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Valve launched the Steam Deck in February 2022 with official iFixit partnership for replacement parts. The OLED model scored 9/10 for repairability. Valve released CAD design files under Creative Commons for 3D printing and modding, and opened authorized repair centers for mail-in repairs free under warranty.

In 2022, Team17 QA staff reported base pay of £16,000/year (below UK minimum wage), with senior testers earning £19,000 (barely above). Employees reported being unable to 'afford to heat their homes, have 3 meals a day or replace clothes with holes' while CEO Debbie Bestwick made ~$10.24 million and had £200M personal fortune. Women who received 'suggestive and degrading messages and photos from male colleagues' were told by HR to 'handle the issue themselves' or saw perpetrators get 'a slap on the wrist.' One female employee said she feared being 'gaslit' by HR.

In February 2022, Meta announced a partnership with the UAE government's Federal Competitiveness and Statistics Centre to support policy-making using Meta's data tools. Meta provides access to real-time aggregate public data on traffic, demographics, and social media use to help the UAE government design future initiatives. The UAE government described it as enhancing 'the effectiveness of government policies' for a country with documented restrictions on speech and press freedom.

In early 2022, Greylock Partners hired Mustafa Suleyman as a venture partner. Suleyman had been placed on administrative leave from DeepMind in 2019 following complaints about bullying employees. Suleyman publicly acknowledged the issue, stating he had been 'very demanding and pretty relentless' and that 'a couple of colleagues made a complaint about my management style.' The hiring raised questions about accountability for workplace misconduct in tech leadership.

In January 2022, Team17 announced MetaWorms NFT project without informing most employees, including the social media team who faced public harassment. Partner studios Aggro Crab, Playtonic, and SMG condemned the project - Aggro Crab called NFTs 'an overall fucking grift' and vowed not to work with Team17 again. The project was cancelled within 24 hours. An internal FAQ warned employees that 'criticising or embarrassing Team17' publicly 'could be cause for disciplinary action.' Staff who opposed NFTs internally were ignored by management.

In January 2022, Neil Young demanded Spotify remove his music over Joe Rogan Experience episodes spreading COVID-19 vaccine misinformation. Joni Mitchell and other artists followed. Spotify added content advisories but refused to remove misinformation outright, and removed 70 episodes containing racial slurs. Despite the controversy, Spotify renewed Rogan's deal for up to $250M in February 2024, making it non-exclusive.

On the All-In podcast in January 2022, Chamath Palihapitiya stated 'nobody cares about what's happening to the Uyghurs' and said he would be lying if he said he cared. He listed supply chain issues, climate change, and healthcare as his actual priorities. After widespread backlash, the Golden State Warriors distanced themselves from him, calling him a 'limited investor.' He issued a statement acknowledging he came across as 'lacking in empathy' but did not specifically address the Uyghurs. He later divested from the Warriors in June 2023.

In January 2022, over 80 fact-checking organizations sent an open letter to Wojcicki calling YouTube 'one of the major conduits of online disinformation and misinformation worldwide' and stating YouTube's measures to combat misinformation are 'proving insufficient.'

In January 2022, Citizen Lab and Access Now revealed that 22 employees of El Faro, a prominent Salvadoran independent news outlet, had their phones infiltrated with Pegasus between July 2020 and November 2021. The investigation found that journalists from 13 other Salvadoran news organizations were also targeted. El Faro is known for its investigative reporting on government corruption and gang negotiations in El Salvador.

On January 3, 2022, Elizabeth Holmes was found guilty of four counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, sentenced to 11 years and 3 months in prison. Co-defendant Ramesh Balwani was convicted of 12 counts of fraud and sentenced to nearly 13 years. Evidence showed Theranos systematically concealed that its Edison devices produced inaccurate results, used traditional blood testing machines while claiming proprietary technology, and ignored internal warnings about test reliability.

In January 2022, Elizabeth Holmes was found guilty on four counts of investor fraud and conspiracy for misrepresenting Theranos's blood testing technology. She falsely claimed projected revenues of $100M+ when actual revenue was near zero, and misrepresented the Walgreens partnership would expand to 900 stores. In November 2022 she was sentenced to 11 years and 3 months. Holmes and co-defendant Ramesh Balwani were ordered to pay $452 million in restitution. The 9th Circuit upheld the conviction on appeal.

Elizabeth Holmes was convicted in January 2022 on four counts of investor fraud and conspiracy for misleading investors about Theranos's blood-testing technology capabilities. The company claimed its Edison device could run hundreds of tests from a finger prick of blood, but internal data showed the technology was unreliable. Holmes raised over $700M from investors based on these claims. She was sentenced to over 11 years in federal prison.

Mike Cannon-Brookes and wife Annie pledged $1 billion to climate nonprofits and investments. In 2022, co-founded Boundless Earth climate action fund. Grok Ventures secured control of Sun Cable, one of world's biggest solar projects to export clean energy from Australia to Singapore.

Tech Transparency Project documented that Google hired 197 former US government officials since 2005, including from the FTC, FCC, and State Department. During the Obama administration alone, there were 23 revolving door moves between Google and the State Department. Google or its main law firms hired several people from the FTC, an agency that conducted investigations into Google's privacy and antitrust conduct. Two-thirds of FTC commissioners over the past two decades had revolving door conflicts with Big Tech.

Reid Hoffman was revealed to be the primary backer of E. Jean Carroll's rape and defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump, funding the suit to the tune of millions through the nonprofit American Future Republic. The grant was made before Carroll filed suit. In May 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation, awarding Carroll $5 million.

