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In December 2010, PayPal permanently suspended WikiLeaks' donation account, citing violations of its acceptable use policy. PayPal VP Osama Bedier acknowledged a US State Department letter influenced the decision. The financial blockade by PayPal, Visa, Mastercard, and others destroyed 95% of WikiLeaks' revenue. Critics called it 'digital McCarthyism' and extrajudicial financial censorship.

On October 18, 2010, Gordon Moore donated $1 million to the 'No on Prop 23' campaign. Proposition 23 would have suspended California's Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32) until unemployment dropped to 5.5% or below. The measure was defeated by 23%, protecting the state's greenhouse gas emission controls. This demonstrated Moore's strong support for climate legislation despite opposition from oil companies.

Dell and Michael Dell paid $100 million in 2010 to settle SEC charges that the company manipulated its accounting to meet Wall Street targets, including undisclosed payments from Intel totaling $4.3 billion over several years.

In 2010, Peter Thiel established the Thiel Fellowship through the Thiel Foundation, offering $100,000 over two years (later raised to $200,000) to 20 people under age 23 to leave college and pursue entrepreneurial ventures. The program has produced notable alumni including Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum), Dylan Field (Figma), and Lucy Guo (Scale AI), generating over $750 billion in value. While praised for supporting unconventional talent, it was also criticized by some educators.

In 2010, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett launched the Giving Pledge, a campaign encouraging the world's wealthiest individuals to commit more than half their wealth to philanthropic causes. As of 2025, over 250 signatories from 30 countries have joined. However, critics note the pledge is non-binding, and an IPS report found that few of the original 2010 pledgers have actually given away half their wealth, with Gates' own net worth more than doubling from $53B to over $115B since signing.

In 2010, fourteen workers at Foxconn factories in Shenzhen, China — Apple's primary manufacturing partner — died by suicide, with others making attempts. Investigations revealed harsh working conditions including excessive overtime, military-style management, cramped dormitories, and low pay. The crisis drew global attention to labor conditions in Apple's supply chain. Apple ordered an investigation and joined the Fair Labor Association, while Foxconn installed suicide prevention nets and raised wages. The incident became emblematic of the human cost of consumer electronics manufacturing.

Between January and November 2010, 18 Foxconn workers attempted suicide at the company's Shenzhen factory complex, with 14 deaths. Workers cited extreme work pressure, mandatory overtime, verbal abuse by supervisors, and social isolation in cramped dormitories. Foxconn's response included installing physical nets to catch jumpers and requiring workers to sign 'no suicide' pledges. The crisis drew international attention to electronics supply chain labor conditions.

Baidu routinely censors politically sensitive search results including content about Tiananmen Square, Tibet independence, Falun Gong, and other topics deemed sensitive by Chinese authorities.

Naval Ravikant co-founded AngelList in 2010 to connect startups with angel investors, addressing barriers that limited early-stage fundraising to Silicon Valley elites. The platform introduced syndicates (2013) and rolling funds (2020), enabling broader participation in venture investing. Over $3.5 billion has been invested via AngelList into 7,000+ startups, with 200+ reaching unicorn status. AngelList also spun off Republic in 2016 to enable non-accredited investor participation in startup equity crowdfunding.

After purchasing an 89-acre beachfront property in Half Moon Bay for $32.5 million in 2008, Khosla locked gates and hired security to block public access to Martins Beach, which had been open to the public for over 100 years. He fought the Surfrider Foundation through California courts and petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court twice (2018, 2023), losing both times. He reportedly preferred spending $10 million on litigation rather than $200 on a coastal development permit. Mississippi described his stance as prioritizing property rights over established public access.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) named Vinod Khosla a Champion of the Earth in 2010 for his vision and investment in clean energy technologies. The award recognized his approach of investing in high-risk 'black swan' technologies that could transform the energy sector, and his 'Chindia price' concept — the idea that clean energy solutions must be economically competitive without subsidies to achieve global adoption in China, India, and developing nations.

In November 2009, YouTube introduced automatic captions using speech recognition technology, initially for English-language content. The feature was led by Ken Harrenstien, a deaf Google engineer. While auto-captions had significant accuracy limitations (60-70% accuracy initially, improving over time), the feature represented a major step toward making the platform's massive video library accessible to deaf and hard-of-hearing users. YouTube subsequently expanded auto-captions to dozens of languages.

From 2009 to 2024, the World Wide Web Foundation advocated for treating internet access as a basic right and public good. During its operation, global internet connectivity increased from approximately 20% to over 70% of the world's population. The foundation launched the #ForTheWeb campaign (2018) and supported policies for affordable access, particularly in developing countries.

In September 2009, Khosla Ventures announced it had raised $1.1 billion in a 'green fund' for renewable energy and clean technology development. The fund was the largest clean technology fund launched since 2007 and one of the largest ever. $800 million was allocated for established technologies and $275 million for early-stage companies. By 2013, Khosla Ventures had invested in more than 70 cleantech companies.

