Activity

In April 2023, a class action lawsuit alleged that DoorDash bilked millions of consumers through an onslaught of hidden and deceptive fees, exploiting struggling restaurants and a largely immigrant workforce. The lawsuit alleged DoorDash charged consumers a 'city' or 'regulatory response fee' designed to appear as though imposed by local governments, when in fact it was a company-assessed fee to circumvent pandemic-era caps on delivery commissions. The suit also alleged anti-competitive pricing practices and misleading service fee structures.

In April 2023, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said a U.S. ban on TikTok would be beneficial, stating 'We'd love that in the short term.' The comment raised concerns about anti-competitive motivations behind supporting the ban on a major competitor.

In April 2023, Wales publicly questioned a former Arbitration Committee member (Bradv) on-wiki about a possible connection to WikiExperts, an undeclared paid-editing firm, saying he did not think 'keeping these matters hushed benefits anyone other than the ultimate scammers.' Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee subsequently investigated and concluded the evidence was flawed, determining the episode was an 'obvious Joe job' (impersonation scam) and that Bradv was a victim rather than complicit. Wales apologized for his tone and voluntarily relinquished his administrative and technical tools on the site.

Yoshua Bengio joined hundreds of AI researchers, tech leaders, and policymakers in signing the Future of Life Institute open letter titled 'Pause Giant AI Experiments', urging all AI labs to immediately halt training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4 for at least six months. The letter warned of an out-of-control race to develop ever more powerful AI systems that no one can understand, predict, or reliably control.

In March 2023, Western Digital disclosed a network security breach where unauthorized parties accessed internal systems and obtained data. The My Cloud service was taken offline for nearly two weeks. Hackers claimed to have stolen approximately 10TB of data. Customer names, billing/shipping addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers were exposed. The ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware group claimed responsibility.

In 2020, four major publishers (Hachette, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Wiley) sued Internet Archive over its Open Library lending practices. The lawsuit was triggered by the 'National Emergency Library' during COVID-19 which removed lending limits. In March 2023, the court ruled against Internet Archive on all four fair use factors. The Second Circuit affirmed in September 2024. Over 500,000 books were removed and the 'controlled digital lending' legal theory was rejected.

Framework Computer published comprehensive hardware documentation including mainboard schematics, electrical reference designs, and 3D CAD files under open-source licenses. This enabled community development of custom modules and repair guides, and established a new standard for hardware transparency in the laptop industry.

In March 2023, Mozilla launched Mozilla.ai, a new startup within the Mozilla ecosystem with $30 million in initial investment, focused on building trustworthy AI. The initiative aimed to create open-source AI tools that are transparent, safe, and serve public interest. However, in late 2024, Mozilla.ai pivoted from open-source AI to building a commercial ad-targeting product, drawing criticism from the community.

Adobe trained its Firefly generative AI model on licensed Adobe Stock content and public domain works rather than scraping the web. The company developed Content Credentials, an industry-standard metadata system acting as a 'digital nutrition label' for AI-generated content. Adobe also implemented a creator opt-out preference allowing artists to indicate they don't want their content used for AI training, embedded via Content Credentials. Adobe began paying annual Firefly bonuses to contributing Stock artists in September 2023.

On March 20, 2023, a Samsung supplier in Vietnam experienced a methanol poisoning incident that killed one worker and hospitalized 37 others. The incident occurred at a Samsung display manufacturing supplier facility. This highlighted ongoing workplace safety issues in Samsung's supply chain, part of a broader pattern of occupational health problems that have affected thousands of workers over decades.

On March 20, 2023, a bug in the Redis open-source library used by ChatGPT caused a data leak where certain users could view the chat titles and first messages of other users' conversations. Approximately 1.2% of ChatGPT Plus subscribers (estimated 12,000+ paying users) had their chat history titles exposed, and some payment information (names, email addresses, payment details) was compromised. OpenAI shut down ChatGPT for 9 hours to fix the vulnerability, disclosed the incident promptly, and notified affected users.

