Business & Tech Twitter and Facebook Remove Falun Gong, Saudi Disinformation Campaigns Both Twitter and Facebook announced Friday that they were removing hundreds of inauthentic accounts with links to the Falun Gong spiritual movement — of Shen Yun fame. And Twitter also admitted it just had to remove 88,000 fake accounts linked to Saudi Arabia.
Business & Tech Uber Riders Tell Harrowing Story Of Feeling Kidnapped By Driver In Oakland A mistake by an Alaska Airlines gate agent and a very angry Uber driver led to a 911 call and a kidnapping story fit for local news — not to mention a fresh bit of bad PR for Uber.
Business & Tech Smash-and-Grab Thief Takes Facebook Hard Drives With Sensitive Employee Data A thief broke into the car of an employee in the payroll department at Facebook last month and made off with hard drives that contained banking and salary information for 29,000 Facebook employees.
Business & Tech Google and Facebook Slip Out of Top Ten In Glassdoor Ratings By Employees Two of the Bay Area's big tech companies that have long been evangelized by their employees and praised as places to work are steadily slipping in their popularity rankings on Glassdoor.
Business & Tech San Francisco Loses Major Convention, Oracle's OpenWorld, to Las Vegas Following several years in which the convention bureau has been decrying the visible homelessness on downtown streets as a deterrent for organizers of lucrative professional conventions, the city is losing one of its longstanding mainstays, Oracle's OpenWorld.
Business & Tech Apple Rolls Out Its Most Expensive Computer Ever, Topping Out at $53K The newest Mac Pro desktop models go on sale today, and while the base model costs just a dollar under six grand, add-ons bring the top-of-the-line version to $52,599.
Business & Tech Facebook Says It Will Fight Disinformation About the 2020 Census It's not only an election year next year, it's also a census year, and Facebook is saying that it plans to treat the census like a high-profile election — only in this case it will actually take down ads that spread lies.
Business & Tech It's Not Even Built Yet, But Downtown's 61-Story Oceanwide Center Is Already For Sale Chinese developer Oceanwide Holdings looks to be trying to exit the U.S. market, either partially or fully, putting its considerable development portfolio in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco all on the market at once.
Business & Tech Lyft Is Being Sued By 20 Victims In Second Sexual-Assault Suit A second lawsuit was filed Wednesday against Lyft in a case involving 20 cases of sexual assault involving drivers. And this suit joins a separate one filed in September by the same law firm that covers 14 other cases of assault.
Business & Tech 12 Years After The First iPhone, Craigslist Has Finally Launched a Smartphone App The purple peace sign power of Craigslist is now available as an official iOS app, though the Android app is more of a beta version casual encounter.
SF News Day Around the Bay: Google Co-Founders Step Down As Alphabet Chiefs Larry Page and Sergey Brin are ending remarkable two-decade careers by stepping down from their roles at Alphabet, the Tubbs Fire cause is again questioned, and closures begin at the Caldecott Tunnel.
Business & Tech Mark Zuckerberg Gets Grilled By Gayle King About Political Ads, That Secret White House Dinner Monday on CBS This Morning, Gayle King aired the first half of a two-part interview she did with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan — the first joint television interview the couple has ever done.
Business & Tech SF-Based Charles Schwab Buys TD Ameritrade, Will Move HQ to Dallas Area 48-year-old brokerage firm Charles Schwab confirmed its widely rumored acquisition of TD Ameritrade on Monday, and the news came with the added detail that the combined company's new corporate headquarters will be in Westlake, Texas.
Business & Tech Former CEO Travis Kalanick Dumps Uber Stock To the Tune of $1.5 Billion Following the expiration of the six-month lockup period for investors and employees' Uber stock, former CEO Travis Kalanick has had some big paydays this month.
Business & Tech Twitter Gets Pushback On Its 'Minefield' Of a Political Ad Policy Twitter fleshed out its rather convoluted new policy for political ads on Friday, and it was met with immediate criticism, skepticism, and outright bafflement from both sides of the political spectrum.
Business & Tech Vaping Illnesses Linked To THC Pod Additive Vitamin E Acetate For the first time since the outbreak of lung illnesses associated with e-cigarettes earlier this year, the Centers for Disease Control says it has identified a specific ingredient as a "very strong culprit": Vitamin E acetate.
Business & Tech Two Former Twitter Employees Accused of Spying For Saudi Arabia The U.S. government has accused two former Twitter employees of spying on behalf of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia via their access to sensitive Twitter user data.
Business & Tech California Sues for Zuck’s Emails as Growing Scandal Reveals More About Facebook Data Dealings A four-pronged scandal-palooza is rocking Facebook’s world today, the worst of which is probably the “Switcharoo Plan” where recent user privacy measures did not apply to choice advertisers.
Business & Tech Hold On To Your Peaches: Facebook, Instagram Ban The 'Sexual Use’ Of Emoji For those who fancy employing emojis in suggestive fashions — which, let’s be honest, is every person with an internet-connected device — using them in such ways on Facebook and Instagram could (potentially) cause you to get banned from either platform.
Business & Tech Bernie Bashes Apple’s $2.5 Billion Housing Pledge, Calls It Corporate ‘Hypocrisy’ The Democratic candidate slams Apple for being “corporate tax evaders” who “helped create California’s housing crisis.”
Business & Tech Zuckerberg Hosts Off-the-Record Dinner Party With Critics To Discuss Facebook's Political Ad Policy He invited civil rights leaders and other staunch critics of the policy for an intimate dinner at his Palo Alto home Monday evening, because he wants to look like he cares.
Business & Tech Airbnb to Crack Down on 'Party Houses' After Orinda Shooting Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said in a series of tweets over the weekend that the company was banning all "party houses" in the aftermath of a Halloween shooting at an unauthorized house party in Orinda.
Business & Tech Two Men Confess To Cyber Ransom Scheme Involving 2016 Uber and Lynda.com Hacks In a San Jose federal court Wednesday, a Florida resident and one Toronto local pleaded guilty to charges of computer hacking and extorting conspiracies, as part of the massive 2016 Uber and Lynda.com data breaches.
Business & Tech Twitter Takes a Stand Facebook Won't And Says No To Political Ads Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey made a major announcement Wednesday that is a clear response both the current political climate in the U.S. and to the public outcry over competitor Facebook's policy surrounding political advertising.
Business & Tech Juul Knowingly Sold More Than a Million Contaminated Vape Pods, Fired Exec Claims A new lawsuit claims that former Juul CEO Kevin Burns dismissed concerns about contaminated and expired vaping pods, saying that half the company's customers are "drunk."
