Worst Tech Companies To Work For

Gwendal Le Bec

The Manufacture

The Evil Listing

Which tech companies are actually doing the nearly impairment? Here are the 30 almost dangerous, ranked by the people who know.

Maybe it was faux news, Russian trolls, and Cambridge Analytica. Or Travis Kalanick's conniption in an Uber. Or the unmasking of Theranos. Or all those Twitter Nazis, and racist Google results, and conspiracy theories on YouTube. Though activists, academics, reporters, and regulators had sent up warning flares for years, it wasn't until quite recently that the era of enchantment with Silicon Valley ended. The list of scandals—over user privacy and security, over corporate surveillance and information collection, over fraud and foreign propaganda and algorithmic bias, to name a few—was as unending as your Instagram feed. There were hearings, resignations, investigations, major new regulations in Europe, and calls for new laws at home. At that place was an manufacture that insisted information technology now valued privacy and safety but yet acted otherwise. There was WeWork, whatever that was.

The tech industry doesn't intoxicate us like it did simply a few years agone. Keeping upwards with its issues—and its fixes, and its fixes that cause new issues—is boundless. Separating out the meaningful threats from the noise is hard. Is Facebook really the danger to democracy it looks similar? Is Uber really worse than the system it replaced? Isn't Amazon'due south same-mean solar day delivery worth it? Which harms are real and which are hypothetical? Has the techlash gotten information technology correct? And which of these companies is actually the worst? Which ones might be, well, evil?

We don't mean evil in the mustache-twirling, burn-the-earth-from-a-secret-lair sense—well, we mostly don't mean that—but rather in the mode Googlers once swore to avoid mission drift, respect their users, and spurn short-term profiteering, even though the company now regularly faces scandals in which information technology has violated its users' or workers' trust. We hateful ills that outweigh conveniences. Nosotros hateful temptations and poison pills and unanticipated outcomes.

Which brings united states of america to this listing. Slate sent ballots to a wide range of journalists, scholars, advocates, and others who take been thinking critically about technology for years. We asked them to tell usa which tech companies they are most concerned about, and we let them determine for themselves what counts as "apropos." We told them to define the category of technology companies as narrowly or broadly equally they liked, which is how, say, Exxon Mobil fabricated the listing. Each respondent ranked as many equally x companies—subsidiaries counted as part of parent corporations—with more than points going to the choices they placed at the peak. Then we added up their votes and got this.

What did we find? While the major U.S. tech companies topped the vote—read on to find out which came in at No. 1—our respondents are deeply concerned well-nigh foreign companies dabbling in surveillance and A.I., as well equally the domestic gunners that power the data-broker business. No ane thinks Twitter is the worst thing that could happen to a planet, but a lot of people worry about it a little. Companies with the potential to do harm can be as lamentable as those with long records of producing it. Privacy people care a lot about misinformation, but misinformation people might non be so worried about privacy. About anybody distrusts Peter Thiel. And some people don't have a problem with Amazon or Apple or even Facebook at all—which is why we included dissents for many of the top companies on our list.

Nosotros hope you'll argue over this attempt at finding consensus, make your own mental listing, and decide which concerns expressed here are as well balmy, totally overblown, or exactly right. —Jonathan L. Fischer

Entries compiled past Jonathan Fifty. Fischer and Aaron Mak

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30

mSpy

Year founded: 2010

Founder: Andrei Shimanovich

What it is: A telephone-spying software company that allows users to monitor another person'south messages, locations, social media, browsing histories, calls, and other digital activity. Marketed to parents, the product is essentially the ultimate cyberstalking tool.

One evil thing:

Our respondents say: "I am most troubled by the growth of cyberstalking apps (pitched equally legitimate help for parents and employers and deployed past domestic abusers)." —Danielle Citron, Boston University School of Constabulary

29

Cellebrite

Yr founded: 1999

Co-CEOs: Yossi Carmil and Ron Serber*

What it is: A forensics visitor based in Israel that breaks into personal devices (price to unlock a phone: $1,500) on behalf of its clients, which are ofttimes constabulary enforcement or other government entities.

1 evil affair: In 2017, authorities in Myanmar arrested ii Reuters journalists who were covering the genocide of Rohingya Muslims. A law officer who had apparently received grooming from Cellebrite used the company's engineering science to infiltrate the journalists' phones. The authorities then used the documents the officer found as evidence in its trial against the reporters, who were sentenced to seven years in prison. (Cellebrite has declined to comment on the incident and left the Myanmar market in 2018. The reporters were eventually released in 2019.)

28

Baidu

Yr founded: 2000

Co-founder and CEO: Robin Li

What it is: The Chinese multinational is the second-largest search engine and smart-speaker vendor in the world.

One evil thing: Baidu, which controls ii-thirds of China's online search marketplace, appears to have been active in suppressing information about the 2019 pro-democracy protests.

Our respondents say: "I of the things we've realized in the past two decades about tech is that information technology'due south indisputably not neutral: platforms and products take cultural norms and biases built into them past the architects and policymakers. Baidu works in concert with the Chinese government to conscience and surveil its users. As we motility into the side by side decade, Baidu will unequivocally be 1 of the tools People's republic of china uses to continue to control its own citizens and expand its reach." —Kate Klonick, St. John'due south University Law Schoolhouse

27

The Grid

Customers throughout the U.s.: 145 million

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What information technology is: The loosely connected networks, composed of government utilities and private companies, that distribute electricity to homes and businesses across the country. The grid is a vital—yet distressingly fragile—touchstone of modernistic society.

