Activity

Valve developed Proton (launched August 2018), an open-source Windows compatibility layer based on Wine, in partnership with CodeWeavers. Published on GitHub, it enables thousands of Windows games to run on Linux. SteamOS 3.0, a modified Arch Linux distribution, shipped with Steam Deck. These contributions significantly advanced the Linux gaming ecosystem.

All Five Eyes intelligence alliance members declared Huawei equipment poses 'significant security risks' with allegations Beijing could use 5G infrastructure for espionage. US banned Huawei/ZTE from federal government use (August 2018 NDAA) and added Huawei to Entity List (May 2019). UK, Australia, New Zealand banned equipment from 5G networks. Germany proposed ban by 2026 (September 2023). Eleven EU countries took 5G security measures against Huawei and ZTE.

From 2017 to 2019, Google secretly developed Project Dragonfly, a censored search engine for China that would link users' phone numbers to searches and block sites covering human rights, democracy, and religion. After The Intercept exposed the project in August 2018, over 1,400 employees signed internal letters demanding transparency, 600+ signed public petitions calling for cancellation, and a senior researcher resigned in protest. Amnesty International called it 'an alarming capitulation on human rights.' Google terminated the project in July 2019 under sustained internal and external pressure.

23andMe entered a $300 million deal with pharmaceutical giant GSK to share genetic data from its customer database for drug development research, raising consent and data monetization concerns.

The European Commission fined ASUS $74.4 million for intervening to prevent online retailers in Germany and France from selling its laptops and displays below recommended resale prices. ASUS systematically limited retailers' ability to set their own prices, violating EU antitrust rules on vertical restraints.

In July 2018, the European Commission fined Google a record €4.34 billion ($5 billion) for abusing Android's dominant position. Google required smartphone manufacturers to pre-install Google Search and Chrome as a condition for licensing the Google Play Store, and paid large manufacturers and carriers to exclusively pre-install Google Search. The fine was the largest EU antitrust penalty ever. Combined with the 2017 Shopping fine (€2.4B) and 2019 AdSense fine (€1.49B, later annulled), Google received €8.25 billion in EU antitrust fines.

In July 2018, Musk called British cave diver Vernon Unsworth 'sus' and a 'pedo guy' on Twitter after Unsworth criticized Musk's involvement in the Thai cave rescue. Musk also allegedly emailed a BuzzFeed reporter suggesting Unsworth was a 'child rapist' who had taken a 12-year-old 'child bride,' and reportedly had an employee hire a private investigator to dig into Unsworth's background. Musk later apologized and deleted the tweets. A jury found Musk not liable for defamation in December 2019.

On July 12, 2018, Guido van Rossum stepped down from his position as 'Benevolent Dictator For Life' (BDFL) of Python, stating 'I'm tired, and need a very long break.' Rather than appointing a successor, he eliminated the BDFL title entirely. In December 2018, the Python community voted to adopt a steering council model with distributed decision-making. This represented a voluntary surrender of power to enable more democratic, sustainable governance.

McKinsey performed over $20 million in consulting work for ICE, proposing cuts to food, medical care, and supervision of detainees. Consultants sought ways to accelerate deportations, raising concerns among ICE staff that recommendations risked short-circuiting due process protections. McKinsey staff also ghostwrote a government contracting document defining their own responsibilities and justifying a $2.2M contract extension. The firm ended the contract in July 2018 after media reporting.

In July 2018, Huawei and Chinese Academy of Sciences jointly filed patent application for 'identification of pedestrian attributes' that specifically referenced Uyghurs as one 'race' that 'can be' detected: 'The attributes of the target object can be gender (male, female), age (such as teenagers, middle-aged, old), race (Han, Uyghur)'. Following BBC and IPVM investigation in January 2021, Huawei said they would 'amend' the patent, stating ethnicity identification 'should never have become part of the application.'

Between May 2017 and July 2018, misinformation and rumors about child abduction and organ harvesting spread via WhatsApp led to mob violence resulting in at least 29-40+ deaths across India. WhatsApp's lack of content moderation in its largest market (400M users, almost all mobile phone owners) enabled viral spread of false information. Company responded with forwarding limits, labels on forwarded messages, and $50K research funding, but only after sustained deaths and public pressure.

EFF filed an influential amicus brief in Carpenter v. United States (2018), arguing that warrantless access to cell phone location records violates the Fourth Amendment. The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of privacy, establishing that police need a warrant to access cell site location information. This was a landmark digital privacy ruling.

In 2018, Chuck Robbins, who chairs the Business Roundtable's immigration committee, publicly criticized Trump's family separation policy at the border. He stated it was 'a moral issue for our country' and 'doesn't represent the values of the entire company.'

In 2018, Brian Chesky and co-founders Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk issued joint statement criticizing Trump's family separation policy at the border: 'Ripping children from the arms of their parents is heartless, cruel, immoral and counter to the American values of belonging'.

In June 2018, following the Project Maven controversy, Sundar Pichai published Google's AI Principles, committing the company to develop AI that is socially beneficial, avoids unfair bias, is built and tested for safety, is accountable to people, incorporates privacy design principles, upholds scientific excellence, and is made available for uses that accord with these principles. Notably, Google pledged not to develop AI for weapons or surveillance that violates international norms.

In June 2018, CEO Sundar Pichai published Google's list of ethical artificial intelligence principles, stating that Google won't use its AI technology for weapons or surveillance (with caveats). Pichai wrote that this document would act as 'concrete standards' that inform research, product development and business decisions. Google piloted a Moral Imagination workshop for 248 Googlers across 23 product teams to walk through ethical implications of potential AI products.

