Incidents and actions from tracked entities.
Anthropic joined Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI in announcing 8 voluntary commitments at White House including: pre-release security testing, information sharing on AI risks, cybersecurity for model weights, bug bounties, watermarking, public capability reporting, societal risk research, and deploying AI for societal challenges.
Yann LeCun played an instrumental role in convincing Mark Zuckerberg to release Meta's Llama 2 AI model as open source in July 2023, making it freely available for commercial use. LeCun publicly argued that open-source AI is essential for cultural diversity, democracy, and preventing dangerous concentration of power in proprietary AI systems, stating 'the future has to be open source, if nothing else, for reasons of cultural diversity, democracy, diversity.'
In July 2023, Stability AI co-founder Cyrus Hodes filed a civil lawsuit against Emad Mostaque claiming fraud. Hodes alleged Mostaque 'brazenly deceived' him about the company's value and purchased his entire 15% stake for $100 - a stake worth approximately $150 million five months later when Stability raised $101M at a $1B valuation. Hodes also accused Mostaque of embezzlement, including using company funds for personal rent.
Over 2.5 years, the FTC under Khan's leadership lost every single merger challenge it brought through litigation without a single win. Courts rejected FTC attempts to block Microsoft's $69B acquisition of Activision Blizzard (July 2023, judge called case 'bald assertion') and Meta's acquisition of Within (February 2023). The FTC also lost challenges to Illumina-Grail merger. Courts found the FTC was 'weak on the facts,' could not demonstrate consumer harms, and relied on 'novel antitrust theories that courts did not recognize.'
HireVue published independent bias audits of its AI hiring tools to comply with New York City's Local Law 144, becoming one of the first companies to proactively demonstrate regulatory compliance for AI hiring systems.
In 2023, the Carnegie Corporation of New York named Timnit Gebru an honoree of the Great Immigrants Awards in recognition of her significant contributions to the field of ethical artificial intelligence. As an Eritrean Ethiopian-born American, the award highlighted her impact on AI ethics discourse and advocacy.
In May 2025, a lawsuit was filed alleging Computacenter fired a manager who reported a significant security breach at Deutsche Bank's New York headquarters. The breach involved an employee repeatedly bringing an unauthorized Chinese national into secure server rooms from March to June 2023. The manager claims the breach was not reported to SEC or Federal Reserve as required, and he was dismissed in July 2023 after raising concerns. He is seeking over $20 million in damages.
The American Foundation for the Blind recognized Discord's desktop app as a model example of how to make a complex web application accessible to screen reader users. Discord committed to WCAG 2.1 compliance and introduced accessibility features including Role Colors for colorblind users, a saturation slider for color sensitivities, text-to-speech controls, and motion/contrast adjustments. During Disability Pride Month, the company open-sourced its React-Native Drag and Drop backend to help other developers build accessible experiences.
Eric Schmidt founded White Stork, a startup developing low-cost AI-powered kamikaze drones for Ukraine. The drones cost approximately $400 each with small explosive payloads. Schmidt has invested over a billion dollars in defense AI startups including White Stork, Rebellion Defense, and Istari. He signed a memorandum with Ukraine's Defense Ministry on strategic partnership.
In 2023, iFixit filed a formal petition with the Federal Trade Commission urging the agency to investigate and take enforcement action against manufacturers who use software locks, parts pairing, and other technical barriers to prevent independent repair. The petition was supported by extensive technical documentation.
FDA inspectors found 'objectionable conditions or practices' at Neuralink's animal testing facilities during June 2023 inspections, including missing calibration records and quality assurance failures. Separately, the USDA confirmed a 2019 Animal Welfare Act violation involving unapproved BioGlue that caused animal suffering, but it was hidden from public records. DOT also fined Neuralink $2,480 for hazardous materials transport violations in 2023.
