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In October 2019, Apple removed the Quartz news app from App Stores in Hong Kong and mainland China. Quartz had been providing extensive coverage of Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests, including live updates and investigative reporting. Apple did not provide a detailed public explanation, citing only that the app violated local content regulations. The removal prevented Hong Kong residents from accessing independent journalism during a critical political moment.

On October 9, 2019, Apple removed HKmap.live from the App Store, an app that crowdsourced real-time police locations during Hong Kong pro-democracy protests. Apple initially approved the app, then removed it after China Daily (state media) published an editorial accusing Apple of 'facilitating illegal behavior' and threatening consequences. Apple claimed the app was used to 'ambush police,' a claim protest organizers disputed, noting it was used for safety. The removal was widely seen as capitulation to Beijing.

In October 2019 more than 200 GitHub employees signed an open letter calling on the company to terminate its $200,000 contract with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). At least five engineers publicly resigned in protest. CEO Nat Friedman defended the contract by saying GitHub products were 'general-purpose developer tools' and the company would not cancel the contract, while pledging $500,000 in donations to immigrant-rights organizations. The contract has been renewed each year since.

Amazon's Ring subsidiary partnered with over 2,600 police departments, giving law enforcement the ability to request doorbell camera footage from users without warrants. Ring admitted to providing footage to police without owner consent at least 11 times in early 2022 during 'emergencies.' Sen. Markey's investigation found Ring had egregiously lax privacy and civil rights protections, with employees in Ukraine having unfettered access to live camera feeds. Over 30 civil rights organizations demanded the partnerships end, citing racial profiling and overpolicing risks. Ring discontinued its police Request for Assistance tool in January 2024.

In 2019, Intel settled with the U.S. Department of Labor for $5 million over allegations of systematic pay discrimination against female, African American, and Hispanic employees. The DOL investigation, which began with a routine compliance review in March 2017 examining 2016-2017 pay data, found pay disparities. At least $3.5 million was allocated for back wages and interest, with $1.5 million for ongoing pay-equity adjustments over five years for U.S. engineering employees.

Under Tim Cook's leadership, Apple removed VPN apps, the HKmap.live Hong Kong protest app (October 2019), and other politically sensitive apps from China's App Store at the request of Chinese authorities. Employees alleged Cook ultimately approved plans to aggressively censor apps and store customer data on Chinese government-managed servers in Guiyang and Inner Mongolia.

On September 24, 2019, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded its Goalkeepers Global Goals award to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the Swachh Bharat (Clean India) sanitation campaign. The decision drew criticism from academics, Nobel laureates, and human rights activists, with a petition signed by over 100,000 people demanding the Foundation rescind the award, arguing a Hindu nationalist leader with human rights abuse allegations should not be celebrated by an organization stating 'every life has equal value.'

In September 2019, Amazon co-founded The Climate Pledge with Global Optimism, committing to reach net-zero carbon by 2040 — ten years ahead of the Paris Agreement. Amazon ordered 100,000 electric delivery vans from Rivian and became the first signatory of the Pledge, which has since attracted 565+ signatories. By 2023, Amazon matched 100% of electricity use with renewable energy, seven years ahead of target. Carbon intensity improved 40% since 2019. However, Amazon faced criticism for quietly dropping its 'Shipment Zero' pledge and the pace of EV deployment (~31,000 of 100,000 vans delivered by 2024).

WeWork formally withdrew its S-1 filing and postponed its IPO on September 17, 2019, after investors raised serious concerns about corporate governance. The filing revealed founder Adam Neumann held super-voting shares (20:1 ratio), lacked meaningful board oversight, had installed his wife as chief brand officer with power to fire employees, and had structured succession planning around the Neumann family. The company's valuation collapsed from $47 billion to approximately $10 billion. Neumann was forced to step down as CEO on September 24, 2019.

In September 2019, Stallman resigned as FSF president and from his MIT CSAIL position after emails surfaced in which he made comments about a victim of Jeffrey Epstein, suggesting she may have been 'entirely willing.' The comments sparked widespread condemnation in the tech community.

WeWork's planned 2019 IPO collapsed after its S-1 filing revealed extensive self-dealing by CEO Adam Neumann: he had trademarked 'We' and charged the company $5.9M to license it, personally owned buildings leased back to WeWork, had taken hundreds of millions in personal loans secured by company stock, and maintained supervoting shares giving him near-total control. The company's valuation dropped from $47B to under $10B.

In 2019, Mozilla partnered with Mullvad VPN to power its Mozilla VPN product (initially Firefox Private Network). Mozilla selected Mullvad after evaluating VPN providers for privacy practices, no-logging policies, and transparency. The partnership brought Mullvad's infrastructure to a much wider audience through Mozilla's trusted brand.

The FTC and New York Attorney General fined Google/YouTube $170 million ($136M to FTC, $34M to NY) for violating COPPA by collecting personal information from children under 13, including viewing history, without parental consent. YouTube had marketed its popularity with children to advertisers like Mattel and Hasbro while refusing to acknowledge portions of its platform were directed at kids. This was the largest COPPA penalty in history at the time.

Shopify created its Sustainability Fund to invest in carbon removal technologies, committing over $54 million to various climate projects including direct air capture and biomass carbon removal.

After researchers including Kate Crawford documented pervasive bias in ImageNet's person categories -- including racist slurs, misogynist labels, and ableist classifications -- Fei-Fei Li's team systematically identified non-visual concepts and offensive categories. They proposed and executed removal of 1,593 categories (54% of the 2,932 person categories), addressing both bias and privacy concerns in the foundational AI dataset. This represented a significant acknowledgment that even groundbreaking datasets require ongoing ethical review and correction.

