Instant Alert: 7 scandalous things tech companies like Facebook, Apple, and Amazon have done that sound made up — but are actually true

MANAGE SUBSCRIPTIONS   |   UNSUBSCRIBE   |   VIEW ONLINE   7 scandalous things tech companies like Facebook, Apple, and Amazon have done that sound made up — but are actually true by Mark Abadi on Jan 22, 2018, 1:47 PM Advertisement Major tech companies like Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Uber, and Google have an enormous amount of access to, and influence on, the average person's life. In some cases, the companies have admitted to using their access in data in ways that tend to make people uncomfortable. Most recently, Apple apologized for slowing down the performance of batteries on older model iPhones.  Tech companies have done a lot of questionable things over the years, from slowing down old batteries to collecting data on users' sex lives. Chris Gilliard, a professor who researches privacy and tech policy, provided several examples in a December Twitter thread featuring some of the most notable companies in the world, including Facebook, Google, and Amazon. Read on to see some of the things tech companies have done that sound too strange to be true:  SEE ALSO: Millennials have taken down dozens of industries — but it looks like Gen Z will be the ones to hurt Facebook DON'T MISS: A 21-year-old Canadian woman was found guilty of killing her best friend after a Facebook photo showed the weapon in plain sight In 2009, Amazon removed books people had purchased from their Kindles, including 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' Amazon gave customers a full refund if they had purchased certain books, including George Orwell's dystopian classic "Nineteen Eighty-Four," saying they had been mistakenly published. Needless to say, removing a book about a totalitarian government that censors information was not a good look. In 2012, the LinkedIn app uploaded users' entire calendars from their iPhones and Androids. Users of the LinkedIn app woke up to the creepy realization that their iPhone and Android calendars had been uploaded to the social networking site. That didn't just include calendar entries, but also any notes users had added, including sensitive meeting notes, participants, and dial-in information. LinkedIn argued that users voluntarily agreed to the practice when gave the app permission to access their calendars, but the company did not communicate the extent to which it would upload users' information to its servers. The company soon stopped uploading information from the "meeting notes" section of users' calendar entries. Facebook once conducted a psychological experiment on 700,000 unwitting users Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg apologized in 2014 when data scientists discovered the company manipulated the newsfeeds of 700,000 users for one week to see how they would react. The researchers found that two years earlier, Facebook tweaked the users' newsfeeds to show more positive or negative posts and then gauged whether they posted positive or negative updates about their lives in response. The experiment raised numerous ethical issues, including whether the unwitting participants had given informed consent or were ever allowed to opt out.   See the rest of the story at Business Insider   Share the latest business news with your network:    Email sent to: nguyenvu1187.love5@blogger.com   |   Manage your email preferences   |   Unsubscribe Terms of Service   |   Privacy Policy Business Insider. 150 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10011