An NBC News investigation in June 2023 found that at least 35 child abduction, grooming, or exploitation prosecutions and 165 CSAM prosecutions involved Discord communications. Hundreds of active servers promoting child exploitation were identified. The FBI subsequently warned in September 2023 that violent online groups were deliberately targeting minors aged 8-17 on messaging platforms including Discord to extort them into producing CSAM, with LGBTQ+ youth and racial minorities particularly targeted.
In June 2023, UPSIDE Foods became the first company to receive both FDA and USDA approval to sell cultivated chicken in the United States. Cultivated meat is grown from animal cells without slaughtering animals, representing a technological breakthrough for animal welfare. The company launched at Michelin-starred restaurant Bar Crenn and is suing Florida over its ban on cultivated meat.
Since its founding in December 2020, Airbnb.org has connected nearly 200,000 refugees and asylum seekers with free temporary stays globally. Major efforts included housing 100,000 Ukrainian refugees (announced February 2022) and 20,000 Afghan refugees (August 2021). The organization launched a $25 million Refugee Fund in June 2021, with CEO Brian Chesky and co-founder Joe Gebbia making significant personal donations. Airbnb covers all of Airbnb.org's operating costs so 100% of donations go directly to providing emergency housing. By June 2023, Airbnb.org added a $2 million sponsorship initiative and $1 million in additional refugee funding.
Throughout 2023-2024, Yann LeCun was one of the most vocal critics of AI existential risk narratives. He called concerns about AI existential risk 'preposterous' (June 2023) and 'complete B.S.' (October 2024), publicly disagreeing with fellow AI pioneers Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio. He argued the AI alignment problem has been 'ridiculously overblown' and that it is 'way too early to regulate' AI to prevent existential risk. He debated Eliezer Yudkowsky on alignment feasibility and estimated P(doom) at less than 1%.
During the June 2023 API pricing protests, when approximately 8,500 subreddits went private or restricted, some communities labeled themselves NSFW in continued protest. Reddit administrators responded by removing entire moderation teams from protesting subreddits, citing violations of the Moderator Code of Conduct. CEO Steve Huffman dismissed the protest, saying 'It's a small group that's very upset' and telling employees internally that the protest 'will pass.'
During the June 2023 Reddit API controversy, CEO Steve Huffman called protesting volunteer moderators 'landed gentry,' comparing them unfavorably to democratically accountable leaders. Despite relying on unpaid moderator labor estimated at 466 hours per day ($3.4M annually at $20/hour), Huffman refused to compensate them or invest in paid moderation. On June 22, Reddit began pressuring subreddits continuing their blackout to reopen, threatening to install new moderators. Huffman dismissed the protest of 8,500+ subreddits as a 'small group' that is 'very upset' and said the blackout 'will pass.' The stance demonstrated contempt for volunteer labor essential to Reddit's platform while extracting value from their unpaid work.
In 2023, YouTube significantly expanded creator monetization opportunities. In February, YouTube launched Shorts revenue sharing giving creators 45% of allocated ad revenue. In June 2023, YouTube lowered Partner Program eligibility thresholds from 1,000 to 500 subscribers and from 4,000 to 3,000 watch hours, enabling more emerging creators to earn money. The lower tier initially provided access to fan funding features (Super Chat, Super Thanks, channel memberships), with ad revenue sharing unlocking at the existing thresholds.
In June 2023, Reddit implemented API pricing changes that effectively killed third-party apps like Apollo, Reddit is Fun, and Sync. The pricing ($12,000 per 50 million requests) was prohibitively expensive. Over 8,000 subreddits participated in blackout protests. CEO Steve Huffman compared volunteer moderators to 'landed gentry' during the controversy.
In June 2023, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman told employees that Apollo developer Christian Selig was blackmailing the company for $10 million. Selig publicly refuted the claim with audio recordings of his conversation with a Reddit employee that disproved the extortion allegation. In a June 9, 2023 AMA, Huffman doubled down, criticizing Selig for 'recording and leaking a private phone call' and saying he didn't know how Reddit could do business with him. The false accusation appeared to be retaliation against Selig for publicly disclosing Reddit's prohibitive API pricing that would force Apollo to shut down.