Ane evil thing: National security officials take become increasingly concerned about the prospect of a foreign power, especially Russia, disrupting the U.S. grid with a cyberattack. As it turns out, some of the country's biggest power companies may non be prepared in such an upshot. The North American Electric Reliability Corp., a nonprofit regulatory system, has fined some of the country'southward largest power companies—such as PG&East, DTE Free energy, and Duke Free energy—in recent years for inadequate infrastructure protections. Duke Energy, a utility based in N Carolina that operates in vii states, agreed to a $10 1000000 fine in February, the largest in NERC history. NERC reportedly found 127 violations of safe rules, including a system configuration error that would have left Duke unaware of sure types of hacks over a six-month flow. Duke had also allegedly allowed employees and contractors without proper clearance to access critical digital records for more than than four years and did not use multifactor authentication for some sensitive computer systems.

Our respondents say: "Aside from a nuclear weapon detonation in or nigh a populous expanse, it'south difficult to imagine a more disruptive effect that could have long-term catastrophic effects on our economy and way of life than one that disrupts the flow of ability on a large calibration, and still we just practise not have enough focus and expertise to reduce the complexity of the grid and ensure its safety and reliability. … It'south not clear whether many of these companies take the expertise and ability to tell the departure between an incident that has its roots in a cyberattack and one that is prompted by other causes (or a combination of the ii)." —Brian Krebs, Krebsonsecurity.com.

26

Vigilant Solutions

Year founded: 2005

Founder and president: Shawn Smith

What it is: An artificial intelligence and analytics visitor that sells police departments surveillance tools, which tin help them to skirt the Fourth Subpoena.

One evil matter: Every month, the company uses automated readers to browse between 150 1000000 and 200 million photos of license plates captured past cameras in malls, parking lots, and residential neighborhoods. In March, the ACLU sued Immigration and Community Enforcement over its use of a license plate database maintained by Vigilant to runway the cars of undocumented immigrants.

Our respondents say: "Vigilant has clustered billions of data points of location information. They contract with police departments across the state to add another layer of surveillance to the already expansive web of tracking powers available to law enforcement. Having the power to trace people's movements through infinite directly restricts our freedom of movement and clan." —Chris Gilliard, Macomb Community College

25

Megvii

Yr founded: 2011

Co-founder and CEO: Qi Yin

What it is: A $four billion deep-learning A.I. visitor focused on facial recognition that volition soon debut on the Hong Kong stock market, and which the Trump administration blacklisted in October for allegedly abetting efforts to suppress Uighurs in Xinjiang. Megvii's tech has been integrated as an ID verification feature in ride-sharing apps, payment systems, retail stores, photo retouching tools, office security infrastructure, and public transportation. The ubiquity of Face up++ in the country has helped to make the population more comfortable with an authoritarian technology for the sake of convenience.

One evil thing: The Chinese regime has used Face up++ to track downward criminals as office of its SkyNet system, which uses 170 million security cameras and was one time able to locate a BBC reporter in seven minutes.

Our respondents say: "These technologies are the proof of concept for what Amazon has however to achieve, and their rollout moves the world closer to universal facial recognition surveillance everywhere." —Julie Cohen, Georgetown University Law Center

24

Airbnb

Year founded: 2008

Co-founder and CEO: Brian Chesky

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What it is: A lodging platform that makes it cheaper and easier to programme that weekend getaway, just too diminishes long-term housing options and causes rent hikes in neighborhoods around the world.

One evil thing: In 2018, the New Orleans housing rights group Jane Place Neighborhood Sustainability Initiative released a study indicating that Airbnb was exacerbating the city's shortage of long-term housing and displacing residents in its low-income neighborhoods. The report establish that some investors were purchasing New Orleans properties, evicting their tenants, and converting them into short-term rental spaces, aka Airbnbs. In Bywater, a neighborhood with i of the highest concentrations of curt-term rental properties in New Orleans, the median listing price to rent a three-bedroom home rose by 72 percentage from 2009 to 2015. (Airbnb disputed the method and conclusions of the Jane Place study at the time.)

23

Anduril Industries

Yr founded: 2017

Co-founder: Palmer Luckey

Co-founder and CEO: Brian Schimpf

What it is: After selling his virtual reality startup Oculus to Facebook and and so leaving the social behemothic nether hazy circumstances (allegedly because of donations to a misogynistic, racist pro-Trump group), the then-24-year-old Palmer Luckey founded the A.I. defense force firm Anduril, named for a mystical sword in Lord of the Rings and staffed with former Palantir (see: Evil List No. four) executives.

1 evil matter: Anduril is earning millions of dollars past helping the Trump administration create a virtual border wall of solar-powered surveillance towers with A.I.-enabled sensors and cameras, which the immigrants' rights group Mijente says is part of "a surveillance apparatus where algorithms are trained to implement racist and xenophobic policies."

22

IBM

Year founded: 1911

President and CEO: Ginni Rometty

What it is: A multinational Information technology infrastructure company that was responsible for the invention of the ATM, the hd bulldoze, and the Watson A.I. computer. (And yes, that infamously supplied the Tertiary Reich with dial bill of fare applied science that helped organize and facilitate the Holocaust.)

