CNN – Social Media/Technology

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

Reuters Network gear maker Cisco Systems has made a takeover offer worth more than $20 billion for software maker Splunk, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. The offer was made recently, and the companies are not in active talks, the newspaper said, citing some of the sources. Cisco

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 Jackie Wattles, CNN Business Up to 40 of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites are expected to fall out of orbit thanks to some inopportune timing: The company launched the satellites directly into a solar storm. A batch of 49 Starlink internet satellites were on SpaceX’s latest launch on February 3, and now the company is expecting

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 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 Jackie Wattles, CNN Business Four years ago this week, the most powerful operational rocket in the world, SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, made its inaugural launch from Florida and tore into outer space carrying nothing other than Elon Musk’s personal Tesla roadster. The cherry red sports car — which is occupied by a spacesuit-clad mannequin nicknamed

By Matt McFarland, CNN Business Cruise, the self-driving subsidiary of General Motors, started offering robotaxi rides this week in San Francisco. Anyone can sign up for the chance to be selected to get a ride in a self-driving car, provided they don’t mind staying up late. Cruise’s robotaxis are generally only operating from 11 p.m.

By Clare Duffy, CNN Business Peter Thiel, one of Facebook’s longest-serving and most controversial board members, plans to step down from the company’s board later this year, the company said Monday. Thiel, an early investor in Facebook, has served on the board of the company, now known as Meta, since 2005, one year after the

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