The seven biggest scandals of Silicon Valley giants in 2018

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Technology companies all want to portray themselves as good people with ideals and principles, but the performance of major Silicon Valley giants in 2018 clearly violated the principle of "don't be evil". Foreign media compiled the seven major negative news about these technology giants in 2018, and the giants we are familiar with were "honored" to be on the list.

Technology companies have always wanted to portray themselves as good people with ideals and beliefs, who do everything for the public. "Kindness", "fairness" and "justice" are words that they often mention.

But looking back at 2018, the Silicon Valley technology giants, which were once seen as leading progress and delivering good things, faced unprecedented doubts this year.

As startups get bigger and make more money, they accumulate more power and influence outside Silicon Valley and even make deals with governments.

The two principles that were once on everyone's lips, such as "connecting the world" and "don't be evil", are no longer applicable.

Scandals that have broken out in major companies have disappointed the public. Foreign media has compiled the seven major negative news about these technology giants in 2018. Apple, Google, Amazon, Tesla, Uber... all the giants we are familiar with are "honored" to be on the list. These scandals sound incredible.

"Rewarded" sexual assault: Android's creator sexually assaulted a female subordinate and was forced to resign, but Google paid him $90 million in compensation

As the #MeToo movement gained momentum, the tech industry was singled out as the epitome of rampant misconduct.

On October 25, a report in the New York Times revealed a piece of news: Andy Rubin, known as the "Father of Android", was exposed to sexually assaulting a female employee in 2013. After investigation, Google asked Rubin to resign.

When Rubin left Google, Larry Page gave him high praise: With Android, Rubin created something really amazing - with more than one billion happy users. Even more incredible is that Rubin received a compensation of up to $90 million when he left Google, paid monthly, $2 million per month, and the last compensation was paid in November this year.

After the incident broke out, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Vice President of Human Resources Operations Eileen Naughton jointly signed an internal letter to Google employees, claiming that in the past two years, 48 ​​Google employees had been fired for sexual assault and no one had received severance pay.

Robin has since taken a leave of absence from his smartphone company Essential.

Technology under question: The world's first driverless death, Uber stops testing

In the early hours of March this year, in Tempe, Arizona, an Uber self-driving car in autonomous mode was involved in a fatal accident during road testing. The safety driver was in the car when the accident occurred. This accident was the first time in the world that a person died during a road test of a self-driving car, and will have a huge impact on the testing and regulation of self-driving cars around the world.

According to a police report released by the Tempe Police Department, investigators determined the driver looked at his phone 204 times during the 43-minute test drive. The driver also played "The Voice" on Hulu, and law enforcement determined the driver's eyes were not on the road for 3.67 miles of the 11-mile total trip.

As a result, Uber suspended all self-driving testing operations in Pittsburgh, Toronto, San Francisco and Phoenix and released a safety report detailing how it would add precautions to its self-driving car tests, including two testers who must always sit in the front seat and have the automatic braking system engaged.

The incident immediately raised insurance and liability questions about self-driving cars, as well as an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.

As car companies race full speed ahead in developing solutions that will shape the future of urban transportation, tragedies like this remind us that while self-driving cars and humans share the road, these plans are fraught with risk. Did Uber learn its lesson? Soon after, the company received a permit from Pennsylvania to resume self-driving car testing.

Journalist assassinated by Saudi Arabia: Is there blood behind the wealth of high-end players in Silicon Valley?

The story of the assassination of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi by agents of the Saudi Arabian government at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, as Khashoggi was about to receive his marriage license, shocked the public for weeks.

As the tech industry becomes uneasy about its relationship with the government and sources of funding that flagrantly abuse its power, the public is beginning to focus on the financial backers behind Silicon Valley giants.

Silicon Valley gets most of its money through SoftBank’s Vision Fund and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. SoftBank has a $93 billion tech-focused fund, and nearly half of that money ($45 billion) comes from the Kingdom. That means the Saudis alone invest far more in U.S. startups than any single VC combined. So are we going to see a startup refuse to work with SoftBank? No, probably not. Because Silicon Valley players are mostly just politicians and activists when it comes to convenience.

Silicon Valley companies that accept this source of funding also have a vested interest in staying friendly with Saudi Arabia and its crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who has been a proponent of staying friendly with tech CEOs in the past. But where do we go when Saudi money continues to distort U.S. venture capital? SoftBank has provided round after round of funding to countless startups due to the debt crisis.

As SoftBank’s war chest grows, tech founders and CEOs are faced with the age-old question of whether dirty money can be used for “good.” Regardless, if founders start to think critically about where their money is coming from and take action, the aftermath of Khashoggi’s assassination could spell the end of an era of venture capital in the United States.

Facebook faces congressional hearing: "Cambridge data gate" triggers panic about privacy and security

In March this year, the media revealed that the data analysis company Cambridge Analytica obtained data of up to 87 million Facebook users without authorization, and used the data to predict and influence voter voting in the 2016 US presidential election. This incident became one of the largest user data leaks since Facebook was founded.

