Lucas Nolan

According to a recent survey, more than forty percent of Americans distrust Facebook and TikTok, but sixty-five percent believe Google to be trustworthy.

A recent report from the New York Times states that the stock trading platform Robinhood is facing almost 50 lawsuits directly related to the recent GameStop trading frenzy.

Social media giant Twitter announced this week that it will begin labeling tweets that share “misleading information” about the coronavirus vaccine and will implement a strike system for repeat offenders of the “misinformation policy.”

Texas-based software company SolarWinds was the victim of a major hack recently that affected multiple government agencies and corporate clients. In a hearing before the House Oversight and Homeland Security Committees, the company’s former CEO blamed an intern that changed a company password to “solarwinds123.”

Ride-sharing giant Uber is reportedly attempting to strike a deal with government transit agencies to replace certain elements of public transport in major cities around the world.

A federal judge has given final approval to a $650 million settlement for a class action lawsuit against Facebook which alleged that the Masters of the Universe stored biometric data in violation of Illinois state law. 

A recent report from Bloomberg states that game developer CD Projekt SA was forced to delay a promised update to its heavily-criticized blockbuster game Cyberpunk 2077, claiming that a recent ransomware attack resulted in hackers stealing the game’s source code and locking the company’s systems.

A recent report from BuzzFeed News alleges that social media giant Facebook is considering building facial recognition technology into its upcoming smart glasses product.

The Chinese-owned social media app TikTok has reportedly agreed to pay $92 million to settle dozens of lawsuits alleging that the app harvested personal data from users without consent and shared the data with third-parties, including some in China. Experts are calling it one of the largest privacy-related payouts in history.

Social media giant Twitter has begun exploring new products including a “Super Follow” feature that will allow users to charge followers a fee to access premium tweets.

A recent report from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children claims that Facebook had 20.3 million reported incidents of child sexual abuse material. In comparison, Pornhub’s parent company MindGeek had only 13,000 reports. Facebook accounted for 95 percent of the incidents in the report.

Following an internal revolt at Google over the integrity of its artificial intelligence research, the company has promised to change procedures for reviewing its scientists’ work.

Elon Musk’s electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla has reportedly shut down a Model 3 production line at its Fremont, California, factory for two weeks amid an industrywide microchip shortage.

The Australian government has reportedly passed a new law requiring Google and Facebook to pay news outlets for access to their content.

The United States Postal Service recently revealed a new set of electric and gas-powered delivery trucks set to replace their current delivery fleet. The design showed off this week drew mixed reactions on social media.

Investigative journalism group Project Veritas recently published a report detailing plans by the cloud-based software giant Salesforce to de-platform customers who have “the potential to incite politically motivated violence.” According to the Project Veritas video, executives are communicating with the RNC specifically about messages from former President Donald Trump. Project Veritas reports that its own business account with Salesforce has been cut off.

A proposed bill in the Australian parliament that would require Facebook and Google to pay news outlets for content has cleared its final hurdle, and Facebook has agreed to restore access to news pages in the country after the government agreed to small changes to the legislation.

Martin Avila, the CEO of IT infrastructure company Right Forge, which provides digital services for center-right businesses and groups, recently published an op-ed arguing that a second internet must be created to maintain digital freedom.

According to analysts, Elon Musk’s electric car company Tesla has directly tied its share price to the value of Bitcoin following the company’s major investment in the cryptocurrency. One analyst told CNBC: “Musk runs the risk that this side show can overshadow the fundamental EV (electric vehicle) vision in the near term for investors.”

The popular Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp will reportedly block users who refuse to accept its updated privacy terms and conditions from using the service.

Australia does not plan to alter legislation that would require Facebook and Google to pay news outlets for content, according to a senior lawmaker.

Google-owned video platform YouTube mistakenly suspended the channel of a popular Croatian chess player after his discussion of “black versus white” in terms of chess strategy was flagged by the site’s algorithm as racism. The incident demonstrates that the AI tools the Masters of the Universe rely on to police their platforms are not yet up to the task.

According to a recent market analysis report, tech giant Apple passed Samsung to become the largest smartphone vendor worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2020.

Ride-sharing giant Uber has lost its final appeal in a long UK legal battle over whether its drivers are self-employed contractors or legally-recognized workers. The ruling draws an end to a five-year-long legal fight and is a major setback for Uber that could affect all gig workers in the United Kingdom.

In a recent interview, Apple CEO Tim Cook praised China and Apple’s “phenomenal” growth in the communist country in recent years.

Australian officials are reportedly in talks with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg after the social media platform made the decision to ban all news content in Australia in response to new legislation that would force tech giants to pay news publishers.

Tech giant Facebook recently stated it plans to start adding information labels to posts about global warming that direct people to a “climate change information hub.”  George Mason University, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, and the University of Cambridge will all contribute to Facebook’s program of fact checking.

The North Dakota state senate recently voted 36-11 against a bill that would have required tech giants Apple and Google to enable software developers to use their own payment processing software and avoid fees charged by their app stores.

In a recent interview relating to his new book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates stated that the world needs more entrepreneurs like Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon musk to tackle global warming.

The state of Maryland is reportedly set to be the first U.S. state that will impose a tax on the sale of online ads. The tax will impact the Masters of the Universe, primarily Google and Facebook which hold the ad market in a duopoly that Amazon is only beginning to gain a foothold in, but critics claim the tax will be passed on, saying “This tax increase was historically shortsighted, foolish, and harmful to countless small businesses and employees, and Marylanders will remember it that way.”