On June 6, 2023, the SEC filed suit against Coinbase alleging it violated federal securities laws by operating as an unregistered exchange, broker, and clearing agency, and by offering unregistered securities through its staking program. In March 2024, a federal court rejected nearly all of Coinbase's challenges. However, after Coinbase donated over $75M to Fairshake PAC supporting pro-crypto candidates and $1M to Trump's 2025 inauguration fund, the SEC dropped the case on February 21, 2025 under the new Trump-appointed SEC leadership, raising regulatory capture concerns.
In June 2023, Sequoia Capital announced it would split its China operations into an independent entity called HongShan, completed by March 2024. The US House Select Committee on the CCP later revealed that Sequoia China had invested in companies supporting PLA military modernization and CCP surveillance, including EverSec (PLA cybersecurity) and 4Paradigm (PLA battlefield AI). Congress raised concerns that the split was designed to avoid regulatory scrutiny while allowing continued US capital flow to problematic investments, and that HongShan would likely scrap the national security screening mechanism Sequoia had established.
SEC alleged Binance used Sigma Chain, a trading firm owned by CZ, to inflate trading volumes through wash trading. The firm reportedly executed over $300 million in wash trades.
Jack Dorsey publicly endorsed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for president in June 2023, saying Kennedy was 'focused on peace' and had 'a grasp of all of the issues.' Kennedy is known for anti-vaccine views. Dorsey later reneged on a promised $5M donation to Kennedy's super PAC.
In June 2023, YouTube reversed its policy of removing content making false claims about the 2020 US presidential election being stolen. The platform had previously removed 'tens of thousands' of such videos since December 2020. YouTube stated the reversal was because 'removing this content does curb some misinformation' but 'could also have the unintended effect of curtailing political speech.' Critics argued this enabled continued spread of election denialism.
Court filings revealed Meta engineers torrented 81.7 terabytes of copyrighted books from Library Genesis, Z-Library, and Anna's Archive to train Llama models. Internal emails showed Meta director Sony Theakanath confirmed 'GenAI has been approved to use LibGen for Llama 3' after escalation to Mark Zuckerberg, with explicit instruction to never publicly disclose the use. Engineers wrote scripts to strip copyright notices from ebooks. A June 2025 ruling found this piracy was not protected by fair use.
A June 2023 Forbes investigation citing 30+ sources found Emad Mostaque misled investors about his educational background (claimed Oxford master's degree he never completed), overstated his role at a hedge fund (junior analyst, not key decision-maker), and made unsubstantiated partnership claims with the UN, WHO, World Bank, OECD, and government of Malawi - all of which denied partnerships. Multiple sources also told Bloomberg he claimed to have been a 'secret agent' in the UK government.
Reddit laid off approximately 5% of its workforce, equivalent to 90 employees, in 2023. According to The Wall Street Journal, CEO Steve Huffman said the company would subsequently reduce hiring to about 100 from the initial plan of 300 for the year 2023. The layoffs came shortly before the controversial API pricing changes that sparked community protests, suggesting workforce reduction was part of preparation for the company's IPO.
Analysis by Issue One and Public Citizen found that 85% of Meta's registered federal lobbyists were former government employees as the company faced FTC antitrust litigation. Meta's D.C. lobbying operation expanded significantly during 2023-2024, hiring former officials from DOJ, FTC, and congressional staff. This pattern of revolving-door hiring was part of a broader tech industry trend where 75% of FTC officials had corporate conflicts of interest.
Between 2022 and early 2024, BYJU'S shed approximately 46,000 employees through multiple rounds of layoffs, reducing headcount from roughly 60,000 to about 14,000. The layoffs occurred as the company faced mounting financial difficulties, delayed financial filings, and growing investor concerns. The mass reductions affected employees across departments and geographies.