Business & Tech Twitter Says It Is Adding 'Context' to Trending Topics; Facebook and Google at War With Australian Government Ahead of the latest U.S. election, Twitter is responding to criticism that one of its defining features, the Trending Topics sidebar, tends to promote misinformation and conspiracies.
Business & Tech Facebook (Finally) Removes Racial Ad Targeting After four years of scandals over targeting users by race — including a white users only option — Facebook has very quietly removed the racial targeting option for advertisements.
Business & Tech Will TikTok Youth Rock the Vote? Or Will Conservatives Game Facebook to Win Trump Another Four Years? Right-wingers have already won the fight to dominate Facebook engagement, but rival social media upstarts could blaze a new path, or go down in flames of election misinformation.
Business & Tech Tesla Successfully Thwarts Russian Ransomware Attack A Tesla employee succeeded in thwarting a recent attempted malware hack of its computer systems, after bringing the attempt quickly to the attention of company brass and the FBI.
Business & Tech Facebook Gets Heat For Not Removing ‘Kenosha Guard’ Militia Page Before Shootings Two users flagged a militia group's page for inciting violence in Wisconsin, but Facebook did not take the page down until after two people were killed Tuesday night.
Business & Tech Some SF Hotels Reopen to Accommodate Wildfire Evacuees at a Discount San Francisco's largely vacant hotels have an opportunity both to provide shelter to Bay Area residents displaced from their homes due to wildfire evacuation orders, and to make some revenue after months of nearly zero in the process.
Business & Tech Facebook Mulls 'Kill Switch' For Political Ads To Prevent Trump From Contesting Election Results Facebook is doing some disaster planning for the days and weeks after the election, given that all signs point to Donald Trump attempting to hold on to power by questioning the results of the election — should he, god willing, lose.
Business & Tech Uber and Lyft Will Not Shut Down at Midnight After Last-Minute Reprieve Lyft was about to shut down all California rideshare operations at the stroke of midnight, but an appeals court granted a reprieve only about 12 hours before that would have happened.
SF News Humpday Headlines: Apple Valuation Hits $2 Trillion The need for rolling blackouts was averted last night, the SF Board of Supervisors approved a settlement over homeless tents with UC Hastings, and Apple is now worth $2 trillion.
SF Politics DA Boudin Seeks Injunction To Force DoorDash To Make Its Drivers Employees Boudin had already sued DoorDash in June over classifying drivers as contractors, now he wants a court order demanding that they hire their drivers as employees before the October trial.
Business & Tech Apple Kicked Fortnite Out of the App Store, and Now Fortnite Has an Ad Mocking Apple's Famous '1984' Ad Epic is boldly using Apple's own brand history against them, taking the iconic "1984"-themed Super Bowl ad that defined Apple three decades ago as the brand that supported individuality in the face of PC tyranny, and using it to argue that Apple is now the oppressor.
SF News Day Around the Bay: Airbnb Sues Guest Over Unsanctioned Party Where Three Were Shot Five new liquor licenses are for sale for cheap in SF, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf is pissed about Lake Merritt vendors and gatherings, and next year's Game Developers Conference is scheduled to happen in person at the Moscone Center in July.
Business & Tech Far-Right Boogaloo Movement Evaded Facebook Ban In Pretty Much One Single Day It took all of one day for the disaffected bros of the alt-right to beat their Facebook ban, as all they had to do was adopt new and different keywords.
Business & Tech As California Labor Case Heads For Appeal, Uber Says It May Halt Operations In State Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi gave an interview on MSNBC Wednesday morning saying that the company would likely have to shut down operations in California for at least several months if it is forced to make all its drivers employees.
Business & Tech Now Twitter Is Looking Into Acquiring TikTok Amid Looming Trump Ban Twitter is in the mix with Microsoft to acquire the video app, as the clock is ticking on the September 15 deadline of a mandatory TikTok sale.
Business & Tech Despite Bans, QAnon Exploding in Popularity Facebook, Google, and Twitter QAnon posts are now dominating Facebook’s daily ‘top ten,' while Youtube is unwittingly allowing the peddlers of satanic pedophile pizza conspiracy theories to monetize small fortunes.
Business & Tech Self-Driving Car Engineer Anthony Levandowksi Gets 18-Month Sentence For Stealing Waymo Technology One time Google/Alphabet employee Anthony Levandowski, who jumped ship to take a generous offer from Uber in 2016 that included $680 million for his self-driving truck startup Otto, has just been sentenced to 18 months in jail for stealing trade secrets.
Business & Tech Alaska and American Airlines Announce Bay Area Layoffs Joining the series of layoff notices sent to airline employees at multiple companies in the last month, Alaska Airlines and American Airlines have given the heads-up to hundreds of local staff that their jobs could be on the line.
Business & Tech Feds Announce Charges Against Three People In Twitter Hack, Including Florida Man and Juvenile The major hacking and data breach at Twitter two weeks ago has already produced three alleged culprits, and federal authorities on Friday announced charges against the three, as well as the online moniker of a hacker still at large who is believed to have been the mastermind.
Business & Tech While National Economy Tanked Last Quarter, Apple, Alphabet, and Facebook Made Bank Despite a historic economic downturn in which the American economy contracted more than it ever has in one quarter, four big tech companies — Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook — saw huge profits and extremely healthy second quarters.
Business & Tech Twitter Mulls A Paid Subscription Model, As Congress Calls Jack Dorsey In To Testify Fresh off a highly embarrassing data breach, Twitter would like your credit card information — but Congressional Republicans want to grill Jack Dorsey first.
SF News Thursday Morning What's Up: Twitter Hack Was 'Coordinated Attack' Three Tenderloin building owners are suing the city over homeless encampments, the SF Police Commission voted to support the Black Lives Matter movement, and Airbnb says it is still planning to IPO soon.
Business & Tech Airbnb Gets Dragged For Asking People To Donate Cash To Homeowner Hosts It certainly isn't the first utterly tone-deaf thing that Airbnb has done as a company, but amid a global pandemic and recession, it seems wildly inappropriate and dumb to be asking customers to pad the pockets of hosts — i.e. homeowners — who are suddenly out their side income.
Business & Tech Facebook Gets More Bad News Via Final, Scathing Report From Yearslong Civil Rights Audit Facebook has repeatedly failed the civil rights community and had a "deeply troubling" response to the ongoing problem of President Trump's posts, according to a final report from a two-year-long civil rights audit.
Business & Tech United Airlines Sends Furlough Notices To Almost Half Its U.S. Employees In a sign of growing trouble for the airline industry, United Airlines has sent mandated 60-day job-cut warnings to 36,000 of its employees — or nearly half of its U.S. staff.
