Adam Kos Sure, a lot of good and interesting things happened in 2021, but all that has to be balanced with the negative, otherwise the balance of the world would probably be disturbed. We were dealing with misinformation, we had nothing to spend our hard-earned money on, and our internet was crashing. Into all of this, we were introduced to the metaverse. After all, see for yourself.
Disinformation
In 2020, disinformation was a huge problem that continued into 2021. Whether it was dangerous and completely false conspiracy theories about the risks of vaccinations or the rise of QAnon (a series of unproven and loosely connected far-right conspiracy theories), it became increasingly difficult to distinguish what what is real and what is fake. Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube bear much of the blame here, where conspiracy theories, false claims, and misinformation have proliferated at a truly frenzied pace.
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Pavel Jelic Facebook. I'm sorry, Meta
Criticism of first Facebook and then Meta has surged over the past year, from concerns about Instagram's children's project (which the company suspended) to damning allegations in the Facebook Papers case that mention the fact that profit comes first. Facebook's own supervisory board, which was set up as the company's watchdog, said the tech giant had repeatedly failed to be transparent, to which Facebook itself said the recommendation your own advice can't keep up. Do you get it?
Gallery
The platform's slow response to spreading misinformation about vaccines even led US President Joe Biden to say the company was "killing people", although he later retracted that statement. Amidst all the controversy, the company then held its annual virtual reality conference, where it rebranded itself as Meta. The pre-recorded event, which talked about the potential of a new metaverse, seemed rather uninteresting in light of the general criticism of the company.
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The supply chain crisis
Do you still remember the case of Ever Given? So the cargo ship that got stuck in the Suez Canal? This small hiccup was just a sliver of a massive global crisis in the supply chains of all companies. The result was felt not only by companies but also by customers. The supply chain has long operated on a delicate balance of supply and demand, and the coronavirus has disrupted it in a way that will unfortunately be felt well into 2022. It has also meant that Christmas shopping has started earlier. This is, of course, out of fear that what we absolutely need simply won't be available before Christmas. Car manufacturers also had to stop production due to chip shortages, Apple used components from iPads to iPhone, etc.
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Activision Blizzard
From sexual discrimination to rape - there is a culture at Blizzard, which treats women unfairly and exposes them to considerable harassment. But instead of owning up and drawing consequences, the company defended itself through an email to employees sent out by Frances Townsend, vice president of corporate affairs. However, it turned out that the text was drafted by CEO Bobby Kotick, who was allegedly aware of the problems but did nothing about them. But the most interesting thing about the whole case is that the company was condemned by others, namely Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. And if three big console manufacturers, who otherwise don't agree on anything, unite against you like this, something is probably really wrong.
Internet outages
Internet outages just happen, but 2021 was a record year for them. In June, the Fastly outage occurred when the cloud computing service provider was hit by a "glitch" that appeared to shut down half the internet and knocked out key providers such as Amazon. Fastly stores copies of key websites around the world for faster loading, and when it went down, there was a global ripple effect that affected everyone (like the New York Times, etc.).
And there's Facebook again. In October, it suffered a self-inflicted outage due to a misconfiguration that disconnected its data centers from various social networks, including Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger. While such a social media detox may sound great, many businesses in the world are simply addicted to Facebook, so this outage was literally painful for them.
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Other unsuccessful steps by companies
LG is ending the phones
This isn't so much a misstep as it is a total mess. LG had a number of interesting phones, however, she announced in April, that he is clearing the field in this market.
Volt car
The newspaper reported at the end of March USA Today about Volkswagen's April 29 press release. The document stated that the company was officially changing its name to "Voltswagen of America" to emphasize its commitment to electromobility. And it wasn't April Fools. VW directly confirmed to Roadshow magazine and other publications that the name change is real.
Billionaire Space Race
While mere mortals reaching for the stars is a noble goal, billionaires Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard Branson's race to be the first to reach space begs the question: "Why couldn't you spend those billions helping people down here on Earth?"
Apple and photography
While Apple had good intentions with iPhone photo scanning for child abuse, it faced criticism for privacy implications. The company eventually shelved the move, which in turn alarmed child protection groups. Kind of a dead end situation, don't you think?
