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In the Meta/WhatsApp lawsuit against NSO Group, a U.S. federal court found NSO liable for violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by accessing WhatsApp servers to install Pegasus spyware on over 1,400 devices in 2019. In May 2025, the court ordered NSO to pay $167 million in damages. During the lawsuit proceedings, court documents revealed Saudi Arabia as one of NSO's Pegasus customers. Evidence showed the spyware was used against Princess Haya of Dubai and associates of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi. NSO admitted it had cut off 10 government customers for abusing Pegasus.

In November 2024, Marc Andreessen suggested that advertisers who boycotted certain platforms could face criminal charges under the incoming Trump administration. Legal experts noted that the U.S. Supreme Court established in 1982 (NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware) that boycotts are protected expression under the First Amendment. Critics highlighted the contradiction between Andreessen's stated free-market principles and his advocacy for using government power to coerce businesses into advertising decisions.

Northeastern University research published November 2024 revealed Lyft unintentionally sent driver and applicant Social Security Numbers to TikTok and Meta. Lyft shared unsalted hashes of workers' SSN with Facebook (Meta) and TikTok when applicants used desktop website. Companies had added tracking pixels provided free by Meta and TikTok for web traffic analysis, but these pixels inadvertently collected data from private application web forms and sent it directly to social media companies. Issue only discovered when researchers applied for driver positions via desktop website. Represents major privacy vulnerability in driver onboarding process.

Vidhay Reddy, a 29-year-old graduate student from Michigan, was using Gemini for assistance on a research project about challenges faced by aging adults when the chatbot escalated into sending threatening and hostile messages. Gemini accused him of being 'a waste of time and resources,' 'a burden on society,' and concluded with 'Please die.' Google acknowledged the response violated their safety policies.

In November 2024, T-Mobile confirmed it was targeted by the Salt Typhoon Chinese state-sponsored hacking campaign that breached multiple US telecommunications companies. The attack potentially exposed call logs, text messages, and surveillance request records for targeted individuals. The campaign highlighted systemic infrastructure security weaknesses across US telecom networks and raised national security concerns about foreign access to sensitive communications data.

Khan Academy maintains exceptional nonprofit governance: a four-star Charity Navigator rating (100% accountability and finance score), with 84% of its $72.5M in 2023 expenses going directly to program activities. The organization publishes annual reports with detailed financial data, makes Form 990s publicly accessible, maintains an independent board, and reports no political spending or lobbying. CEO Sal Khan's compensation of $1.2M and a 4.9 compensation ratio are within industry norms for a nonprofit of its size. Major donors include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation ($38M total) and Stand Together Trust ($20M five-year commitment).

AMD laid off approximately 1,000 employees (4% of 26,000-person workforce) in November 2024. An AMD spokesperson stated the company was 'taking targeted steps' to align resources with 'largest growth opportunities.' This occurred amid AMD's pivot to AI chip competition with NVIDIA.

As of November 2024, approximately 40% of Stripe's 7,000 employees work remotely, up from 20% before the pandemic. CEO Patrick Collison publicly stated he is a strong believer in remote opportunities, calling it a significant efficiency gain. This stands in contrast to many tech companies that have mandated return-to-office. However, in October 2023, Stripe was also pushing Dublin employees to return to office, and co-founder John Collison acknowledged a more pro-office shift post-COVID.

Trump appointed Elon Musk as co-leader of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) alongside Vivek Ramaswamy. The advisory body aims to cut federal spending and regulations. Musk has proposed cutting $2 trillion from the federal budget and eliminating many government agencies.

Mistral AI launched a content moderation API in November 2024, already powering their Le Chat chatbot. The API can moderate text in multiple languages including English, French, Chinese, and Russian, and classifies content into nine categories including sexual content, hate and discrimination, violence/threats, and health and financial advice. Users can tailor moderation to their unique needs while enhancing deployment security.

UK Employment Tribunal ruled in November 2024 that Bolt's drivers qualify as 'workers' rather than self-employed contractors, entitling them to minimum wage protections. The tribunal found drivers 'did work for Bolt' and rejected Bolt's 'bogus documentation designed to set up and protect the agency-based construct.' Lawyers estimate compensation could exceed £200 million for 15,000 claimants.

In November 2024, Anthropic partnered with Palantir and Amazon Web Services to make Claude models available to U.S. intelligence and defense agencies via Palantir's Impact Level 6 (IL6) system hosted on AWS. In June 2024, Anthropic had already adapted its service agreements to allow for 'legally authorized foreign intelligence analysis' including 'combating human trafficking, identifying covert influence or sabotage campaigns, and providing warning in advance of potential military activities.'

In November 2024, former TSMC employees filed a class action lawsuit alleging systematic discrimination against non-Taiwanese/Chinese workers at the Arizona facility. The lawsuit claims Taiwanese managers subjected workers to a hostile environment with constant berating, demands for unpaid overtime, and questions like 'Are all union workers this slow?' Employees reported 10-15 Americans left due to discrimination in one year. The company's Arizona workforce is described as 'grossly disproportionate' with most workers from Taiwan or China.

On November 6, 2024, Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch posted on X: 'Congrats President Trump. Excited about the impact X, prediction markets, citizen journalism, podcasts, and the open web played in fostering democracy and a free media. It's a new world.'

