new chief executive officer. Apollo Management Group, which recently bought the ailing search engine for $5 billion, announced Friday that Jim Lanzone will be Yahoo’s new CEO as of September 27. He’s succeeding Guru Gowrappan, who has led Yahoo since

By Matt McFarland, CNN Business The brightly-colored robotic boats made by Saildrone seem to have a death wish. Saildrone makes autonomous ocean vessels to study the environment. This summer, the Silicon Valley startup sent five of its vessels directly into the path of hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean. While airplanes can fly through hurricanes, the

By Rachel Metz, CNN Business In November 2014, Chantelle Darby awoke to an excrement-fueled nightmare. Her Roomba robot vacuum was set to run in the middle of the night, while she, her husband, and their dogs were asleep. But one of the three dogs — a foster pooch named MacGregor — pooped in the house

By Matt Egan, CNN Business Microsoft announced Thursday that it’s scrapping plans to fully reopen US offices early next month because of concerns about the Delta variant. The tech giant declined to set a new reopening date but promised to give employees 30 days’ notice. “Given the uncertainty of Covid-19, we’ve decided against attempting to

By Jill Disis and Hilary Whiteman, CNN Business Media companies in Australia are liable for the comments that Facebook users post under their articles, the country’s highest court ruled this week. The decision could have widespread consequences for how Australian publishers interact with their readers on social media. The High Court of Australia on Wednesday