SF News Monday Morning Headlines: Facebook Pauses Development of 'Instagram Kids' Facebook is pausing development of its controversial 'Instagram Kids' app as it faces scrutiny in Washington, one Afghan family describes their harrowing journey to get back to the Bay Area, and the Grand Princess cruise ship is back at sea.
Business & Tech Zuckerberg Denies Secret Deal With Jared Kushner to Never Censor Trump’s Posts Maybe this explains Facebook’s kid-gloves approach to right-wing propaganda — a new book claims Zuckerberg agreed to a “hands-off approach to conservative sites” in exchange for lax regulations.
Business & Tech Pandemic Slack Communications Inside Apple Have Led to More Employee Activism, Unrest The notoriously secretive corporate culture at Apple has been exposed to have some leaks and cracks when it comes to the treatment of employees and various other complaints.
Business & Tech Dreamforce Returns as Much Smaller, Mostly Outdoor Conference in SoMa This Week 170,000 people usually come to Dreamforce, which along with the now departed Oracle OpenWorld would typically clog up traffic all over downtown for several days as conventioneers descended on the city. This year will be much different.
Business & Tech After Suing Uber, Google’s Waymo Is Now Subleasing Office Space from Uber The COVID-era corporate subleasing craze has paired some strange bedfellows, as the self-driving car company Waymo is leasing empty office space from Uber, whom they had previously tried to sue into oblivion.
Business & Tech Reddit Moderators Revolt Over Company’s Lax Misinformation Policy Some of the most popular subreddits on Reddit have “gone dark” this week in protest of the company’s hand-off policy with misinformation and anti-vaxxer online bullying, and Wednesday, Reddit did at least ban one of the worst offenders.
Business & Tech Jury Selection Set to Begin In Elizabeth Holmes Trial; Defense Expected to Cite Abuse by Boyfriend The high-profile criminal trial begins this week of disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. While opening arguments in the San Jose courtroom won't begin until after Labor Day, jury selection begins on Tuesday, August 31.
Business & Tech Facebook Seemingly Still Monkeying With Algorithm to Limit Right-Wing Agitprop K-Pop stans and dog advice posts are the early benefactors of some possible Facebook algorithm and reporting changes, but the Dinesh D'Souzas and Ben Shapiros of the world are sharp at adapting to game the system.
Business & Tech If You Would Like to Hail a Robo-car in San Francisco You Can Do That Now With Waymo Google's self-driving car spinoff Waymo has just launched its autonomous vehicle ride-hailing service Waymo One in San Francisco, with a view toward getting rid of the "safety driver" altogether and letting the robo-cars do all the work.
Business & Tech Cal Takes a Cryptocurrency Naming Rights Deal for Memorial Stadium The Goldens Bears’ stadium will now be called ‘FTX Field at Memorial Stadium,’ in a crypto deal that is either a trailblazing innovation, or a slush fund for future ransomware attacks.
Business & Tech Eight Months Into National Vaccine Effort, Facebook Says It's Removed Anti-Vaxx Misinformation Superspreaders After being on the receiving end of stern words from President Biden last month, Facebook says it has removed three-dozen pages and accounts associated with a dozen previously identified superspreaders of vaccine misinformation.
Business & Tech Facebook Now Pushing Off Return to Office Until January Facebook announced Thursday that its workers in U.S. offices, and some international workers, don't have to return to their desks in person until January 2022.
Business & Tech Apple Will Scan Your iPhone for Child Porn; Critics Wonder What Else They’ll Snoop On A coming iOS upgrade will scan users’ iPhones for any images of child sexual abuse, but one wonders how many livelihoods will be ruined whenever the bots make a mistake.
SF News PG&E Finally Has Plans to Put Electrical Lines Underground In Fire-Prone Areas A week after a new wildfire appears to have been potentially sparked by a tree hitting PG&E transmission lines in Butte County, the company gave a press conference to announce a ten-year plan to bury 10,000 miles of power lines.
Business & Tech Uber Adds Grocery Delivery In SF, Including From Safeway and Andronico's Uber is pushing further into the world of delivery with a major expansion of grocery delivery services this week, including in San Francisco.
Business & Tech Biden Backs Down Slightly From Saying Facebook Is 'Killing People' With Vaccine Misinformation President Joe Biden attempted to de-escalate a war of words he started last week with Facebook, walking back a statement he made about the platform "killing people" due to its failure to curb misinformation about coronavirus vaccines.
Business & Tech Facebook Is Dismantling CrowdTangle Team Because It Showed the Platform to Be a Right-Wing Echo Chamber CrowdTangle, the analytics tool for social media posts that Facebook acquired five years ago, may not be long for this world, and its mostly independent team within Facebook is now being broken up.
SF News Monday Morning Headlines: It's Back-to-the-Office Day For Some at Google Firefighters have contained the 128-acre Diablo Fire in the East Bay, the search continues for a Berkeley runner who went missing in Pleasanton, and today's back-to-the-office day for many employees at Google (and elsewhere).
SF Politics Trump Is Now Suing All the Tech Companies Who Banned Him Donald Trump is busying himself with a new crusade that is likely to fail, and it's a class-action lawsuit against Facebook, Twitter, and Google.
Business & Tech Mark Zuckerberg, American Hero on a Dork's Surfboard? Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a strange but totally on-brand Instagram video on July 4th of himself holding a big American flag riding an electric foil surfboard on a lake, set to the tune of John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads."
Business & Tech San Francisco Attorney Intends to File 400 Separate Sexual Assault and Harassment Cases Against Uber A personal injury firm in San Francisco has filed 85 separate lawsuits on behalf of women who say they were sexually assaulted, falsely imprisoned, kidnapped, harassed, and/or stalked by Uber drivers, and they say they have over 300 more to go.
Business & Tech In Effort to Placate Employees, Uber Backtracks On Back-to-the-Office Plan Uber is the latest company to offer increasing flexibility for its workforce that has gotten very comfortable with their telecommuting situation.
Business & Tech Facebook's Market Cap Tops $1 Trillion for the First Time After Antitrust Case Is Dismissed Facebook has now joined the ranks of trillion-dollar companies, alongside the only other companies to reach such a market capitalization, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, and Microsoft.
Business & Tech Antioch Wants to Become the Bay Area's Next Big Marijuana Hub The East Bay city of Antioch is aiming to be the "cannabis capital of Northern California" with the approval of two major cannabis cultivation and distribution facilities.
Business & Tech Due to Those Batteries, Tesla Car Fires Require Outlandish Volumes of Water to Extinguish All types of electric vehicles pose problems for firefighters when they crash and their lithium ion batteries go ablaze, but Teslas have routinely required more than 20,000 gallons of water. That does not bode well for wildfire season!\