Khan Academy launched Khanmigo in March 2023 as an AI-powered Socratic tutor built on OpenAI's GPT-4, reaching 1.4 million users by 2025. In May 2024, Microsoft partnered to make Khanmigo for Teachers free to all U.S. educators, with global expansion to 180+ countries by July 2024. Khan Academy committed that no student data would be used to train AI models. The tool operates as a Socratic guide, asking questions rather than giving answers, reflecting pedagogically responsible AI design.

OpenAI spent more than 6 months working across the organization to make GPT-4 safer and more aligned prior to public release. GPT-4 is 82% less likely to respond to requests for disallowed content and 40% more likely to produce factual responses than GPT-3.5 on OpenAI's internal evaluations. The company also published safety research for external review and led on risk assessments, conducting the only human participant bio-risk trials.

OpenAI partnered with Be My Eyes to use GPT-4 to transform visual accessibility, serving a community of over 250 million people who are blind or have low vision. GPT-4 can simplify tasks like reading news online and grants people who need visual assistance access to cluttered pages like shopping and e-commerce sites, able to summarize search results the way the sighted naturally scan them. The company also introduced GPT-4o with free access to advanced capabilities for all users.

In March 2023, Founders Fund's operations executives moved firm capital out of Silicon Valley Bank and advised portfolio companies to withdraw their deposits. This triggered a cascade of withdrawals that contributed to $42 billion being pulled from SVB in a single day, leading to the bank's collapse on March 10, 2023. The bank run caused widespread panic across the startup ecosystem and required FDIC intervention. Other venture capitalists criticized Founders Fund and Peter Thiel personally for sparking the run. While firms have a fiduciary duty to protect their investments, critics argued that the coordinated withdrawal advice was reckless and caused disproportionate harm to the broader financial ecosystem.

The Wikimedia Foundation launched Project Rewrite and the Wikipedia Needs More Women campaign to address persistent gender gaps in Wikipedia content and editorship. Only about 15% of English Wikipedia biographies were about women when efforts began. By 2024, that number had grown to over 19%, with a 26% increase in women-related content from sub-Saharan Africa between 2022-2024. The community-driven Women in Red project, supported by Foundation grants and staff, created over 130,000 biographies of women. A 2024 study found deletion nominations occur 34% faster for women's biographies than men's, highlighting ongoing systemic challenges.

Ericsson pleaded guilty and paid $206 million for violating the FCPA's anti-bribery provisions, after breaching a 2019 DPA. The original 2019 settlement totaled over $1 billion for bribery in Djibouti, China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Kuwait. In 2022, the company admitted it couldn't rule out that bribes paid in Iraq between 2011-2018 ended up with the Islamic State terrorist group.

FTC banned BetterHelp from sharing health data for advertising after finding the company revealed consumers' sensitive mental health data (email addresses, IP addresses, health questionnaire responses) to Facebook, Snapchat, and other advertisers without consent. This was the first FTC action returning funds to consumers whose health data was compromised. About 800,000 people received refund notices.

Salesforce established robust DEI programs centered around Equality Groups, with more than 50% of employees and contingent workers participating as members or allies, and membership growing 20% year-over-year. The company launched a Supplier Diversity Academy, a six-month accelerator for small businesses owned by underrepresented minorities, women, veterans, disabled, or LGBTQ+ individuals. Its Warmline employee advocacy program for underrepresented groups reduced attrition by 80% since 2020 and was named a DEI Lighthouse by the World Economic Forum in 2023.

ARM China, which contributed 24.5% of ARM's $2.68B revenue in fiscal 2023, experienced a major governance crisis when CEO Allen Wu refused to share ARM China's financial results with ARM and blocked the company's planned March 2023 NYSE IPO. Wu held the company's seal, preventing ARM from firing him. Since April 2022, Wu lodged several lawsuits in Chinese courts challenging corporate governance. ARM holds only 4.8% effective interest in ARM China through a 10% stake in an intermediate entity, while Chinese parties control the majority. In October 2023, key staff left to form competing chip design startup Borui Jingxin with government backing.