I evil thing: The city of Los Angeles alleges in an ongoing 2019 lawsuit that the Weather Co., a subsidiary of IBM, did not clearly notify users that it was collecting their private locations with the Weather Channel app. The app encouraged its 45 million agile monthly users to grant it access to their locations to get more personalized local weather data and then allowed IBM'due south Watson Advert products to monetize the coordinates. IBM says information technology made the appropriate disclosures and would defend its data-collection practices.

21

Cloudflare

Year founded: 2009

Co-founder and CEO: Matthew Prince

What it is: An internet infrastructure company that assists websites with content delivery and cybersecurity. Cloudflare's services for blocking automatic DDoS attacks are peculiarly crucial to the viability of any website; the New York Times has described CEO Matthew Prince as "one of several internet executives with control over the web'southward most basic infrastructure."

One evil matter: In belatedly Dec, the New York Times reported that the operator of three websites containing more 18,000 pornographic images of children had been using Cloudflare's cyberattack-prevention services to conceal their internet addresses and thus avert detection. Though Cloudflare claims it has cut ties to these and other such websites in the past, Canadian nonprofits defended to fighting child sex corruption take accused the company of beingness slow to take action even after being notified (the company responded at the fourth dimension that it worked closely with the nonprofits and law enforcement to remove several websites). With a couple of notable exceptions like 8chan, Cloudflare has generally refused to take responsibility for the websites it protects, which include forums for hateful and violent content.

Speaking of 8Chan …

20

8kun (formerly 8chan)

Year founded: 2013

Owner: Jim Watkins

What it is: The anything-atrocious-goes message lath founded for users who felt they couldn't fly their edgelord flags on the slightly less vile 4chan, 8chan was deplatformed by its service providers, including Cloudflare, in August following the massacre of 22 people in an El Paso, Texas, Walmart—marking the third time in 2019 that a shooter posted a racist manifesto to 8chan before setting out to impale. The site returned this past fall as 8kun afterwards owner Jim Watkins apologized to his users for the inconvenience in a chilling, rambling video.

One evil matter: In addition to everything else, such manners!

Our respondents say: "It'southward an object lesson in how sites that traffic in hatred for women will inevitably end up inciting other forms of violent bigotry." —Mary Anne Franks, University of Miami Schoolhouse of Constabulary

nineteen

Oracle

Year founded: 1977

CEO: Safra Catz

What information technology is: A deject computing and database management company that has captured three.9 percent of the global market place for enterprise deject software.

One evil matter: Oracle acquired the Java programming language in 2010 and proceeded to sue Google for infringing on the copyrights. Google had previously rewritten Java APIs, which are lines of lawmaking that permit unlike programs to communicate with 1 another, so that coders could build Java apps that would exist uniform with the Android operating arrangement. If the Supreme Court agrees with Oracle'south claim that information technology owns the rights to the Java APIs, that precedent could go far harder for people to develop innovative software that functions across different platforms.

Our respondents say: "Oracle'southward mission to copyright APIs is a terrifying example of the worst kind of tech issue: something totally irksome and esoteric and simultaneously incredibly important. Oracle'south theory is bonkers, and has been propped up by a huge, expensive, shadowy astroturf campaign. It takes a lot to make me feel like Google is being victimized past a bully, but Oracle managed it." —Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing and the Electronic Frontier Foundation

xviii

23andMe

Year founded: 2006

CEO: Anne Wojcicki

What it is: One of the largest consumer genetic testing companies, 23andMe has helped millions of people detect unexplored boughs of their family trees. The service has also created DNA databases that can identify (and assistance law enforcement identify) huge swaths of the population in the process. Similar databases have led to the capture of suspected serial killers. While 23andMe has resisted snooping from law enforcement, the courts may eventually forcefulness the visitor to provide access to its customers' data. Given 23andMe's reach, fifty-fifty people who have non signed upward for the service would be forfeiting their genetic privacy in such an issue.

One evil thing: At the Time 100 Health Height in October, Wojcicki said of concerns about Deoxyribonucleic acid privacy, "The reality is that, with a new technology, information technology merely takes fourth dimension for people to become comfortable with information technology." The statement made headlines because it precisely articulated the gradual social credence of genetic genealogy that privacy advocates have been warning against.

Our respondents say: "Families delight in gifting each other these genetic tests and comparing their results. Meanwhile, the company is quickly edifice a huge genetic database, and in some cases, sharing that data with partners like GlaxoSmithKline for studies; in coming years, there'due south no telling how individuals' genetic information might be used, or worse yet, what could happen if that database is ever compromised." — Jane Hu, Slate contributor

17

SpaceX

Year founded: 2002

CEO: Elon Musk

COO and President: Gwynne Shotwell

What information technology is: The other Elon Musk company (but non that one or that one), the pioneering SpaceX was the first private company to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station and also the starting time private company whose founder borrowed its engineers for a pointless try to rescue the Thai boys' soccer squad trapped in a cave by using a custom-built submarine. For some reason, in 2018, SpaceX sent a Tesla Roadster into space, while at the same time the company has fallen behind on creating spacecraft to ferry bodily U.Due south. astronauts. In other words, SpaceX isn't immune to the whims of its possessor, who wants to somewhen colonize Mars.

