Corporate Accountability

Eli Lilly Reduced The Price Of Insulin To $35 Per Month, And This Guy Who Trolled The Company Can Take Some Credit
Writer Sean Morrow, pretending to be pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, tweeted “insulin is free now” in November. Now it almost is.

Mass Layoffs Are Underway At Twitter
New owner Elon Musk tweeted Friday that there was "no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day."

Kiwi Farms, A Notorious Hate Site, Has Been Taken Down By Cloudflare
Internet services company Cloudflare has blocked the notorious hate site, forcing it offline.

TikTok Owner ByteDance Used A News App On Millions Of Phones To Push Pro-China Messages, Ex-Employees Say
Former employees claim the company placed pieces of pro-China content in its now-defunct US news app, TopBuzz, and censored negative stories about the Chinese government. ByteDance says it did no such thing.

Elon Musk Doesn’t Seem To Realize That Twitter Is Already A Free Speech Warrior In Countries Where It Actually Matters.
This week, Twitter sued India. Under Musk, it probably wouldn’t bother.

TikTok Has Responded To US Lawmakers To Confirm BuzzFeed News' Report That US Users’ Data Was Accessed From China
TikTok's response to Republican senators comes days after an FCC commissioner called on the heads of Apple and Google to pull the app from its stores.

An FCC Commissioner Wants TikTok Removed From App Stores After BuzzFeed News Found American User Data Was Repeatedly Accessed In China
Nine Republican senators have also written to the company's CEO demanding answers.

How Amazon Exported American Working Conditions To Europe
After Amazon workers in Germany began striking, the company expanded eastward, where looser labor laws brought record productivity.

Leaked Audio From 80 Internal TikTok Meetings Shows That US User Data Has Been Repeatedly Accessed From China
“I feel like with these tools, there’s some backdoor to access user data in almost all of them,” said an external auditor hired to help TikTok close off Chinese access to sensitive information, like Americans’ birthdays and phone numbers.

Elon Musk Employee Says Boss Is A Great Guy
SpaceX’s president said she believes sexual harassment allegations are false, but “not because I work for Elon.”

OpenSea Acquired Gem, The NFT Marketplace Cofounded By An Alleged Rapist
“This individual has never and will never be affiliated with OpenSea,” CEO Devin Finzer said.

How An Alleged Rapist And Former Twitch Streamer Helped Build An NFT Startup By Hiding Behind A Pseudonym
Thanks to cryptocurrency’s culture of anonymity, streamer MethodJosh was able to conceal his history of alleged sexual abuse. He has now been pushed out of NFT startup Gem.

Worldcoin Promised Free Crypto If They Scanned Their Eyeballs With “The Orb.” Now They Feel Robbed.
The Sam Altman–founded company Worldcoin says it aims to alleviate global poverty, but so far it has angered the very people it claims to be helping.

TikTok’s Parent, ByteDance, Made Fake Accounts With Content Scraped From Instagram And Snapchat, Former Employees Say
The China-based company scraped public accounts and then duplicated them on Flipagram, a predecessor to TikTok, according to four former employees and documents viewed by BuzzFeed News.

Amazon Workers In Alabama Are Worried A Union Victory Will Make Their Lives Worse
As workers mail in ballots for a second union vote in Bessemer, Amazon has convinced some that collective bargaining could worsen their circumstances.

How A Texas Town Embraced A Crypto Miner It Didn’t Want
A 2021 winter storm overwhelmed Denton's power grid, pushing the city into crushing debt. Then a faceless company arrived with a promise to refill its coffers — and double its energy use.

Lyra Health, Which Provides Therapy For Google And Facebook Employees, Is Facing Concerns Over Privacy And Treatment
“This isn’t an assembly line. This is actually people,” said one former therapist.

We Found The Real Names Of Bored Ape Yacht Club’s Pseudonymous Founders
The buzzy NFT collection has raked in millions and the eager support of dozens of celebrities. But its founders’ anonymity raises questions about accountability in the age of crypto.

Nothing Sacred: These Apps Reserve The Right To Sell Your Prayers
Prominent venture capitalists are flocking to invest in Christian worship apps. The apps say users’ prayers are a business asset.

Facebook’s Spanish-Language Moderators Are Calling Their Work A “Nightmare”
Contractors who moderate Spanish-language content on Facebook said they’ve been forced to come to the office during COVID surges.

“This Is Blackface”: White Actors Are Playing Black Characters In Virtual Reality Diversity Training
Mursion tells big corporate clients that its VR simulations will help teach racial sensitivity. But the actors playing its Black characters are often white.

Police In At Least 24 Countries Have Used Clearview AI. Find Out Which Ones Here.
As of February 2020, 88 law enforcement and government-affiliated agencies in 24 countries outside the United States have tried to use controversial facial recognition technology Clearview AI, according to a BuzzFeed News investigation.

We Found Joe Biden’s Secret Venmo. Here’s Why That’s A Privacy Nightmare For Everyone.
The peer-to-peer payments app leaves everyone from ordinary people to the most powerful person in the world exposed.

How A Facial Recognition Tool Found Its Way Into Hundreds Of US Police Departments, Schools, And Taxpayer-Funded Organizations
A BuzzFeed News investigation has found that employees at law enforcement agencies across the US ran thousands of Clearview AI facial recognition searches — often without the knowledge of the public or even their own departments.

"Mark Changed The Rules": How Facebook Went Easy On Alex Jones And Other Right-Wing Figures
Facebook’s rules to combat misinformation and hate speech are subject to the whims and political considerations of its CEO and his policy team leader.

“If They Won’t Hear Us, They Will Fear Us”: How The Capitol Assault Was Planned On Facebook
Right-wing extremists used Facebook to call for the overthrow of the government and storm the US Capitol in the period leading up to the Jan. 6 insurrection, according to a new report.

US Solar Companies Rely On Materials From Xinjiang, Where Forced Labor Is Rampant
“It’s almost impossible to confidently assess the labor conditions in Xinjiang.”