OneWeb's 2022-2023 sustainability filings with the UK CAA and FCC committed the LEO satellite operator to a 5-year post-mission deorbit standard, substantially more aggressive than the 25-year industry norm. The commitment was credited by orbital-debris researchers and the European Space Agency as a positive industry precedent for sustainable mega-constellation operations, though OneWeb's overall ~648-satellite constellation remains a fraction of Starlink's planned scale.

Following the February 6, 2023 Turkiye-Syria earthquakes, Ericsson's humanitarian volunteer program Ericsson Response deployed as a Standby Partner to the UN Emergency Telecommunications Sector (ETS) operation, active February 6 to May 17, 2023. Ericsson Response personnel were deployed on the ground February 25 to March 9, 2023, enhancing data connectivity at UNDAC coordination sites in Hatay (Feb 26) and Kahramanmaras (Mar 2), and installing 20 mobile-phone charging stations across two displaced-persons settlements (10 units at Sadaka settlement, Hatay, Mar 4; 10 units at Malat settlement, Malatya, Mar 18) to let affected residents recharge devices and contact family. Ericsson also ran a company-matched employee fundraising campaign for earthquake relief in Turkiye and Syria.

In 2023, Signal Foundation president Meredith Whittaker publicly stated Signal would leave the UK market rather than comply with the Online Safety Bill's provisions that could require breaking end-to-end encryption. The UK government ultimately backed down from requiring backdoors.

The Wikimedia Foundation pursued a years-long legal challenge against the NSA's Upstream surveillance program, arguing it violated the First and Fourth Amendment rights of Wikipedia users and editors. Research had documented a measurable chilling effect on Wikipedia traffic to sensitive topics following the 2013 Snowden revelations about NSA surveillance. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case on February 21, 2023, ending the legal challenge. Despite the loss, the Foundation's sustained effort demonstrated commitment to defending user privacy against government surveillance.

In February 2023, Tesla recalled 362,000 vehicles equipped with Full Self-Driving Beta following an NHTSA safety investigation. The agency concluded the FSD system did not adequately adhere to traffic safety laws, including running stop signs, traveling through intersections during yellow lights, and not adequately responding to speed limit changes. Tesla issued an OTA software update to address the issues.

In February 2023, more than 30 employees at Tesla's Buffalo Gigafactory were fired one day after workers publicly announced their intent to unionize with Workers United. Workers alleged the firings were in retaliation for union activity. The NLRB later dismissed the retaliatory firing charge but found merit in charges regarding workplace surveillance and captive audience meetings. In April 2024, the NLRB filed a complaint alleging Tesla unlawfully implemented policies to prevent unionizing at the Buffalo plant.

In early 2023 Meta agreed to pay approximately €170 million to settle an Italian Revenue Agency investigation that argued user-data exchange in 'free' Facebook account services constituted a VAT-taxable transaction. Italy's case was the first major test of whether platform companies should pay VAT on monetised user data. Meta was also operating under separate French and Spanish tax disputes through the same period, with cumulative European tax liability disclosed in SEC filings.

In February 2023, Christine Wilson, the sole remaining Republican FTC Commissioner, announced her resignation citing Khan's 'willful disregard for the rule of law and due process.' In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Wilson criticized Khan's 'disregard of congressionally imposed limits on agency jurisdiction, her defiance of legal precedent, and her abuse of power to achieve desired outcomes.' Wilson specifically criticized Khan's decision not to recuse herself from the Meta/Within case despite having publicly argued before joining the FTC that Meta should be prevented from acquiring any other firms.

In February 2023, GitLab announced a 7% workforce reduction affecting approximately 120 employees. CEO Sid Sijbrandij attributed the decision to conservative enterprise software spending. Employee Glassdoor reviews alleged the company had been trying to push people out before the formal layoff announcement, and described management as fostering 'distrust and anxiety.'

In February 2023, the U.S. Department of Transportation opened an investigation into Neuralink over the potentially illegal movement of hazardous pathogens. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) obtained documents suggesting unsafe packaging and transport of implants removed from monkey brains that may have carried infectious diseases including antibiotic-resistant staphylococcus and herpes B virus, in violation of federal hazardous materials law. In January 2024, DOT issued a fine of $2,480 for the violations.