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In August 2023, CEO Guillaume Pousaz mandated three office days per week. When employees raised concerns about childcare and appointments, Pousaz reportedly said 'we all have kids and doctor's appointments, but you have to come three days' and 'if you don't like it, leave' multiple times. Glassdoor reviews in 2024 averaged 2.3 stars (vs industry average 3.6), with 57% disapproval of the RTO policy. Employees described being 'treated like children' and alleged the company 'thrives on racism, sexism and bullies.'

Despite CEO John Legere's promise that the Sprint merger would be 'jobs-positive from Day One,' T-Mobile conducted mass layoffs. In 2020, thousands of Sprint employees were laid off including nearly 400 in one call. In 2023, another 5,000 jobs (7% of workforce) were eliminated. Three years after the merger, T-Mobile employed 9,000 fewer people than the combined pre-merger workforce.

In August 2023, China Labor Watch released investigation findings on Foxconn's Chengdu facility manufacturing Amazon Echo and Kindle devices. Workers reported mandatory overtime exceeding legal limits (80+ hours/month vs 36-hour legal cap), wages withheld for months, inadequate safety equipment, and dismissal threats for refusing overtime. Amazon audits had repeatedly missed these violations.

In 2023, Proton publicly challenged demands from Australia's eSafety Commissioner for access to user data, arguing that breaking encryption for law enforcement would undermine security for all users. Proton maintained its position that privacy is a fundamental human right.

Thoughtworks laid off approximately 500 employees (4% of workforce) in March 2023, then 600-700 more (5-6%) in August 2023, and a further ~500 in July 2024. Employees reported leadership was opaque with zero transparency and mixed messages, having previously assured staff that layoffs were 'absolutely not on the table' while requiring furlough weeks. Stock fell 26% on the August announcement. The company expected $75-85M in annualized cost savings. Employees reported the layoffs created an 'awful environment' with anxiety before each earnings call.

In August 2023, Apple backed California's SB 244 right-to-repair bill, marking a major policy shift from its previous opposition. Apple stated it would support the bill 'so long as it continues to provide protections for customers and innovators,' citing requirements that protect user safety, security, and manufacturer intellectual property. This represented the first time Apple publicly supported state-level right-to-repair legislation.

In August 2023, DoorDash agreed to pay $1.6 million to workers after violating Seattle's sick and safe time policy for the second time in two years. DoorDash failed to establish a system for eligible workers to request and use paid time, did not provide timely compensation for using allotted time, and did not give workers monthly notice of their paid and safe time balances. This was the second violation in two years, indicating a pattern of non-compliance with basic worker protections.

In August 2023, data from 2.6 million Duolingo users was released publicly after an API vulnerability allowed scraping of user information. The exposed data included real names, login names, email addresses (not meant to be public), languages learned, XP points, and learning progress. The vulnerability was first exploited in January 2023 when data was offered for sale for $1,500. Despite a researcher publicly disclosing the API flaw in March 2023, the API remained accessible. Duolingo called it 'a scrape' rather than a breach.

In 2023, Nikesh Arora's total compensation from Palo Alto Networks was $151.4 million, up 1,355% from the previous year, making him the fourth highest paid CEO in the U.S. that year. This created a CEO-to-median worker pay ratio of 735-to-1 for the company. His compensation was $58 million in 2024 and $99.74 million in 2025, with the ratio declining to 269-to-1 in 2024 but remaining among the highest in the tech sector.

Bengio testified before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, arguing for government interventions including regulation and research investments to mitigate potentially catastrophic outcomes from future AI advances. He stated that regulation and liability could reduce the probability of a rogue AI by a factor of a hundred, and called for mandatory registration of frontier AI systems costing hundreds of millions to train.

Amodei told Senate Judiciary Committee that AI systems pose substantial risk of enabling bioweapon production within 2-3 years. Anthropic worked with biosecurity experts for 6 months to study AI misuse. Recommended tough testing/auditing regime, AI supply chain security, and equipment export limits.

Sea Limited faced a class action lawsuit alleging materially false and misleading statements regarding its Garena (gaming) and Shopee (e-commerce) business segments. The initial complaint was filed July 2023. A $46 million settlement was reached, with court hearing scheduled for July 1, 2025. The company also conducted multiple layoff rounds in 2022-2023, cutting 3% of Shopee Indonesia staff and withdrawing from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, France, and India.

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.

Intuit announced a science-based target, validated by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across its full value chain (Scopes 1, 2, and 3) by fiscal year 2040 -- roughly a decade ahead of the 2050 timeline scientists say is needed to align with the Paris Agreement's 1.5C goal. The commitment includes cutting absolute Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions 90% and Scope 3 emissions intensity 97% (per million USD of gross profit) from a FY2022 baseline. Intuit says it had already achieved carbon neutrality for prior years via decarbonization plus offsets, and has since taken concrete steps including retiring a natural gas fuel cell in favor of a renewable wind power-purchase agreement at its Mountain View and San Diego campuses, and running supplier-facing programs (Supplier Emissions Reduction Program; Supplier Climate Action Accelerator) to help vendors set their own science-based targets -- with 29% of suppliers (by emissions) committed or approved as of FY2023.

Substack has consistently maintained a 10% subscription-fee revenue model with no ad-targeting or behavioural ad systems, preserving direct creator-to-subscriber relationships and email portability. The model has been credited by writers including journalists transitioning out of traditional media with restoring viable independent reporting economics, while critics including The Atlantic argue the model concentrates writer compensation at the top. Substack publicly rejected ad-supported pivots throughout 2022-2025 funding rounds despite VC pressure.

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.'