Ane evil thing: As of this month, SpaceX has launched 180 Starlink satellites, which are intended to beam downward internet access. Cool, right? Unfortunately, astronomers say the satellites are disrupting their work because they are non painted black. This isn't exactly evil, only "in club to become detailed observations of distant cosmic objects, astronomers typically take long-exposure images of the dark sky with ground-based telescopes," the Verge recently reported. "Whenever a bright satellite passes through the telescope'south field of view, it creates a white streak through the motion picture, obscuring the result." SpaceX is trying to correct for the problem but doesn't know if its new darker coating will withstand space travel.

16

Verizon

Yr founded: 1983

CEO: Hans Vestberg

What it is: A telecommunications giant that turned the phrase "Tin can you hear me now?" into a cultural phenomenon—and also waged a number of destructive and contemptuous campaigns against internet neutrality, antitrust provisions, and consumer protections.

One evil thing:

Our respondents say: "A 'biggest telecoms' slot is cheating, merely Verizon, AT&T, Dart, and T-Mobile'southward combined disdain for their customers' privacy, anti-competitive maneuvering against cyberspace neutrality, incessant attempts to stymie competitors through relentless lobbying of everyone from town councils considering municipal broadband to Congress and the FCC make these companies a deeply venal portion of the ecosystem. Y'all can see some variation in their shared patterns of shady practices: Verizon, for example, was marginally better behaved relative to its peers in the location-information-selling mess that started unfolding about a twelvemonth ago (it claims to have stopped selling location data without consent starting time). But it also owns Adjuration, which agreed to settle the merits that information technology illegally tracked children concluding year. Verizon throttled the Santa Clara Fire Department and then coerced it into paying for a more expensive plan and then that information technology could keep fighting fires. And it has a history of unethically tracking its customers. The Silicon Valley companies deserve all the scrutiny they're getting and and then some, but so practise the companies that have been fleecing consumers since long before Mark Zuckerberg ever entered his get-go dorm room." —Lindsey Barrett, Institute for Public Representation, Georgetown University Law Center

15

Disney

Year founded: 1923

CEO: Robert Iger

What information technology is: The wholesome amusement conglomerate—and now streaming-video challenger—that has attracted the attention of antitrust enthusiasts because of its swallowing, over the past xxx years, of ABC, ESPN, Pixar, Lucasfilm, Curiosity Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox, and more than.

1 evil thing: Beloved films from the Twentieth Century Play tricks catalog that were pop amid second-run motion picture theaters have been disappearing from circulation. Now that the famously restrictive Disney owns the studio, it's pulled films like 1976'due south The Omen and the 1986 remake of The Fly out of repertory, every bit New York mag reported in Oct. Perhaps not super-evil, just also non cool.

Our respondents say: "The 1 surprise in my listing may be Disney—though it evidently is like many other tech firms in aggressively pursuing copyrights. Two answers to this: First, as social media and streaming video accept hold, Disney, like all other media firms, is finding itself forced to be a tech company. Second, Disney and other firms in the copyrighted content space have long had a great bargain of influence over the trajectory of technology development: They nearly killed off the VCR, arguably did kill off peer-to-peer technology, and have enshrined into law numerous complications and complexities into technology evolution in order to protect their copyrights." —Charles Duan, R Street Establish

14

Tesla

Yr founded: 2003

CEO: Elon Musk

What it is: The manufacture-changing electric vehicle–maker may be mockable for having a fan base of operations as toxic as Star Wars', for its foible- and fine-decumbent CEO, and for whatsoever the Cybertruck is. But Tesla truly is worrisome considering of its troubled tape of worker safety and its dubious claims that it volition shortly offer "full self-driving" to customers who take already paid $7,000 for the promised addition.

One evil thing: Tesla has been criticized for using the term "autopilot" to draw its vehicles' less-than-autonomous driver-assist feature, since drivers may put too much religion in a feature that is not meant to do the work for them (to occasionally fatal results). It also sells that as-notwithstanding-nonfunctioning "total self-driving" mode even though the rest of the autonomous vehicle manufacture now concedes such a thing is years or decades away. And withal:

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Our respondents say: "The very real social good that Tesla has done by creating safety, zero-emission vehicles does not justify misdeeds, like credible 'stealth recalls' of defects that appear to violate safety laws or the 19 unresolved Make clean Air Human action violations at its pigment shop. … Tesla'southward arroyo to automated driving engineering non just endangers its customers and the public more broadly, but the life-saving potential of the technology itself and those firms that are pursuing it responsibly." —Edward Niedermeyer, host of The Autonocast and author of Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors

13

Tencent

Year founded: 1998

CEO and co-founder: Ma Huateng

What it is: A telecommunications, social media, and consumer electronics giant that is also the world'south largest video game publisher. Tencent operates WeChat, China's most pop messaging app, which has more than 1.15 billion monthly users and has been accused of exercising censorship practices to toe the party line.

