In 2021, Bill Gates lost his impeccable reputation, Zuckerberg broke half of the Internet, and Musk fell out with the President of the United States. recalled the loudest Silicon Valley scandals that have occurred this year.

Not who he seemed

In 2021, it became known about the divorce of Bill and Melinda Gates, who decided to leave after 27 years of marriage. After the news about this, materials began to appear in the media, which revealed not the most pleasant facts from the biography of the billionaire.

For example, the co-founder of Microsoft was friends with the late financier Jeffrey Epstein, who was accused of trafficking and sexual exploitation of minors.

In addition, it became known that Geist had repeatedly cheated on his wife and molested Microsoft employees. Former colleagues also said that he always yelled at subordinates, got drunk quickly and created a toxic atmosphere in the team. Gates himself did not comment on these materials in any way, and appeared in the press only as one of the experts on the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Child porn and Apple

In the summer, Apple announced that it was going to introduce a system to scan users' snapshots for child pornography. The statement instantly became a pretext for criticism of the American company.

Many were convinced that, under the pretext of fighting prohibited content, the Cupertino company would spy on users.

Apple denied all allegations, assuring users that they were completely safe.

Later, during an interview with 9to5Mac, Apple's anti-fraud chief Eric Friedman stated that Apple is "the largest platform for distributing child porn.

These words were perceived ambiguously, since it was not clear where Apple got such information, if it does not scan user data. This provoked a new wave of criticism against the tech giant, and in the fall, Apple postponed the introduction of the new feature indefinitely.

The entire Internet fell - Meta is to blame

In October 2021, Meta (formerly Facebook) and all of its services "crashed" and were unavailable for about seven hours. Following the tech giant, many other services stopped working, including Vkontakte, YouTube and TikTok.

This failure is considered the largest in the history of the Internet.

The company itself stated that it was caused by improper system configuration changes. However, users were not satisfied with this answer and they came up with their own theories.

Many people associate the failure with a scandal that happened shortly before it.

Former Meta product manager Frances Haugen leaked many of the company's internal documents to The Wall Street Journal.

All of Haugen's leaked documentation was used in newspaper materials that were intended to undermine Meta's reputation.

She also accused the company of disregarding the public interest, aiding in the spread of disinformation in order to increase its own profits, as well as involvement in the storming of the US Capitol.

Some users were convinced that the company provoked the failure in order to cover up the traces of their wrongdoing and distract the public.

Harassment suicide

In the summer, California authorities sued game studio Activision Blizzard, claiming internal harassment. The lawsuit described cases of systematic discrimination against women, sexual harassment and bullying.

There was also one case of bullying-related suicide reported.

The sex scandal hit the head of the company, Bobby Kotick, especially hard. The Wall Street Journal published an investigation claiming that Kitty knew about most of the problems that were occurring in all divisions and studios of the company, but did not report it to the board of directors. In particular, he concealed the data on complaints of nearly 30 female employees.

It was also revealed that in 2006, Kitty, in anger, sent a voice message to his assistant with threats of murder, but, as noted in the company, he immediately apologized for the "hyperbole inappropriate letter".

After that, employees of the company for the development and publication of video games Activision Blizzard decided to go on strike, demanding the dismissal of the head of the company. As a result, amid a large-scale scandal, Kitty left his post.

Masks against Biden

In the fall, Elon Musk's family took up arms against US President Joe Biden and his administration because they did not recognize the merits of Tesla.

It all started with Biden's speech at the opening of the General Motors (GM) plant - he praised GM chief Mary Barra for holding "America's future in her hands." This angered Elon Musk's mom.

“Biden's speech was written 20 years ago, just before GM killed electric cars. His speechwriter uploaded the wrong file by mistake, ”May wrote, hinting at GM's failure in this area.

Elon Musk also did not stand aside and commented on the situation.“Maybe they are characters from a computer game, and Tesla is simply not in their dialogue options? Let's try to get them to say the word "Tesla" - wrote the head of the company.

This summer, the summit, which was dedicated to the US electro-automotive industry, was attended by the largest manufacturers of electric cars. However, Musk's company was not invited, which clearly indicates a misunderstanding between the current American leader and the main Tesla.

WhatsApp and spying on users

At the beginning of 2021, it became known about the change in the WhatsApp privacy rules. According to the innovations, the messenger should transfer the personal data of users to the parent company Meta to analyze their habits and preferences.

At the same time, the administration of the messenger said that those people who do not agree with the new WhatsApp policy will be deprived of the opportunity to use the service in full - its functionality will be seriously limited.

This led to a massive boycott of the application - many users left the messenger and started using more confidential alternatives - Telegram and Signal.

Since then, the controversy about the violation of user privacy has not subsided. Mark Zuckerberg was also accused of wanting to know as much information as possible about all WhatsApp users in order to earn money from targeted advertising.

bbabo.Net