At 2:15 pm on April 10th, Eastern Time, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg attended the joint hearing of the Senate Commerce and Judiciary Committee as the only witness. At the hearing, Zuckerberg explained the "Cambridge Data Gate" incident and accepted five hours of questioning from 44 senators. It is worth mentioning that the word "AI" appeared no less than 30 times in Zuckerberg's congressional hearing. Can artificial intelligence really be the key to saving Facebook?

This incident also made people pay more attention to the issue of public privacy, and users began to understand the truth about Facebook: collecting factual information, opinions and malicious false content on one platform, providing training data for algorithms, and profiting from users' addictive tendencies. As people become more cautious and critical of Facebook, a new and better social network may emerge, learning from the lessons of its predecessor.

Apple, with a market value of over one trillion dollars, has increasingly boring new products and increasingly expensive ones

For Apple, 2018 was a tough year for hardware. The MacBook Air got a Retina Display; the Apple Watch added a lot of new designs; the iPad Pro said goodbye to the home button, and we also met new products: Mac Mini and updated Apple Pencil. In September this year, Apple held its annual conference in Cupertino and announced the launch of three new iPhones, XS (regular model), XR (cheap model) and XS Max (super large model) - to be honest, compared with the price, the performance has not been significantly improved.

In August, Apple became a trillion-dollar tech company. It wasn't frayed charging cables or crappy keyboards that propelled the company past that milestone, but continued price increases on its already highly profitable iPhones. But while Apple remains wildly profitable, growth is slowing significantly.

Tech stocks took a beating at the end of the year, and while Apple appears to have weathered the storm better than most, it may have reached a plateau in its level of innovation in high-end hardware. If it wants to be worth $2 trillion, then Apple might be wise to focus on other ways to bring in revenue, such as Apple Music and iCloud.

As the largest and richest companies get bigger and richer, there are more questions about antitrust and regulation to prevent them from having too much economic power.

The fact is, Cook has more power than many political leaders, let’s hope he uses it well.

The price of speaking without restraint: Tesla CEO Musk accused by SEC of posting "false and misleading" tweets

In August, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted that he was considering taking Tesla private at $420 per share and that he had secured funding to do so. After the tweet was released, doubts flooded in: Is it legal? Is this a marijuana joke?

The tweet caused Tesla's stock price to rise more than 6% on August 7. Musk also complained that as a public company "has subjected Tesla to sustained defamatory attacks from the short-selling community, causing tremendous damage to our valuable brand."

It turns out that Musk did meet with a representative of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, whose principal told Musk that they were interested in taking the company private after purchasing about 5% of Tesla for $2 billion, and confirmed that the representative had the authority to make such investment decisions for the fund. However, nothing was put on paper, and Musk did not inform Nasdaq.

In late September, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a securities fraud lawsuit against Musk for his "false and misleading" tweets, seeking to remove him from Tesla.

Musk reached a settlement with the SEC two days after he was charged, resigning as chairman but remaining CEO. Musk and Tesla were also ordered to pay a separate $20 million fine, according to the SEC.

Public companies are supposed to value shareholders. One impulsive tweet broke that trust — in Musk’s case, costing him $40 million and a board seat, which is why we shouldn’t fear or trust leaders too much.

Musk is smart, and his inventions are changing the world. But he is human, and humans are flawed, and Tesla's board needs to do more to balance the highest power.

Hype of the giants: Amazon's second headquarters plan is seen as a scam

The arrival of tech companies can bring new wealth to cities. Amazon has begun a "roadshow" in the United States, which the company calls its search for a second headquarters, or "HQ2." Amazon, with its large-scale retail and cloud businesses, can undoubtedly bring wealth, innovation, jobs and investment to a region.

Initially the retail giant wanted to choose cities in the American heartland as catalysts for job growth, such as emerging tech hubs like Columbus, Ohio, Detroit, Michigan or Birmingham, Alabama.

Finally, the news that Amazon plans to split its second headquarters, HQ2, and locate it in Long Island City, Queens, New York, and Crystal City, Arlington, Virginia, shocked the public and even sparked anger.

Jon Shieber noted that cities opened their doors to Amazon to prove its viability as a second home for the retail giant. In return, Amazon collected data on urban and suburban centers that could be used to develop office space for the next wave of white-collar workers, and cities that ultimately became the sites of new offices were offered more than $2 billion in tax breaks.

On Twitter, people used words like "farce," "sham" or "stunt" to describe the whole thing. Amazon's critics were outraged by what they called a "bait-and-switch."

Okay, that’s all for this evil inventory.

In 2019, Silicon Valley will continue to maintain some of its good ethos as a venture capital sandbox that supports talented entrepreneurs looking to disrupt old industries through proprietary technology inventions.

But we also hope that no one will be left sleeping forever at the wheel of autopilot, that companies will no longer turn a blind eye to the evil behavior of their largest funding sources, and that there will no longer be a place for covering up ongoing behavior such as sexual harassment.

When what is said is different from what is done and promises made are not fulfilled, the public's trust in the company will only continue to weaken.

Source: techcrunch.com . If there are any copyright issues, please contact us to delete it.

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