Ane evil thing:

Our respondents say: "Tencent is worrisome just past virtue of being an enormous puddle of capital beholden to an authoritarian authorities's technological ambitions. I think that'southward inherently dangerous. I as well remember it's a practiced vision of what many American Silicon Valley capitalists wish they could get away with were they fortunate enough to live in a lodge without a costless press." —Sam Biddle, the Intercept

12

LiveRamp (formerly Acxiom)

Year founded: 1969

CEO: Scott Howe

What information technology is: I of the near formidable consumer data brokers, LiveRamp collects personal info like home values, credit carte du jour transactions, and wellness history from hundreds of millions of people in club to sustain the $100 billion online ad manufacture. Why practice you continue seeing shoe ads all over the web, perhaps fifty-fifty on this very page you're reading, after browsing for loafers on Amazon? These guys.

One evil thing: In 2018, the disgraced political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica defended itself from accusations that it improperly nerveless Facebook user data to assistance Donald Trump's 2016 campaign by claiming that said information turned out to be useless, and that it had actually built its voter-targeting operation on datasets purchased from Acxiom and other information brokers, not from Facebook. In other words, while the Cambridge Analytica scandal was alarming, the kind of intimate data collection that landed the firm in hot h2o was almost trifling compared with what companies like Acxiom appoint in every 24-hour interval to target ads at consumers.

Our respondents say: "Information brokers epitomize the way 'online' and 'offline' behavior are being collapsed, fifty-fifty as there persists some sense that they are separate. Those companies are part of the wide 'surveillance capitalism' infrastructure that [fleshes] out a contour about our viability as a consumer. Nosotros don't take much articulate access to that contour (it is a underground held against us) and no due process with respect to correcting or abolishing it, even so it dictates the experiences nosotros accept in the commercial world (i.e., everywhere)." —Rob Horning, Existent Life mag

11

Huawei

Twelvemonth founded: 1987

Founder and CEO: Ren Zhengfei

What it is: The world's largest telecommunications equipment provider and second-largest smartphone manufacturer. National security experts have warned that the Chinese government could easily force per unit area Huawei to manipulate its supply chains to spy on the U.South. The company has also helped multiple governments, including China's, to repress political dissidents.

I evil thing: In August, the Wall Street Journal found that Huawei had worked with governments from at to the lowest degree two African countries to spy on political opponents. Huawei technicians reportedly helped officials in Zambia access the phones and Facebook pages of bloggers who had been critical of its president, Edgar Lungu. The technicians even tracked the bloggers' locations, leading to their abort in early 2019. In that location has been no proof, though, that executives from Huawei's headquarters in China were aware of these projects. Huawei denied the Journal's reporting.

10

Exxon Mobil

Yr merged: 1999

Chairman and CEO: Darren Woods

What it is: The world'southward largest oil refiner, which has spent millions of dollars to cast dubiety on climate scientific discipline—oh, and which actually pitches itself as a technology company.

I evil thing: In the 1970s and 1980s, Exxon hired scientists to deport internal studies on climate modify well before it became a mainstream consequence. Upon discovering that carbon emissions were affecting global temperatures, the company did non change form just rather worked to spread misinformation on climate science and lobbied to prevent the U.S. from joining international environmental treaties, similar the 1998 Kyoto Protocol.

Our respondents say: "Not only practice the emissions it'south responsible for contribute mightily to warming, but it has long sponsored organized and institutionalized efforts to spread deprival about the root of the problem." —Brian Merchant, OneZero

Read Siva Vaidhyanathan's case against Exxon Mobil here.

9

ByteDance

Year founded: 2012

Founder and CEO: Zhang Yiming

What it is: A Beijing-based social media startup. In China, ByteDance operates an A.I.-curated news-reading app that has led to predictable censorship concerns. But the visitor has come under scrutiny in the U.S. because of its app TikTok, American teens' favorite app for lip-synching, short-form nonsense, and becoming a brand.

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One evil affair: Most major social media platforms take steered clear of deepfakes, since the technology tin be abused to produce revenge porn and disinformation. Merely not ByteDance: In early January, a market-research startup discovered as-yet-released code inside TikTok and sister app Douyin that would allow users to make their own deepfakes. (ByteDance denied that it planned to introduce a deepfakes feature in TikTok.)

Our respondents say: Setting aside the geopolitical concerns, "TikTok is the closest that the world has always come to 'the Entertainment' of Space Jest, an immersive experience that's so addictive that its users forget to eat or drinkable or slumber. Simply be thankful that your phone has finite battery life." —Felix Salmon, Axios and Slate Coin

8

Twitter

Year founded: 2006

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CEO: Jack Dorsey

What it is: The microblogging service shares many of the same problems that plague the larger social platforms similar Facebook and YouTube—harassment, misinformation, imitation accounts—just its power can be overstated due to its popularity (the love-hate kind) with journalists. It's also a specially attractive venue for entities that would try to tilt the news bike, similar bot campaigns and @realDonaldTrump.

One evil matter: Last month, Dorsey announced a loftier-flight idea to decentralize social networks that evoked the ideals of an older, purer internet. But some critics saw the proposal as a convenient way for Twitter to eventually offload responsibility for what its users do.

Our respondents say: "Twitter is beingness used by the president of the United States to threaten state of war crimes. Just long before that, it (and Facebook and YouTube) contributed to the degradation of public discourse by rewarding people's worst instincts: impulsivity, cruelty, insincerity, instant gratification, performativity." —Mary Anne Franks

Dissent: "It's non a global force. It makes no money. Its power is express to its power to reflect and refract messages that originate elsewhere or notice greater amplification elsewhere." —Siva Vaidhyanathan, University of Virginia

7

Microsoft

Year founded: 1975

CEO: Satya Nadella

What it is: The software startup that Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded in an Albuquerque garage has grown—subsequently its antitrust spanking two decades ago—into a sprawling multinational technology corporation that has its hands in everything from cloud calculating to video game consoles. In fiscal year 2019 alone, Microsoft spent $9.one billion on xx companies (including a $7.5 billion deal for GitHub).

