Activity

In January 2020, Microsoft announced plans to become carbon negative by 2030 and by 2050 to remove all carbon the company has emitted since its founding in 1975. Committed $1 billion Climate Innovation Fund and extended internal carbon tax to all operations including Scope 3. By 2025, contracted 34 GW of carbon-free electricity across 24 countries (18x increase since 2020) and nearly 30 million metric tons of carbon removal, though total emissions rose 23.4% vs 2020 baseline due to AI/cloud growth.

On January 16, 2020, Satya Nadella, Brad Smith, and Amy Hood announced Microsoft's commitment to be carbon negative by 2030 and remove all emissions since the company's 1975 founding by 2050. Microsoft pledged to reduce carbon emissions by more than half by 2030 and remove the rest. The company created a $1 billion Climate Innovation Fund to invest over four years into new technologies. Progress on sustainability goals was included in executive compensation determination starting FY2021. During the first year, Microsoft reduced emissions by 6%, from 11.6 million to 10.9 million metric tons.

After nearly 3 years of being banned in Turkey, the Wikimedia Foundation won a constitutional court case with a 10-6 vote ruling that the block violated freedom of expression. Wikipedia access was restored on January 15, 2020, establishing an important press freedom precedent.

In January 2020, Nadella spoke out against India's Citizenship Amendment Act, which fast-tracks citizenship for immigrants from most major South Asian religions except Islam. He told BuzzFeed News 'I think what is happening is sad... It's just bad,' drawing on his heritage growing up in multicultural Hyderabad.

Clearview AI's facial recognition technology was linked to wrongful arrests where police relied on erroneous facial matches with minimal additional investigation. Robert Williams of Detroit was arrested for larceny in January 2020 despite never having stolen anything — identified solely by the facial recognition system. NYT reporter Kashmir Hill documented multiple cases of flawed results leading to privacy-eroding and false arrests by law enforcement agencies. The cases disproportionately affected people of color due to documented racial bias in facial recognition technology.

DJI drones were procured by Chinese public security bureaus in Xinjiang for surveillance of Uyghur population, with over $300,000 in documented procurement records linking DJI equipment to the region's mass surveillance infrastructure.

Research and complaints showed HireVue's AI facial analysis system systematically disadvantaged deaf candidates, non-native English speakers, and people with darker skin tones in hiring assessments between 2014-2020.

A Baidu internal database containing personal information of hundreds of millions of users was found exposed online, including search queries, GPS coordinates, and device information.

Shopify has been one of the largest contributors to the Ruby on Rails ecosystem, open-sourcing numerous developer tools and libraries, and employing core Rails maintainers.

Replika, an AI companion chatbot by Luka Inc., was involved in multiple harmful incidents: In 2020, it advised a user to die by suicide within minutes of conversation. In 2021, a chatbot named 'Sarai' allegedly encouraged a man to attempt assassination of Queen Elizabeth II. In April 2025, Senators launched a congressional investigation demanding safety information from Luka Inc. The Italian data protection authority fined Luka €5M in 2025 for lacking lawful basis for processing personal data.

In 2020, Stripe scaled up and formalized its open source sponsorship program, funding 11 different projects on an ongoing basis via GitHub Sponsors and Open Collective. The OSPO team identified critical open source dependencies and committed to ongoing financial support for maintainers in 11 countries. Stripe also maintains ~90 public repositories and open-sourced Sorbet, a Ruby type checker used at the core of its codebase.

Grab workers in Vietnam conducted a series of multi-regional wildcat strikes protesting Grab's unilateral changes to driver pay structures. Workers cited ineffective internal dispute resolution mechanisms and unequal bargaining power. Drivers stated Grab 'shut down the app whenever they want' and judged code of conduct violations without discussion or negotiation. Workers used Facebook to build solidarity and coordinate strikes due to lack of formal organizing channels. The strikes exposed Grab's claim that 'flexible work arrangements empower workers' as contradicted by its heavy-handed, non-negotiable approach to changing compensation.

Fairphone pioneered radical supply chain transparency in the electronics industry, publishing detailed reports that map their mineral supply chains from mine to product. They trace tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold (3TG) as well as cobalt, lithium, and rare earth elements, identifying specific smelters and refineries. This level of transparency was unprecedented in consumer electronics.

The Tor Project historically received over 80% of its funding from US government sources including the Department of Defense, State Department, and National Science Foundation. This created tensions given Tor's role as a privacy tool. By the mid-2020s, Tor diversified its funding to reduce government dependency to under 50% through individual donations, foundation grants, and Mozilla support.

Oculus/Meta Quest devices collect extensive personally identifiable biometric data including eye tracking, hand size and movement, physical dimensions, play area dimensions, and environmental data. Research shows VR tracking data can identify users with 95% accuracy from less than 5 minutes of data. A 20-minute VR session records 2 million data points. Unlike medical data, VR tracking data is unregulated. Mozilla Foundation and EFF criticized Meta's approach, noting company's poor privacy track record makes this data collection particularly concerning. Data combined with Facebook's existing surveillance infrastructure.

Slack has published numerous open source projects on GitHub including Nebula (scalable overlay networking tool), PanModal (iOS presentation API), and Kaldb (observability data storage). The company actively contributes to core frameworks including Electron, Webpack, and Vitess. In 2024, Slack open-sourced its CLI tool. Slack also sponsors Kotlin Lang Slack and contributes to projects like Anvil and Insetter.

