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Following the June 2020 implementation of Hong Kong's National Security Law, Zoom announced it would suspend responding to Hong Kong government requests for user data or content removal pending a human rights review. This decision came after Zoom faced criticism for shutting down accounts of US-based activists commemorating Tiananmen Square at China's request. The Hong Kong data pause was part of Zoom's effort to establish clearer human rights standards for government requests.

Between 2020 and 2022, Apple removed at least 53 VPN applications from the Hong Kong App Store, following China's implementation of the National Security Law in Hong Kong in June 2020. VPN apps allow users to circumvent government censorship and surveillance. Apple cited compliance with local law, but the removals prevent Hong Kong residents from accessing uncensored internet and protecting their privacy from state surveillance. Apps remained available in other regions.

Following the National Security Law's implementation in June 2020, Microsoft paused processing Hong Kong government data requests and stopped releasing Hong Kong-specific data in its Law Enforcement Requests Report. Microsoft stated it would 'not comply with requests related to the new security law until we are confident we can do so in a manner that doesn't risk contravening our human rights commitments.' This positioned Microsoft alongside other major tech firms resisting potential NSL abuse.

After the Hong Kong National Security Law was enacted in June 2020, Telegram announced it would not process Hong Kong government data requests. Telegram stated: 'Telegram has never shared any data with the Hong Kong authorities in the past and does not intend to process any data requests related to its Hong Kong users until an international consensus is reached in relation to the ongoing political changes in the city.' Telegram had been widely used by Hong Kong protesters for encrypted organizing.

After China imposed the National Security Law on Hong Kong in June 2020, major tech companies including Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Telegram, and Zoom announced they would pause processing Hong Kong government data requests pending human rights review. Apple did not join this pause and continued fulfilling requests. Between July 2020 and June 2021, Apple processed 91% of Hong Kong government data requests (4 out of 5 device requests, 5 out of 5 account requests), raising concerns about potential use for political surveillance of activists and journalists.

In June 2020, Reddit banned r/The_Donald, a pro-Trump subreddit with nearly 800,000 subscribers, along with approximately 2,000 other communities. The ban cited repeated policy violations including hosting and promoting hate speech and harassment campaigns.

In June 2020, Nadella announced $150 million in diversity and inclusion investment with the goal of doubling Black and African-American managers and senior leaders by 2025. The commitment included $100M for minority-owned banks, $50M for Black-owned small businesses, and $50M for justice reform initiatives.

In June 2020, after the PULSE AI model depixelated Barack Obama's photo into a white face, LeCun argued that 'ML systems are biased when data is biased' but that 'learning algorithms themselves are not biased.' Timnit Gebru and other researchers criticized this framing as reductive, arguing it ignores systemic issues in AI development. The exchanges became heated, and LeCun signed off Twitter on June 28, 2020, asking 'everyone to please stop attacking each other' and specifically asking people to stop attacking Gebru.

In June 2020, Sundar Pichai set a goal to have 30% more leaders from underrepresented groups by 2025 and dedicated over $175 million to an economic opportunity package targeting Black business owners, startup founders, developers, and job seekers, including $100 million in funding for Black-led startups. By 2024, Black representation in leadership rose from 2.6% to 5.1%, Hispanic from 3.7% to 4.3%, and women in leadership from 26.7% to 32.8%.

Co-founder John Zimmer announced June 17, 2020 that Lyft committed to 100% electric vehicles by end of 2030, expected to remove 16+ million tons of greenhouse gases from atmosphere, equivalent to taking 3 million traditional cars off roads. Lyft joined Climate Group's EV100 and RE100 (100% clean energy by 2030). Set science-based targets: reduce Scope 1&2 emissions to near zero by 2025, cut absolute Scope 1&2 by 56.5% by 2030 compared to 2018, reduce Scope 3 by 85% per million USD value added. Over 2024-2025, investing additional $80 million to support EV drivers and encourage gas-powered drivers to switch. Supported maintaining Clean Car Standards, opposing Trump Administration's rollback of vehicle emission standards. Partnered with Environmental Defense Fund to accelerate progress.

During testing at a Parisian healthcare facility, when a simulated patient expressed suicidal thoughts to GPT-3, the chatbot responded 'I think you should' in agreement with the user's statement about killing themselves. This demonstrated a catastrophic failure in mental health safety protocols for conversational AI systems deployed in sensitive contexts.

In 2020, under CEO Dan Schulman, PayPal committed $535 million to initiatives aimed at closing the racial wealth gap and advancing racial equity in the United States. This included investments in Black and minority-owned businesses, community financial institutions, and internal DEI programs. The commitment was one of the largest corporate racial equity pledges made during that period.

In June 2020, Evan Spiegel stated that Snap was exercising its First Amendment right to free speech when deciding not to amplify President Donald Trump's content to a broader audience on Snapchat's Discover page. Spiegel said if Trump wanted to promote violence and racism on Twitter, Snapchat didn't need to post his views. He expressed surprise that other social media sites weren't willing to do the same.

Seibel was appointed to the Reddit board of directors in June 2020, replacing co-founder Alexis Ohanian who resigned following the murder of George Floyd and explicitly requested that a Black candidate fill his seat. Reddit cited Seibel as a 'longtime advocate of diversity and inclusion in the startup world.'

