Business & Tech Feds Allege Elizabeth Holmes Destroyed a SQL Database That Proved Her Theranos Product was Garbage Prosecutors subpoenaed an internal Theranos database they say proved executives knew their blood test product was a sham. That database was promptly destroyed, according to a new filing.
Business & Tech Airbnb Cancels All D.C. Reservations Ahead of Inauguration Guarding against taking any blame for providing shelter to domestic terrorists, Airbnb announced Wednesday that it would be canceling all reservations at properties owned by Washington D.C. hosts during inauguration week — as well as all reservations through Airbnb-owned HotelTonight.
Business & Tech Facebook Tells Employees to Stop Wearing Company-Branded Apparel, For Their Safety Following the bans on President Trump and "Stop the Steal" content, Facebook is telling its employees not to wear company-branded swag out in public, lest they incur the wrath of Trumpers.
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink Yelp Now Allowing Users To Out Businesses and Restaurants for Violating COVID-19 Guidelines The San Francisco-based company synonymous with publishing crowd-sourced reviews on local businesses will now allow users to post complaints about businesses violating COVID-19 safety protocols.
Business & Tech Pro-Trump Protest at Twitter HQ Fails to Materialize There was much ado about nothing Monday morning outside Twitter headquarters, where police and journalists waited for a deluge of pro-Trump protest chaos that never came.
Business & Tech Boom — President Trump Has Been Permanently Banned From Twitter With only 12 days left in his presidency, the sitting American president has been permanently removed from his favorite late night, all-caps messaging platform.
Business & Tech Facebook Locks Trump's Account Indefinitely; Will Twitter Be Next? Following temporary locks on Donald Trump's Twitter and Facebook accounts that began Wednesday night, Facebook has escalated its crackdown on the president's lies and decided to suspend his access to the platform indefinitely.
Business & Tech Twitter Locks Trump's Account, Facebook and YouTube Remove Video After His Continuing Lies Fail to Discourage Rioters Twitter has stepped in to lock President Trump's account for 12 hours and blocked access to several tweets from Wednesday citing risks of violence, and along with Facebook and YouTube they have removed a video Trump posted from the Rose Garden Wednesday afternoon.
Business & Tech Small Businesses in CA Now Have Until January 13 to Apply For COVID Relief Grants The Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (Go-Biz) announced Monday that the deadline has been extended for small businesses to apply for economic relief grants of up to $25,000.
Business & Tech Google Employees Have Formed a Union, But Only A Tiny Percentage Have Signed Up A smattering of Googlers, YouTubers and Waymo staff have formed the Alphabet Workers Union, in a move that could revolutionize the tech industry — or merely result in about 200 Google employees getting fired for vague “performance” reasons.
Business & Tech Uber and Lyft Both in Rush To Offer ‘Free’ Rides to Get Vaccine (Many of Which Won’t Be Free) The two competing rideshare giants announce two different competing plans to offer free rides for vaccine shots, but the fine print shows plenty of these rides will not actually be free.
Business & Tech United Airlines Passengers Who Gave Aid to Dying Man With COVID Were Given $75 Flight Voucher It's been confirmed that a man who died last week in some respiratory or cardiac distress on board a California-bound United flight out of Orlando was COVID-positive. And now passengers who helped administer medical aid are wondering why they had to find out from the news media.
Business & Tech Airbnb Removes 65 Listings for Scofflaw 'Party Houses' In SF, Oakland, and San Jose Airbnb is again cracking down on "party houses" that seem to have incurred violations around the Bay Area, but why is this coming up now when technically no vacation rentals are even permitted here?
Business & Tech Twitter is Testing ‘Humanization Prompts’ in Hopes That We Won’t Be Such Trolls to One Another Twitter figures that if we are informed that someone also likes dogs or soccer, maybe we will tone down our death threats and online harassment.
Business & Tech 10 (Red) States Are Suing Google Over What They Say Is an Online Advertising Monopoly The end of 2020 is arriving with a slew of legal headaches for Big Tech. And a week after we learned of twin antitrust lawsuits against Facebook being brought by state attorneys general and the FTC in tandem, we learn that a group of states is also filing suit against Google.
Business & Tech Amazon Buys Recology Site in SF for $200 Million, Scuttles Plan to Make it Housing Recology just sold its 900 7th Street waste maintenance facility to Amazon, who plan to make it a six-acre delivery warehouse facility in San Francisco.
Business & Tech Zuckerberg Says Facebook Employees Won’t Need Vaccine to Return to Work It’s a prickly topic for any workplace, but Facebook staff will not be required to get the COVID-19 vaccine before returning to their pampered workplace.
Business & Tech Twitter Acquires Group Video-Chat App Squad, Will Shut It Down This Weekend Squad, an app that allows users to video-chat and screen-share with groups of friends in a more "fun" way than Zoom, has been acquired by Twitter, and the Squad app will have its sunset on Saturday, December 12.
Business & Tech Uber Wants Its Non-Employee Drivers to Get Early Vaccines Industry trade organizations are lining up to lobby the CDC and states to get their workers high up in the queue of Americans waiting to receive the coronavirus vaccine, and Uber is lining up too.
Business & Tech FTC and States Join Forces In Antitrust Lawsuits Against Facebook, Calling It an Illegal Monopoly In a clear escalation in the war Facebook faces over its dominance in the social media landscape, the Federal Trade Commission and a coalition of 48 states' attorneys general are suing to break the company up.
Business & Tech Amazon’s Cartoonish Self-Driving Taxi Prematurely Debuts in Union Square Zoiks! The new Zoox self-driving taxicab from Amazon was spotted in SF this past weekend, more than a week before its scheduled public debut.
Business & Tech Trump Justice Department Sues Facebook Over Alleged Bias Toward H1-B Visa Workers Over Americans In a last, litigious middle finger to Facebook on their way out the door, Trump's Justice Department is suing the social media giant over what it found to be a pattern of favoritism toward temporary immigrant workers over Americans in its hiring practices.
Business & Tech In Its Biggest Acquisition to Date, Salesforce Buys Slack for $27.7 Billion Confirming the story that was first reported last week about the two companies being in "advanced" talks about an acquisition, Salesforce and Slack announced Tuesday that they are joining forces.
Business & Tech Salesforce May Be Buying Slack, and Slack's Stock Price Is Going Nuts San Francisco-based Salesforce is reportedly in advanced negotiations to acquire workplace messaging app Slack, in the latest of a flurry of year-end mergers and acquisitions.
Business & Tech Facebook Still Grappling With How Misinformation and Hate Speech Are Very Profitable for Them Engineers at Facebook reportedly labeled certain types of posts internally as “bad for the world,” and when limiting them led to less engagement on the platform, the baddies got boosted back.