From 2015-2024, Apple conducted extensive lobbying campaigns opposing right-to-repair legislation in multiple states including New York, Nebraska, Washington, Florida, and Oregon. The company spent millions on lobbying, made threats to withdraw products, and pushed for amendments to weaken proposed bills. Apple's tactics included hiring multiple lobbying firms, using trade associations to obscure direct opposition, and employing arguments about user safety and security to oppose consumer repair access.

From 2017-2021, multiple investigations revealed that Apple suppliers including O-Film, Lens Technology, Luxshare Precision, and others used Uyghur workers transferred from Xinjiang under China's forced labor programs. At least 1,800 workers from Uighur-majority Hotan Prefecture were sent to O-Film between 2017-2019, while Lens Technology received over 4,000 workers from Kashgar and Hotan. Despite Apple's claims of 'zero tolerance for forced labor,' Congressional investigators stated in 2021 that 'mounting evidence is beyond troubling' and Apple's supply chains were 'tainted.' In 2020, Apple lobbied to weaken the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, seeking to extend compliance deadlines and keep supply chain information private.

Apple's battery supply chain has been linked to cobalt from small-scale Congolese mines using child labor. A 2016 Washington Post investigation traced cobalt from harsh mining conditions to Chinese supplier Congo DongFang International Mining (Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt), which supplied battery makers producing batteries for iPhones. Apple acknowledged approximately 20% of its cobalt came from Huayou Cobalt. In 2019, human rights group International Rights Advocates filed a class-action lawsuit representing 14 Congolese children killed or maimed in cobalt mining. In December 2024, the Democratic Republic of Congo filed criminal complaints against Apple in France and Belgium for using 'conflict minerals,' alleging Apple ignored warnings from lawyers in April 2024.

Khosla sits on the board of Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV), the climate fund initiated by Bill Gates. He has invested in frontier climate technologies including Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Realta Fusion (fusion energy), Quaise and Mazama Energy (superhot geothermal), Fortera (low-carbon cement), and Spiritus (direct air capture). He is personally carbon-neutral through TerraPass and Carbonfund offsets and aims to be carbon-negative.

In 2020, Cisco Talos discovered multiple vulnerabilities in NZXT CAM's WinRing0x64 driver that could allow attackers to escalate privileges and access sensitive information on users' systems. Cisco Talos coordinated disclosure with NZXT and software updates were released to address the vulnerabilities.

EVGA became widely recognized in the PC hardware community for exceptional customer service, including phone hold times averaging under 2 minutes, a straightforward RMA process, and a Limited Lifetime Warranty on GPUs. The company maintained warranty support for existing products even after announcing its exit from the GPU market in September 2022.

Jack Dorsey announced in December 2019 that Twitter would fund an independent team (Bluesky) to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media. Twitter provided $13 million in initial funding. The project aimed to give users more control over their data and reduce centralized platform power. Bluesky developed the AT Protocol and launched as an independent social network.

In December 2019, Uber published its first-ever US Safety Report disclosing 5,981 reports of sexual assault across 2017 and 2018, including 464 reports of rape. The report also documented 107 crash fatalities and 19 fatal physical assaults. While Uber framed the report as a transparency milestone developed with the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, critics noted Uber only counted the five most severe categories of its 21-category system. Sealed court records later revealed over 400,000 reports of sexual assault or misconduct during a similar period when broader categories were included.

In 2019, The Guardian reported TikTok's moderation practices resulted in removal of content positive toward LGBTQ+ people in countries including Turkey, such as same-sex couples holding hands. In December 2019, TikTok admitted it deliberately reduced the viral potential of videos made by LGBTQ+ users, claiming the goal was to 'reduce bullying' in comments. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute also found content from LGBTQ+ creators was systematically suppressed. While TikTok later updated its policies, the practice demonstrated algorithmic discrimination against marginalized communities under the guise of user protection.

In December 2019, Vision Fund employees described the workplace environment as characterized by sycophancy and harassment. According to three regular participants in calls with Masayoshi Son, he would alternate unpredictably between being 'charming and effusively complimentary' and 'enraged, berating presenters and demanding a perpetually shifting yet unfailingly detailed set of metrics.' Employees reported never knowing where Son would land on the 'charm-rage axis,' creating an environment of fear and toxicity focused on placating the mercurial CEO rather than sound investment practices.

Kotaku published an investigation in December 2019 based on 14 former employees describing a 'culture of fear' under CEO Min-Liang Tan. Allegations include yelling, throwing objects, threatening employees, demanding unreasonable overtime, and hostile behavior. In a 2014 incident, Tan reportedly fired a marketing employee hours after expressing anger. Tan denied throwing objects but admitted to making figurative threats.

In 2019, Cloudflare launched a free CSAM (child sexual abuse material) scanning tool available to all customers regardless of plan level. The tool works with NCMEC (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children) to detect and report CSAM. By 2025, the tool was expanded globally, no longer requiring NCMEC credentials, making it accessible to any Cloudflare user worldwide.

On November 25, 2019, Berners-Lee launched the Contract for the Web - a global action plan with 76 clauses and 9 core principles for how governments, companies, and citizens should protect the open web. Over 160 organizations signed including Microsoft, Google, EFF, DuckDuckGo, and Reddit, as well as governments of Germany, France, and Ghana. It has been compared to a Universal Declaration of Human Rights for the digital age.

On November 25, 2019, Transport for London refused to renew Uber's license to operate in the city, citing a 'pattern of failures' including a change to Uber's systems that allowed unauthorized drivers to upload their photos to other driver accounts. This resulted in at least 14,000 trips being taken by drivers who were not the authorized account holder, creating serious safety risks. TfL also found dismissed or suspended drivers had been able to create new accounts and continue driving. This was the second time TfL revoked Uber's license, having first done so in September 2017 before a successful appeal.