In 2010, former housekeeper Nicky Diaz Santillan alleged Whitman knowingly employed her as an undocumented worker for 9 years, failed to pay full wages, denied maternity leave, and fired her in 2009 when she requested help obtaining citizenship. Santillan alleges Whitman said 'You don't know me, and I don't know you.' Evidence included a 2003 Social Security letter with note in husband's handwriting. Whitman settled wage claims for $5,500 without admitting wrongdoing.

Starting in 2007, Fei-Fei Li led the creation of ImageNet, a visual database of over 14 million labeled images that catalyzed the deep learning revolution. The ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge (ILSVRC) spurred breakthroughs including AlexNet in 2012. ImageNet became foundational to modern AI. However, the dataset later faced criticism for biased and offensive labels in person categories and privacy violations from using photos without consent. Li's team responded by removing 1,593 offensive person categories (54% of person categories) from the dataset.

Dahl created Node.js in 2009, revolutionizing server-side JavaScript. In 2018, he created Deno as a successor addressing Node's security shortcomings, featuring a secure-by-default permissions model where scripts cannot access files, network, or environment without explicit permission. Both projects are open source under MIT license.

The European Commission originally fined Intel EUR 1.06 billion in 2009 for abusing its dominant position in the x86 CPU market. Intel used hidden rebates and paid manufacturers (HP, Acer, Lenovo) to delay or stop production of AMD-powered products between 2002-2006. After lengthy legal challenges, the EU General Court upheld the ruling in December 2025 with a reduced fine of EUR 376 million (approximately $278M). The case remains one of the largest antitrust actions in the semiconductor industry.

In his April 2009 Cato Unbound essay "The Education of a Libertarian," Peter Thiel wrote that he "no longer believed that freedom and democracy are compatible." He also stated that the extension of voting rights to women made capitalist democracy an "oxymoron," arguing that welfare beneficiaries and women generally favor redistributive policies. The essay advocated for escape from politics through cyberspace, outer space, and seasteading.

In 2008, Brendan Eich donated $1,000 to support California Proposition 8, which sought to ban same-sex marriage. He also donated $2,100 to Prop 8 supporter Tom McClintock between 2008-2010. The donation became public in 2012 when it was uncovered in public donor records.

Peter Thiel provided approximately $1.7 million in funding to the Seasteading Institute between 2008-2011, including an initial $500K pledge in April 2008. The institute's mission was to 'establish permanent, autonomous ocean communities to enable experimentation with diverse social, political, and legal systems' - essentially creating societies outside the reach of democratic governments. Thiel served on the board until 2011. He later expressed skepticism about the engineering feasibility in 2017.

In June 2007, Whitman allegedly shoved subordinate Young Mi Kim, an eBay communications employee, while preparing for a Reuters interview. Whitman said 'In any high-pressure working environment, tensions can surface.' Matter was resolved with $200,000 settlement.

The Internet Archive operates Open Library, a wiki-editable library catalog aiming to have 'a web page for every book ever published.' The platform has over 20 million book records and lends approximately 70,000 books per day to users worldwide. The Archive has digitized over 2 million books and scans 4,300 books daily across 18 locations.

In 2007, when the FBI issued a National Security Letter demanding personal information about an Internet Archive user, Kahle refused to comply silently. He worked with the ACLU and EFF to challenge the NSL as unconstitutional, helping establish legal precedent for challenging these secretive government demands for user data.

Resig created jQuery in 2006, which became the most widely-used JavaScript library and fundamentally simplified cross-browser web development. Released under the MIT license and later stewarded by the jQuery Foundation (now OpenJS Foundation), it demonstrated the power of community-driven open source development.

Greylock Partners led a $25 million financing round for Facebook in April 2006, investing $12.7 million when the platform was still in its early stages. Partner David Sze joined Facebook's board. Facebook/Meta later faced extensive documented harms including data privacy violations (Cambridge Analytica), mental health impacts on teens, misinformation amplification, and content moderation failures. Greylock has not publicly criticized Meta's documented harms despite being a major early investor.

In 2006, Bobby Kotick allegedly left a voicemail on his assistant's phone threatening to 'have her killed.' Kotick apologized, and the dispute was settled out of court. This incident was reported in the November 2021 Wall Street Journal investigation into Kotick's knowledge of workplace misconduct at Activision Blizzard.

Since its founding in 2005, Automattic has operated as a fully distributed company with no central office, employing workers across 90+ countries. The company has been widely cited as a model for remote work, offering stipends for home office setups, co-working spaces, and annual meetups. CEO Matt Mullenweg has been a vocal advocate for distributed work as an equity practice.

Automattic has been the primary corporate contributor to WordPress, the open-source CMS that powers over 40% of all websites. The company employs numerous WordPress core contributors and sponsors WordCamp events globally. Automattic's commercial products (WordPress.com, Jetpack, WooCommerce) are built on top of the open-source project, and the company has historically championed GPL licensing.

Development of Git began on April 3, 2005 after BitKeeper revoked free access. Torvalds built Git in roughly 5 days and released it in April 2005 under GPL-2.0. By 2022, nearly 95% of developers used Git as their primary version control system. Git became self-hosting on April 7, and managed kernel 2.6.12 release by June 16.