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1 evil thing: In Apr, the Financial Times institute that Microsoft's research co-operative in China had worked on three A.I. research papers with the land'due south National University of Defence force Technology, which is controlled by the military. The research topics included facial recognition, which critics in the U.S. said could assist the Chinese government monitor and oppress its citizens, particularly the Uighurs in Xinjiang. This isn't just a hypothetical concern. In 2016, the company created a public database of 10 meg images of 100,000 writers, activists, policymakers, and other prominent figures without their consent. The Chinese companies SenseTime and Megvii, which develop the surveillance technologies that the country'south government uses to monitor Xinjiang, had tapped into this database to train their facial recognition systems. Facing scrutiny, Microsoft shut the database downwardly this June.

Our respondents say: "Microsoft president Brad Smith's recent book bout presented Microsoft as the kinder, friendlier, Big Tech behemothic. The reality is that with its investment in deject services and its acquisitions of LinkedIn, Skype, GitHub, Minecraft, and other data-rich services, Microsoft is merely post-obit Google's playbook in building a business on surveillance and control." —Marker Hurst, Creative Skillful

Dissent: "For many years, both Microsoft and Apple essentially tried to create airtight, vertically integrated ecosystems and went to swell pains to maintain control and keep competitors out. Today both strike me as changing: Microsoft is embracing both open up source and cloud services, and Apple tree is making devices more interoperable with third-party products. Both of these are good for competition. This is not to say they are both there nonetheless—I still have my problems with Apple tree'due south walled-garden App Store—but the trends are definitely important." —Charles Duan

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Apple

Yr founded: 1976

CEO: Tim Cook

What it is: The maker of beloved hardware products. Its critics say it takes too big a cut of App Store sales, pays too little in taxes to the U.S. government, and pays far as well much deference to the Chinese Communist Political party—more, even, than Facebook and Google, which don't offer their core services in mainland People's republic of china.

1 evil matter:

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Our respondents say:  "Apple's adherents nonetheless consider themselves an oppressed indigenous minority, and the company's public stance against commercial surveillance gets them more credit than they're due: Apple won't spy on you lot for ads, just they'll help the Chinese government spy on its citizens to keep its supply chain intact." —Cory Doctorow

Dissent: "Yep, Apple fights 'right to repair' movements and doesn't want you to open upwards the gadgets you own yourself. Aye, information technology transparently sided with Prc in removing an app Hong Kong democracy protests were relying on to avoid police brutality. Aye, its supply concatenation still has major issues, not the to the lowest degree of which is the continued exploitation of associates workers at manufacturing plants. Just compared with its competitors, these are, believe information technology or not, bottom sins. Its devices have good encryption, and Apple makes security and privacy a genuine priority. It is serious about renewable free energy, and meets its net electricity demands entirely with clean ability. Information technology is less aggressive in seeking defense contracts than Google and Microsoft, and is by and large a amend political player. By and large. This is non to entirely damn it with faint praise—its phones are still pretty damn good, too." —Brian Merchant

Read Doctorow'due south full-throated case against the cult of Apple here.

5

Uber

Year founded: 2009

CEO: Dara Khosrowshahi

What information technology is: A "mobility" company that has peddled 1) a highly influential labor model that treats non-employee workers like customers; ii) a highly influential growth model that uses sharp elbows to conquer local markets; iii) a highly influential—and toxic—internal tech-bro civilization; four) an enduring Silicon Valley villain in ousted CEO Travis Kalanick; 5) and app-based taxi-hailing, which is very user-friendly. (Plus nutrient delivery, "micromobility" options like electric bikes and scooters, helicopters, and a cyberspace loss in the third quarter of 2019 of $ane.16 billion.)

One evil thing: Uber trains its lobbying muscle on major legislative threats like California'due south gig economic system law AB5, but a more obscure scuffle with policymakers in the Gilded Land highlights Uber's connected reticence to mitt over any power to local officials, as well equally how a company that one time spied on journalists using a "God View" tool tends to cloak itself as a privacy champion whenever it'south convenient. Since summer 2018, Los Angeles has collected detailed, anonymized data on electric scooter trips in the urban center so that transportation planners can better understand how all those Birds and Limes are moving around. Now L.A. wants to exercise the same with ride-hail information. Privacy advocates accept raised some skilful—though not disqualifying—concerns about the collection of all that rider information, a chorus to which Uber has added its voice. Two problems: Uber has made a stink well-nigh potential privacy issues before, fifty-fifty when cities have asked for much less precise data, considering it doesn't seem to similar handing over any information that could be thought of as a merchandise hugger-mugger or could enable more oversight. And it's besides going over Los Angeles' head, asking California and other states to restrain cities from collecting certain kinds of rider data—a tactic that mirrors how Uber in one case pushed states around the country to tamp downward on pesky, city-level regulations. Sure, the new Uber isn't generating the embarrassing ain goals of the Kalanick era. Simply when it comes to the wearisome stuff—the stuff that matters to local streets and economies—the visitor hasn't changed much at all.

