Business & Tech Screen Time Takes Worldwide Dip As Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp Suffer Outages Can't load your friend's Insta Story? Guess what! There are major outages worldwide on all of Facebook's social properties.
Business & Tech Over 120 LGBTQ Google Employees Say They Don't Want Google Marching In SF's Pride Parade An open letter from disgruntled Google employees comes after the company refused to allow them to protest from within the company's contingent at Sunday's Pride parade. But SF Pride says Google is still marching.
Business & Tech Uber and Lyft Pushed Drivers To Email State Legislators To Oppose Bill That Would Make Them Employees Both Uber and Lyft are anxious about a bill that could potentially make California the first state where rideshare drivers — and all delivery-app drivers — can't be classified as contractors.
Business & Tech Slack Stock Soars, Triples Company's Valuation In its untraditional public offering Thursday, Slack's stock took off in early trading, and currently is at over $41 per share — well over the reference price announced late Wednesday of $26 per share.
Business & Tech Local Companies Slack and Grocery Outlet Both Hit The Stock Market Thursday Slack Technologies will begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange, while the much less-online Grocery Outlet Bargain Market will also debut on the NASDAQ.
Business & Tech Facebook Unveils Details On Its Crypto Coin, Libra, And Its Plan To Track Every Dollar We Spend It's been the buzz of Crypto Twitter and tech blogs for months, but today we have details of Facebook's next step toward world domination — and the next move that's most definitely going to raise eyebrows among regulators in Washington.
Business & Tech Bay Area Billionaire Vinod Khosla Believes That AI Will Replace Musicians and Songwriters In 10 Years You may be hooked on your algorithm-generated Discover Weekly playlist listening on Spotify, but what if machine learning could auto-generate music tailored to your exact taste and mood? That's what local billionaire Vinod Khosla thinks will be happening within 10 years.
Business & Tech Launch Announced For Uber Air, The On-Demand Helicopter Service That They Say Will Be As Cheap As Uber X Following on but unrelated to its more luxury-focused Uber Copter, which launches in New York City in July, Uber this week announced Uber Air, an all-electric flying taxi service that it hopes to begin testing in Australia next year.
Business & Tech Questionable Study Shows How Much Ad Revenue Google News Has Siphoned From The News Industry News organizations nationwide have been complaining how Big Tech was thriving on the backs of journalists. Now a new report finds that Google made almost as much ad revenue last year on news searches as the entire news industry combined made on its own content.
Business & Tech Apple Kills Off iTunes, Adds iOS 13 Dark Mode Apple kicks off its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Jose today, and the big announcements have begun rolling in — even though no major product announcements are expected at this one, except maybe a new Mac Pro.
Business & Tech Google Cloud Outage Shuts Down Everything From Smart Locks To Snapchat A significant outage with Google Cloud Services Sunday had widespread impacts that included right here on SFist — there were some scary moments there — but the most noticeable impacts for users were probably on Snapchat, YouTube, and Nest.
Business & Tech Salesforce Steps Into Gun Debate, Drops Customers Who Sell Automatic Weapons Salesforce made a change to the acceptable-use policy for its e-commerce software this week, adding a range of firearms and accessories to the list of products it forbids customers from selling.
Business & Tech Low Uber Rating? Company To Start Kicking 'Below Average' Riders Off The App Have you made a driver pull over one too many times so you could boot? Or worse, actually puked in the backseat of an Uber? You may just find yourself removed from the privilege of using Uber in the near future.
Business & Tech Judge Orders Uber To Turn Over Illegal Parking, Safety Hazard Data Police estimate that rideshare drivers commit 65% of San Francisco traffic violations, and the city attorney just won a round in the fight to prove it.
Business & Tech Don't Want To Chit-Chat With Your Uber Driver? New 'Quiet Mode' Is For You Uber has just rolled out a new feature for its black-car service: Quiet Mode. Without having to say so or be passive-aggressively terse, this new option will let your driver know you'd like to ride in silence, thanks.
Business & Tech Airbnb House Fire in Sonoma Tests Company’s Insurance Response A Sonoma couple learned the hard way that Airbnb's $1 million “Host Guarantee” is not exactly a guarantee, or at least not a quick one.
Business & Tech Facebook and Twitter Sign On With 'Christchurch Call' To Quash Extremist Content; White House Refuses The White House is signaling to white nationalists that it wants to protect their free speech rights by refusing to sign on with multiple Western governments to a non-binding pledge to stem the tide of extremist content.
Business & Tech Rideshare Vehicles Are Hotbeds For Germs, Moreso Than Taxis, Says Study Those dangling bottles of hand-sanitizer might be more than just a courtesy! A small-scale study comparing swabs taken from rideshare vehicles with those taken in taxis and rental cars found that the rideshare vehicles had the highest overall presence of bacteria and other germs.
Business & Tech Uber IPO Sputters, Stock Already Trading Below Initial Price Uber's big, much ballyhoo'd IPO did not get off to the most glorious start Friday afternoon, as an already conservative $45 initial share price appears too rich for investors' blood. Even Lyft had a bit of a first-day bounce on its IPO day!
Business & Tech Amazon Go a No-Go As Supes Vote To Ban Cashless Stores The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday voted to ban all retail outlets in the city that don't accept cash as payment. The move to quell a growing trend of cashless stores and restaurants is meant to ensure access to all stores by low-income residents.
Business & Tech Kamala Harris Wants To Make Twitter and Facebook Accountable For Hate Speech Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris said over the weekend that she wants to hold social media companies responsible for allowing radicalization and hate speech on their platforms.
Business & Tech Facebook In Talks With Dozens Of Financial Firms About Launching Its Own Cryptocurrency As has been rumored on the tech blogs for months, Facebook is reportedly working to create its own cryptocurrency, and now we know the name of the covert project: Project Libra.
Business & Tech Uber Drivers Plan Strike Ahead Of IPO Uber drivers are planning to strike in seven cities on May 8, which may be right around the time the company has its big IPO day on Wall Street. The drivers are demanding better pay, benefits, and transparency around their wages.
Business & Tech Facebook Could Be Fined Up To $5 Billion By The FTC For Its Mishandling Of Data The fine, expected to be between $3 billion and $5 billion, is potentially more firm back-hand thwack that it is a wrist-slap, as such fines have mostly been in the past.
Business & Tech Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp Shut Off In Sri Lanka Following Terror Attacks After Sunday's deadly suicide bombings that killed nearly 300 people, the government of Sri Lanka shut off nationwide access to most social media sites and apps citing safety concerns and the spread of false news reports.