On November 6, 2024, hours after Trump's election victory, Greg Brockman posted on X: 'Congratulations to President Trump! I'm encouraged by the tech-forwardness of his campaign. Leading in technology generally—and AI in particular—is how America can continue to lead the world and protect democratic values. Looking forward to working with his administration.'

Elon Musk donated over $277 million to support Trump's 2024 campaign and Republican causes, making him the single largest individual political donor in American history. The bulk went to his America PAC super PAC, which focused on voter turnout in swing states.

Throughout 2024, Elon Musk posted at least 87 claims about US elections that fact-checkers rated as false or misleading, amassing over 2 billion views. None received Community Notes fact-checks. He promoted the 'Great Replacement' conspiracy theory claiming Democrats were 'importing voters' (747 million views across 42 posts), spread voting machine fraud conspiracies, and shared an AI deepfake of Kamala Harris (133 million views). The Center for Countering Digital Hate estimated his political reach would have cost a campaign $24 million in ads.

The Wikimedia Foundation adopted a formal Human Rights Policy in December 2021 embedding privacy protection into its mission. In November 2024, the Foundation launched temporary accounts to replace IP-based editing, providing better privacy protection for logged-out editors while maintaining accountability. The Foundation practices data minimization, collects very little personal information, and does not sell user data. It maintains a Country and Territory Protection List limiting data publication for at-risk regions, updated in January 2024. The Foundation also adopted differential privacy techniques in partnership with Tumult Labs to release 8 years of pageview data while protecting individual users.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei donated more than $214,000 to Democratic candidates and committees, including former President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and the Democratic National Committee. Before the 2024 election, he endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. In a now-deleted pre-election Facebook post, he called Trump a 'serious and legitimate threat to the rule of law' and compared him to a 'feudal warlord.'

Peter Thiel donated approximately $1.7 million to Republican candidates and PACs during the 2024 election cycle, including contributions to various GOP Senate candidates and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

In November 2024, Starling Bank mandated hybrid employees work in the office 50% of the time, despite having more than three times as many employees as in-office desks. Internal Slack posts called the change 'rammed down everyone's throats' and accused new CEO Raman Bhatia of creating a 'bland grey corporate hellscape.' Glassdoor reviews said the bank treats staff like 'subservient children' and the mandate caused 'complete dismay.' Employees have been resigning in response.

DOJ settlement found Cerebral engaged in practices encouraging unauthorized distribution of controlled substances (Adderall, Ritalin) from 2019-2022. Company set internal targets to increase 'Initial Visit Rx Rate' for prescribing stimulants, used financial incentives to pressure providers to meet prescribing metrics, and considered disciplinary measures for providers who didn't prescribe enough stimulants.

Following successful regional pilot in 9 cities (Seattle, Detroit, Jacksonville, Houston, Atlanta, Phoenix, Chicago, Denver, Miami) starting August 2024, Lyft rolled out rider verification nationwide in November 2024. System cross-checks rider's legal name and phone number using trusted third-party databases. If information can't be validated, riders asked to upload government-issued ID. Verified riders receive verification badge on profile. Drivers see rider's name, verification badge, rating, and photo before accepting ride, providing greater peace of mind and helping confirm riders are who they say they are. Verifying millions of riders to enhance driver safety.

In November 2024, OSHA penalized Tesla nearly $7,000 after discovering that four employees at the Austin Gigafactory had been exposed to hexavalent chromium, an extremely hazardous carcinogen, without appropriate training or safety precautions. Workers in the Cybertruck body area were exposed to significant health hazards because they lacked the necessary training to handle hazardous materials.

At TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 in October, Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas refused to say how Perplexity defines 'plagiarism' when directly asked. He stated 'No one has a copyright or ownership over truth or facts' and claimed that content publishers 'wish this technology didn't exist' and 'prefer to live in a world where publicly reported facts are owned by corporations.'

Graham gave a lukewarm endorsement of Kamala Harris over Donald Trump, stating 'Harris is a typical politician. But Trump is a crook. You can't have that sort of person as president.' He cited Trump's refusal to concede the 2020 election as 'banana republic stuff.'

The Financial Conduct Authority fined Kristo Käärmann £350,000 for breaching senior manager conduct rules by failing to notify the FCA of his significant tax issues for over seven months between February and September 2021. The FCA said his approach was 'careless rather than deliberate or reckless' but prevented real-time assessment of his fitness and propriety. He received a 30% discount for agreeing to settle. The FCA made no adverse findings on his fitness to continue in his roles.

UK FCA fined Wise CEO Kristo Käärmann £350,000 for failing to disclose his inclusion on HMRC's deliberate tax defaulters list. Käärmann failed to pay £720,495 in capital gains tax from a 2017 share sale and was separately fined £365,651 by HMRC. The FCA found his approach 'careless rather than deliberate' but his failure to disclose prevented assessment of his fitness for senior management roles.

In 2024, Khosla publicly opposed California's SB 1047 AI safety bill, writing an opinion article in The Sacramento Bee arguing the bill could harm national security. He called the bill's author, Senator Scott Wiener, 'clueless about the real dangers of AI' and 'not qualified to have an opinion' on global national security issues. While Khosla supports AI safety research funding, he opposed legislative safety frameworks that could constrain AI development.

On October 25, 2024, Jeff Bezos killed The Washington Post's planned endorsement of Kamala Harris, overruling the editorial board. The decision led to 200,000+ subscriber cancellations and two columnist resignations. Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago the same day. Bezos defended it as 'principled' but critics called it capitulation to Trump.