CNN – Social Media/Technology

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

By Rishi Iyengar, CNN Business Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick has asked the company’s board to slash his pay to the “lowest amount California law will allow” until the gaming company fixes its issues with gender discrimination and harassment, he said in a letter to employees on Thursday. If the board approves, Kotick will be

By Samantha Murphy Kelly, CNN Business Google is now making it easier for minors or their parents to have photos of them deleted from search results. In a blog post published Wednesday, the company said it is rolling out a tool that lets parents and kids under the age of 18 request photos be removed

By Rachel Metz, CNN Business In late 2017, Facebook had a big problem: users were commenting on, “liking” and resharing posts less than they had in the past. The declines in engagement, visualized in charts on an internal document viewed by CNN Business, looked like wiggly black-and-blue frowns. Facebook decided to make a change —

By Clare Duffy and Rishi Iyengar, CNN Business Two months after former US President Donald Trump was inaugurated in 2017, Twitter executive Vijaya Gadde was asked how she felt about his proposition that he might not have won the White House without the social media platform. “To me, there’s nothing better than having a political

By Matt Egan, CNN Business Venture capitalist Roger McNamee says Corporate America shares blame for the troubles that exist today at Facebook. “What they are doing is willfully turning a blind eye to catastrophic problems that would not exist if they were not willing to advertise on these platforms,” McNamee, an early investor in Facebook,

By Sara Ashley O’Brien, CNN Business The high-profile trial of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes was delayed multiple times before kicking off last month. Now there are questions about whether there will be enough jurors to get through the second half of the trial. When the trial started on September 8, 12 jurors and five alternates

By Donie O’Sullivan, Clare Duffy, Tara Subramaniam and Sarah Boxer, CNN Business In public, Facebook has touted the resources it has dedicated to tackling Covid-19 and vaccine misinformation, even scolding US President Joe Biden for his harsh criticism of the company’s handling of the issue. In doing so, it claimed that “more than 2 billion