In 2018, over 4,000 Google employees signed an open letter and about a dozen resigned in protest against Project Maven, a Pentagon contract using AI to analyze drone surveillance footage. Employees demanded Google cancel the project and adopt a policy never to build warfare technology. On June 1, 2018, Google announced it would not renew the contract when it expired in March 2019. The company later published AI ethical principles excluding weapons development.

Eric Schmidt chaired the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence from 2018-2021, advising Congress on AI spending. During this period, he personally invested over $2 billion in AI tech startups. Critics noted his company Rebellion Defense was winning military AI contracts while he advised on defense AI policy, representing a significant conflict of interest.

After over 3,000 Google employees signed an internal letter to CEO Sundar Pichai demanding cancellation of the Pentagon's Project Maven (AI for analyzing drone surveillance footage), Google announced it would not renew the contract when it expired in 2019. The decision was reactive - Pichai responded to massive internal pressure rather than proactively withdrawing. This directly led to the creation of Google's AI Principles.

After the 2017 sexual harassment scandal exposed by Susan Fowler, Uber undertook a comprehensive cultural transformation under CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. The Eric Holder investigation led to board-approved reforms including zero-tolerance harassment policies. Khosrowshahi replaced the 14 'super pumped' values with 8 ethics-centered norms including 'We do the right thing. Period' and 'We celebrate differences.' The company achieved gender and racial pay equity, hired its first diversity officer, established 18 weeks flexible paid parental leave, and created Pride at Uber and other employee resource groups. A $4.4M EEOC fund compensated harassment victims.

In 2018, Slack partnered with The Last Mile, FREEAMERICA, and the WK Kellogg Foundation to create Next Chapter, an engineering apprenticeship program helping formerly incarcerated individuals find skilled employment in tech. The program has since expanded to 14 hiring partner companies. Slack was one of the first major tech companies to create a dedicated reentry hiring pathway.

DoorDash launched Project DASH in 2018, a program that empowers food banks, pantries, and social impact organizations to use DoorDash technology and Dashers to provide local food delivery to underserved communities. Since launch, the program has powered more than 5 million deliveries of an estimated 80 million meals. DoorDash has awarded more than $500,000 in Project DASH Impact Grants to over 200 food banks and social impact organizations in more than 30 states, helping address food access gaps including in rural areas like West Virginia where families previously had to travel up to 60 miles for healthy groceries.

Noctua was highlighted at Computex 2018 as 'the only hardware company totally ignoring RGB' (PC Gamer). The company refuses to use clear plastics required for RGB fans due to higher-pitched vibrations they produce, framing it as an engineering integrity decision. This stands in contrast to the industry trend of adding RGB lighting to increase perceived product value and drive upgrade cycles.

In May 2018 at the Code Conference, Evan Spiegel acknowledged workplace culture problems after former Snap software engineer Shannon Lubetich told Cheddar that the company was a 'toxic' and 'sexist' place to work. Lubetich cited a Santa Monica party with 'scantily clad women' and Snap VP Tim Sehn making a 'penis enlargement joke' as examples. Spiegel called it a 'wake-up call' and said 'we need to do more and do it faster,' noting Snap had brought in outside consultants.

During her role as Chief Scientist of AI/ML at Google Cloud (2017-2018), leaked internal emails revealed that Fei-Fei Li expressed enthusiasm for Google Cloud's role in Project Maven, a Pentagon drone image analysis contract, but cautioned colleagues to avoid mentioning the AI component, writing 'This is red meat to the media to find all ways to damage Google.' She later told the NYT: 'I believe in human-centered AI to benefit people in positive and benevolent ways. It is deeply against my principles to work on any project that I think is to weaponize AI.' She departed Google Cloud in October 2018 following the controversy.

In 2018, when LLVM adopted a Code of Conduct and faced significant backlash from some community members, Lattner publicly defended the decision, emphasizing that welcoming diverse contributors strengthens open source projects. He took a clear pro-diversity stance at a time when CoC adoption was contentious in many open source communities.

In May 2018, Reid Hoffman and his wife Michelle Yee joined The Giving Pledge, committing to donate the majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes. Through his Aphorism Foundation ($1 billion), Hoffman funds five areas: science, economic opportunity, democracy, AI, and human rights. He launched the $10 million Trust in American Institutions Challenge through Lever for Change to scale solutions restoring public trust in schools, government bodies, media, and medical systems. His foundation also supports Equal Justice Initiative, AllRaise for VC equity, and Opportunity@Work for workforce training.

On April 10-11, 2018, Mark Zuckerberg testified before the Senate Commerce and Judiciary committees and the House Energy and Commerce Committee, facing questions from nearly 100 lawmakers about Facebook's role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. He stated 'It was my mistake, and I'm sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and I'm responsible for what happens here.' This was a rare instance of a tech CEO accepting personal accountability before Congress.

UK government gender pay gap data revealed Rockstar North had a 64% gender pay gap in 2018, meaning women earned only 36p for every £1 a male employee earned. Only 8% of employees in the top quartile of pay were women. Director Andrew Semple attributed this to 'longer tenured employees who are predominantly male occupying our most senior roles' rather than discrimination, but the gap was the worst in the UK games industry.

In April 2018 interview, Sandberg took personal responsibility for Facebook's failure to verify that Cambridge Analytica had deleted 87 million users' data when first notified in 2016. Acknowledged Facebook made mistakes and should have acted two and a half years earlier.