GitLab encoded its commitment to open source stewardship in a formal policy, conducting development in the open with public issue trackers, publishing its full company handbook publicly, and maintaining a public Direction document clarifying project priorities. This level of corporate transparency is rare even among open source companies, with policies, compensation frameworks, and decision-making processes publicly accessible.

Waymo sued the California DMV in January 2022 to prevent public release of data on driverless crashes, claiming it constituted a trade secret. Topics Waymo wanted hidden included emergency handling procedures and operational constraints. In February 2022, Waymo was successful in preventing the release, despite claiming they would be transparent about safety.

In 2022, Crisis Text Line was found to be sharing anonymized data from mental health crisis conversations with Loris.AI, a for-profit spinoff that sold customer service software. Data included word frequency, distress types, and user interactions. Users in mental health crisis couldn't meaningfully consent; some had to agree to data sharing to speak with counselors. Crisis Text Line ended the partnership after FCC Commissioner intervention and public backlash.

TSMC launched Southern Taiwan Science Park Reclaimed Water Plant in 2022, converting treated wastewater to industrial supply with 36,000 tonnes daily capacity by 2026 (60% of local demand by 2030). In 2024, introduced Ammonia Nitrogen Wastewater Diversion system at Fab 20 Phase 1, achieving 40% reduction in discharged wastewater conductivity and 30% cut in chemical reagent use. Arizona facility will recycle 90%+ water by 2028, up from 65% current rate.

The Cisco Foundation committed US$100 million over 10 years for climate solutions that draw down carbon from the atmosphere and/or regenerate depleted ecosystems. This was part of Cisco's broader environmental sustainability strategy 'Plan for Possible,' launched in fiscal 2023 alongside the appointment of its first-ever Chief Sustainability Officer.

Corsair's closed-source iCUE software has been widely criticized for anti-consumer practices. Users report that uninstalling iCUE completely disables manual keyboard control, effectively bricking hardware without the software. The company has also been criticized for releasing new iCUE versions that drop support for older hardware, pushing users toward hardware upgrades. The software consumes 400+ MB of RAM.

Clearview AI sold its facial recognition technology to over 3,100 US agencies including the FBI (contract signed December 2021), ICE ($2.3M contract for immigration enforcement), NYPD (11,000+ searches), and hundreds of local police departments. The company specifically marketed its use for immigration enforcement under ICE's ImmigrationOS system. CEO Hoan Ton-That actively pursued federal expansion, telling Reuters in 2022 the company would 'redouble its efforts' to convert trial users to permanent customers.

Adani's (now Bravus) Carmichael thermal coal mine in Queensland's Galilee Basin commenced exports in December 2021 after a decade of legal and protest opposition led by the Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners, Australian environmental groups and global climate scientists. The mine, sized for up to 60 million tonnes per year of thermal coal exports primarily to India, was the first new mine in the Galilee Basin. UN Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Rights repeatedly raised concerns about the consultation process with Wangan and Jagalingou.

On December 10, 2021, a tornado tore through an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Illinois, killing 6 employees. Questions arose about whether Amazon had adequate severe weather protocols and whether workers were directed to shelter in the safest areas. The incident raised broader concerns about Amazon's warehouse safety procedures and whether the company prioritized operations over worker safety during severe weather events.

On December 7, 2021, a major AWS outage in the US-EAST-1 region caused widespread disruptions lasting approximately 5 hours. Affected services included Amazon's own Ring doorbells, Alexa voice assistant, and third-party services like Disney+, Robinhood, and McDonald's mobile ordering. The outage highlighted systemic risks of cloud infrastructure concentration, as thousands of businesses depend on a single AWS region.

After being fired from Google, Timnit Gebru founded the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) in December 2021, an independent research institute focused on AI accountability, bias, and community-centered AI research. DAIR operates outside Big Tech funding structures to maintain independence in AI ethics research.

Inrupt has deployed the Solid Protocol at national scale, giving individuals control over their personal data. The government of Flanders (Belgium) deployed Solid pods for 6 million citizens. Other partnerships include NHS (UK healthcare data pilot in Greater Manchester), BBC (media), NatWest Bank (financial services), and governments of Sweden, Argentina, Basque Country (Spain), Singapore, Japan, and Helsinki.

Between 2021 and 2022, multiple children died after attempting TikTok's 'blackout challenge,' which involved choking oneself until passing out. In one prominent case, a 10-year-old girl died after TikTok's algorithm recommended the challenge video to her. In August 2024, the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that TikTok's algorithmic recommendation of the blackout challenge was not protected by Section 230, holding that the platform's recommendation algorithm constitutes its own expressive activity, not merely hosting user content.

In November 2021, Apple notified Human Rights Watch researcher Lama Fakih that state-sponsored attackers were targeting her iPhone. The HRW information security team and Amnesty International's Security Lab confirmed her devices had been infected with Pegasus spyware. This demonstrated that NSO's government clients used the spyware against staff of major international human rights organizations, not just individual activists and journalists.

On November 23, 2021, Apple announced a lawsuit against NSO Group and its parent company OSY Technologies for surveilling and targeting iPhone users with Pegasus spyware. Apple sought a permanent injunction banning NSO from using any Apple software, services, or devices, and pledged $10 million plus any damages to organizations pursuing cybersurveillance research. In September 2024, Apple dropped the lawsuit citing concerns that critical spyware files might never be disclosed and that Apple's own disclosures could aid NSO.