Our respondents say: "Information technology'due south hard to recall of a visitor that has shown more disdain for governmental authority, or for the safety and welfare of its drivers, riders, and employees." —Lindsey Barrett

4

Palantir Technologies

Year founded: 2003

CEO: Alex Karp

Gwendal Le Bec

What it is: Co-founded by Peter Thiel, the Gawker-killing, Trump-boosting cyber-libertarian boogeyman, and named for a corrupted spying device from Lord of the Rings, Palantir collects and analyzes data for government agencies, hedge funds, and pharma giants—data, you may not exist surprised to larn, that is not always used for expert.

One evil thing: Google pulled out of its Project Maven contract with the U.Southward. government in 2018 afterwards workers argued that the artificial intelligence plan could permit the Pentagon to better target drone strikes. Palantir—whose CEO has repeatedly stressed that "nosotros're proud that nosotros're working with the U.S. authorities" and that lofty decisions well-nigh the limits of surveillance tech should be fabricated on Capitol Hill, non in Silicon Valley—happily snapped up the job.

Our respondents say:  "I list Palantir primarily because of the visitor's unapologetic technical support of menacing deportation practices by the Trump administration." —Ryan Calo, University of Washington Schoolhouse of Constabulary

3

Alphabet

Year founded (as Google): 1998

CEO: Sundar Pichai

What it is: An internet giant that dropped its famous slogan in 2015 for a reason. If that didn't end the era of Google exceptionalism, and so the recent abdication of slowly disappearing co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin did. Similar its peers at the top of the tech industry, Alphabet merely seems to walk back from its more worrisome activities when someone—the printing or its own employees—calls information technology out. Its workers derailed plans for a Pentagon drone A.I. program and a censored Chinese search engine—the kind of mercenary lines of business that might have seemed incompatible with Google's practice-gooder epitome a decade agone. Google has vast influence over the information economy, the media, advertisement, and the mobile telephone market, where its Android operating system makes information technology far more dominant than Apple tree. Information technology knows more about united states of america than Facebook, and information technology'south moving into more and more areas we depend on, similar public health and urban planning, areas where it will always be incentivized to bring its chief concern model to deport: selling our habits to advertisers. At the aforementioned time, it's tamping downwardly on that famous, self-criticizing internal culture at the very moment its workers have more than vocally tried to act equally its conscience.

One evil thing: 1 consistent venue where Google workers could let executives hear information technology—and human activity as a proxy for many users' concerns—was a weekly TGIF boondocks hall. No longer. CEO Sundar Pichai recently scaled dorsum the meetings to once a calendar month and insisted they only focus on "business and strategy."

Gwendal Le Bec

Our respondents say: "Alphabet belongs on the list because of the huge corporeality of influence it has on public life through its subsidiaries, whether information technology is the domination of online advertizing, which Google has branded as the sharing of knowledge, or the spread of street surveillance technologies through partnerships like Link NYC, or the ramping upwardly of Google Health. Unless we take strong privacy protections in place, Google can use our personal data to build advanced technological systems, which, if they are built using datasets with in-built bias, will have a discriminatory affect on traditionally marginalized groups." —Mutale Nkonde, Berkman Klein Eye for Internet & Guild, Harvard University

Dissent: "Tech sector workers in Silicon Valley fright that autonomous exam vehicles from companies similar Alphabet's Waymo could endanger the public. Ironically, these companies have far more responsible approaches to both the technology and testing practices (using professional test drivers instead of pushing 'beta' features to untrained customers) than Tesla, which avoids scrutiny due to the fact that information technology looks like a 'normal' machine. As happens so often, the strange and unfamiliar attracts more concern than the actual threat."—Edward Niedermeyer

2

Facebook

Year founded: 2004

Co-founder and CEO: Mark Zuckerberg

Gwendal Le Bec

What it does: A social network with immense power over social and political discourse in nigh every country on Earth. Post-obit the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook further tamped down on the user information it allows third parties to extract from the platform, appear a new accent on the kind of encrypted communication its WhatsApp subsidiary specializes in, and invested billions into policing disinformation and other abuses of the social network and its holdings, which also include Instagram and Messenger. But its refusal to meaningfully alter the political ad system that both President Donald Trump and Russian trolls used to their advantage in 2016 suggests that again one of the main arenas of an ugly election volition be Facebook.

Ane evil affair: You could aspect many of Facebook'due south problems—the yearslong looseness with user data, the expansion into countries where it had no staffers who spoke the language to disastrous issue, the unwillingness to always offend conservative critics—to its obsession with growing its user base and revenue get-go and dealing with harms whenever. Untold scandals later, according to a damning BuzzFeed study, growth, not prophylactic, is still how much of the company's piece of work is primarily judged—and for many product managers, it is directly tied to their compensation.