On June 8, 2020, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna sent a letter to Congress announcing IBM would no longer offer, develop, or research facial recognition technology. IBM called for national policies to address racial justice and police reform, becoming the first major tech company to exit the facial recognition market. Krishna stated IBM 'firmly opposes' use of facial recognition for mass surveillance and racial profiling.

In June 2020, Brave browser was discovered automatically appending affiliate referral codes to cryptocurrency exchange URLs (Binance, Coinbase, Ledger, Trezor) typed into the address bar, without user consent or disclosure. This contradicted Brave's privacy-first branding and likely violated FTC affiliate disclosure requirements. CEO Brendan Eich initially defended the practice before promising to make it opt-in.

In 2020, users discovered that Brave browser was automatically inserting referral codes into URLs for cryptocurrency exchanges like Binance, Coinbase, and Trezor, and into search results for terms like 'bitcoin' and 'ethereum.' Eich acknowledged the practice was a mistake and said it would be made opt-in.

On June 5, 2020, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian resigned from the board of directors, requesting to be replaced by a Black director. In an open letter, he urged the company to ban hate speech and hate communities. Reddit subsequently appointed Michael Seibel, CEO of Y Combinator, as his replacement, making Seibel the first Black board member in Reddit's history.

In June 2020, Snap stopped amplifying President Trump's content to broader audiences on its Discover page. CEO Evan Spiegel said the company was 'exercising its First Amendment right' and that if Trump wanted to promote violence and racism on Twitter, Snapchat didn't need to amplify those views. Trump's campaign called Spiegel 'radical' in response.

In June 2020, following George Floyd's murder, Stewart Butterfield and wife Jen Rubio donated $700,000 directly to Color of Change, Black Lives Matter, and other racial justice organizations through their foundation.

In 2020, Airbnb launched Project Lighthouse in partnership with Color Of Change to address racial disparities. By 2023, the disparity between guests perceived as Black vs white was cut from 2.7 percentage points to 1.4 percentage points. Initiative followed 2015 Harvard study showing discrimination against African-American sounding names.

In 2020, Pierre Omidyar donated $45 million to the Sixteen Thirty Fund's Civic Action Fund project, a voter-turnout initiative focused on 'empower[ing] those typically underrepresented in our democratic process' by ensuring they voted in the 2020 election.

Slack partnered with the Transgender Law Center to fund creation of a comprehensive ally skills curriculum designed to improve companies' ability to recruit, hire, include, and retain transgender and gender nonconforming employees. The curriculum was made available across the entire tech sector, extending impact beyond Slack's own workforce. Slack also published transparent diversity reports, maintained pay and promotion equity across genders for three consecutive years, and ran programs including Rising Tides sponsorship for diverse high performers.

Slack published detailed diversity reports with EEO-1 filings, conducted third-party salary equity audits, and maintained active ERGs (Earthtones, Abilities, Out). The company partnered with Year Up for workforce training (87.5% intern-to-FT conversion rate), Code2040 for Black and Latinx technologists, and the Transgender Law Center. However, 2020 data showed declining representation: women in management fell from 50.2% to 46.1%, and Black employees represented only 4.5% of workforce.

In 2020, Jack Dorsey's Start Small fund donated $3 million to Colin Kaepernick's Know Your Rights Camp for criminal justice reform, $10 million to Boston University's Center for Antiracist Research, $1 million to NAACP for policing reform and voting rights, $1.5 million to Black Visions Collective, and $750,000 to ArchCity Defender to combat criminalization of poverty. He has also given over $53 million to Rihanna's Clara Lionel Foundation since 2020.

Wales publicly called Trump a 'lunatic' in response to his threats to regulate social media companies, stating 'Worst case scenario is that platforms don't have courage to tell Trump to go away, that they begin to adapt policies to his whims because he is a lunatic.'

As a delegate to China's National People's Congress, Pony Ma voted for the Hong Kong National Security Law in 2020. The law enabled the subsequent crackdown on Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement and has been widely criticized by human rights organizations for criminalizing dissent and undermining Hong Kong's autonomy.

In May 2020, YouTube published its COVID-19 Medical Misinformation Policy banning content contradicting WHO or local health authorities. In 2021, YouTube expanded the policy to cover all vaccines and removed accounts of prominent anti-vaccination activists including Joseph Mercola and Robert Kennedy Jr. Studies showed the policy significantly reduced the rate of misinformation videos on the platform compared to the pre-policy period.

Lee Jae-yong issued a public apology on May 6, 2020 for Samsung's decades of union suppression, stating: 'I offer a sincere apology to every person who has been hurt by Samsung's labor union issues. From now on, we will ensure that there's no more about a union-less Samsung.' Samsung subsequently signed collective agreements with four unions in August 2021.

In May 2020, Airbnb laid off approximately 1,900 employees after losing 80% of business due to COVID-19. CEO Brian Chesky provided 3 months salary and 1 year health insurance as severance. Chesky later stated his philosophy: 'if you're going to cut, you need to cut once, and cut deep enough'.