In August 2019, approximately 60 Palantir employees signed a petition calling for the company to end its contracts with ICE, citing the company's role in family separations and immigration enforcement. Around 200 workers also confronted CEO Alex Karp in a signed letter about the issue. This followed the Mississippi raids and revelations about Palantir's role in targeting immigrant families.

In August 2019, Google settled a class-action lawsuit for $11 million involving 227 plaintiffs who alleged systematic age discrimination in hiring. Plaintiffs claimed Google's median workforce age of 29 (vs. 41-42 nationally) reflected discriminatory practices, that younger workers were hired at substantially higher rates than similarly qualified workers over 40, and that older applicants were told they were not a good 'cultural fit' or not 'Googley' enough—alleged euphemisms for age. Google also agreed to train employees on age-based bias, create a recruiting subcommittee focused on age diversity, and ensure marketing materials reflect age diversity. The settlement followed class certification in October 2016.

WeWork's August 2019 S-1 filing revealed extensive self-dealing by co-founder and CEO Adam Neumann. He purchased properties and leased them back to WeWork with future lease obligations of approximately $236.6 million. He trademarked the word 'We' and charged WeWork nearly $6 million to use it when the company rebranded. He took personal loans from the company and cashed out at least $700 million in shares before the IPO attempt. These revelations triggered investigations by both the SEC and the New York Attorney General into potential financial rule violations and self-enrichment.

Palantir's FALCON mobile app was used by ICE agents during the largest single-state immigration raid in US history at Mississippi food processing plants. 680 workers were arrested, with children returning from their first day of school to find parents missing. The raids were described as traumatic for the community.

In August 2019, Cloudflare dropped 8chan (later rebranded 8kun) as a customer after the El Paso Walmart shooting, where the gunman posted a white supremacist manifesto on the site. CEO Matthew Prince cited 8chan's repeated role as a platform for mass shooting manifestos. This was only the second time Cloudflare had terminated a customer for content.

In August 2019, Mustafa Suleyman was placed on administrative leave from DeepMind following allegations of bullying employees. Google brought in a law firm to investigate staff complaints about his management style. He had 'most of his management duties stripped away' and undertook professional development training. Suleyman later acknowledged: 'I really screwed up. I was very demanding and pretty relentless.' He left DeepMind for a policy role and departed Google entirely in January 2022.

In 2019, amid widespread criticism of Palantir's ICE contracts following family separations, Alex Karp publicly defended the work, saying that while separations are 'a really tough, complex, jarring moral issue,' he favors 'a fair but rigorous immigration policy.' He stated the ICE relationship 'is here to stay' and seemed sympathetic to Trump's border stance.

On July 24, 2019, the FTC imposed a $5 billion penalty on Facebook — the largest privacy fine ever imposed worldwide — for violating a 2012 FTC consent decree. Facebook had deceived users about their ability to control privacy settings, misused phone numbers obtained for security to target ads, and enabled third-party apps to harvest friends' data. The settlement also required creation of an independent privacy committee on Facebook's board and quarterly compliance certifications by Zuckerberg.

In July 2019, the FTC imposed a record $5 billion fine on Facebook for privacy violations stemming from the Cambridge Analytica scandal and broader data practices. The settlement included unprecedented personal accountability measures for Zuckerberg, who was required to certify Facebook's privacy compliance. Meta shareholders subsequently sued Zuckerberg and other directors seeking to hold them personally liable for the fines, which settled for $190 million in November 2025. The fine reflected the FTC's finding that Facebook repeatedly violated its 2012 consent order regarding user data practices.

In June 2019, Wojcicki defended YouTube's decision not to remove Steven Crowder's videos containing homophobic harassment and racist slurs against journalist Carlos Maza. She apologized to the LGBTQ community but said the company needed to be 'consistent' with its policies. Channel was later demonetized but not removed.

Mozilla has maintained Firefox as the only major non-Chromium browser engine (Gecko), providing a critical alternative to Google's browser dominance. Firefox includes Enhanced Tracking Protection by default, blocks third-party cookies, and has consistently advocated for web standards over proprietary implementations. Mozilla also supports the development of web standards through the W3C.

Hoan Ton-That personally pitched US Border Patrol on using Clearview AI to screen arriving migrants for 'sentiment about the USA,' proposing to scan social media for posts saying 'I hate Trump' or 'Trump is a puta' and targeting anyone with an 'affinity for far-left groups.' The proposal conflated support for Trump with American identity and would have used facial recognition to profile migrants based on political views.

In 2019, the Linux Foundation, Open Invention Network (OIN), and Microsoft created the Open Source Zone with Unified Patents to challenge patents owned by Patent Assertion Entities (patent trolls) that targeted open source projects. Over five years, the initiative achieved a success rate of invalidating more than 54 PAE patents. The collaboration deepened in 2024 with additional companies contributing. This proactive defense protects open source projects from costly litigation that could undermine open source development.

Sam Altman held a personal investment in Rain AI, an AI chip startup, while OpenAI in 2019 signed a non-binding letter of intent to spend $51 million on Rain's chips. This represented a potential conflict of interest where Altman would personally benefit from a deal made by the company he led. The conflict was among the governance concerns raised during the November 2023 board crisis.

Rebellion Defense was founded in 2019 by Chris Lynch, Nicole Camarillo, and Oliver Lewis. Co-founder Nicole Camarillo co-founded Rebellion while still working at the Pentagon, with a pitch deck touting her 'present leadership role in U.S. Army Cyber Command.' Board member Eric Schmidt chaired the National Security Commission on AI (2016-2021) while personally investing over $2 billion in AI startups. Two Rebellion officials served on Biden's transition team, and the company hired White House tech director David Recordon as CTO. Ethics fellow Walter Shaub called Schmidt's dual role 'absolutely a conflict of interest.'