Our respondents say: "It'due south far more than powerful than whatsoever government. Its products are and then varied and far-reaching that neither its users nor founders can keep track of its prying sprawl or purpose. And despite a abiding flow of data breaches and upsetting privacy scandals, it has resisted regulation and protected its irresponsible leaders. Most frighteningly of all, the corporation is controlled by a unmarried unelected homo who is determined to dodge any kind of ideological stance in the name of higher revenues" — Alyssa Bereznak, the Ringer

Dissent: "Google and Facebook are at least enlightened of the harms they are causing and trying to address them." —Ryan Calo

1

Amazon

Yr founded: 1994

CEO: Jeff Bezos

What information technology is: Information technology'due south everything. The online bookseller has evolved into a behemothic of retail, resale, meal commitment, video streaming, cloud computing, fancy produce, original entertainment, cheap human labor, smart habitation tech, surveillance tech, and surveillance tech for smart homes. The visitor is sophisticated enough in learning our habits to produce countless AmazonBasics knockoffs of popular products and sloppy enough about policing its platform to permit in tons of bodily knockoffs. The company's "last mile" shipping operation has led to exhaustion, injuries, and deaths, all connected to a warehouse operation that, while paying a decent minimum wage, is so efficient in part because it treats its man workers like robots who sometimes get bathroom breaks. (To say nothing of the carbon footprint, the negative tax nib, the pejorative HQ2 reality show, and a huge chunk of the web's reliance on Amazon Spider web Services.) Equally the anti-monopoly oversupply has criticized Amazon e'er more loudly for its dominance of online retail, the company has pointed out that information technology even so has a smaller share of full retail than Walmart. But Walmart is condign more than and more like Amazon. And and then is the entire economic system.

Gwendal Le Bec

I evil thing: Even after Amazon's HQ2 competition ended with the company abandoning one of the two winning sites amid blowback from New Yorkers who were upset at the deal's $1.7 billion price tag—dealing a rare blow to the far-too-mutual practice of generous government subsidies for corporate expansions—Amazon is withal at it. While information technology will open up a new New York Urban center office in 2021 sans handouts, in early January the Atlanta Journal-Constitution uncovered a $19.seven meg taxpayer-funded deal to open a warehouse in Gwinnett County, Georgia.*

Our respondents say: "While other companies may be guilty of some of these, Amazon has: 1) contributed to the death of local stores, services, journalism, music, community, etc. around the world; 2) focused on precarious and deskilled labor, with reportedly terrible working conditions; 3) supported police surveillance with its Ring doorbells and surveillance more generally with Alexa devices; 4) racked upward a massive carbon footprint with rapid aircraft as well as AWS deject-based calculating; 5) contributed tech to military and intelligence agencies with dubious human rights records, including U.S. Customs and Edge Protection operations separating families at our own border; 5) failed to moderate what is on its platform, resulting in a overabundance of dangerous fakes such as hands broken counterfeit auto seats for children; 6) has a famously hostile workplace civilization, which has been shown to contribute to harassment of women and minorities; and seven) evaded taxation with shady categorization of assets and offshore revenue enhancement havens." —Morgan G. Ames, University of California–Berkeley

Read Jordan Weissmann's dissent and more in his debate with Ashley Feinberg over who's worse: Amazon or Facebook?

The voters: Morgan G. Ames, University of California–Berkeley; S.A. Applin, Centre for Social Anthropology and Calculating; Lindsey Barrett, Plant for Public Representation, Georgetown University Police force Center; Karissa Bell, Mashable; Alyssa Bereznak, the Ringer; Sam Biddle, the Intercept; Meredith Broussard, New York Academy; Ryan Calo, University of Washington School of Law; Corinne Cath-Speth, Oxford Internet Constitute; Danielle Citron, Boston Academy Schoolhouse of Law; Julie Cohen, Georgetown Academy Police force Middle; Noam Cohen, Wired; Jade E. Davis, Columbia University; Renee DiResta, Stanford Internet Observatory; Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing and the Electronic Frontier Foundation; Charles Duan, R Street Institute; Veena Dubal, University of California, Hastings College of the Law; Ashley Feinberg, Slate; Mary Anne Franks, University of Miami Constabulary School; Chris Gillard, Macomb Customs College and hypervisible.com; David Golumbia, Virginia Commonwealth University; Megan Graham, University of California, Berkeley School of Law; Sydette Harry, Academy of Southern California Annenberg Innovation Lab; Rob Horning, Existent Life; Jane Hu, Slate contributor; Mark Hurst, Artistic Adept; Kate Klonick, St. Johns Academy Schoolhouse of Law; Brian Krebs, Krebsonsecurity.com; Sarah Lamdan, CUNY Schoolhouse of Constabulary; Tiffany C. Li, Boston Academy School of Law; Brian Merchant, OneZero; Edward Niedermeyer, The Autonocast; Mutale Nkonde, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Guild at Harvard Academy; Andrea O'Sullivan, Mercatus Center; Whitney Phillips, Syracuse University; Felix Salmon, Axios and Slate Money; Matthew Stoller, Open Markets Plant; Siva Vaidhyanathan, University of Virginia; Hashemite kingdom of jordan Weissmann, Slate; Harlan Yu, Upturn.

Correction, Jan. 15, 2020: This commodity originally misidentified the Atlanta Journal-Constitution as the Atlantic Journal-Constitution.

Update, Jan. 17, 2020: This commodity has been updated to include Airbnb's response to a study of its impact on housing in New Orleans.

Correction, Jan. 24, 2020: This article originally misidentified Ron Serber equally Rob Serber.

Source: https://slate.com/technology/2020/01/evil-list-tech-companies-dangerous-amazon-facebook-google-palantir.html

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