WASHINGTON (AP) — Three bright and driven women with ground-breaking ideas made significant — if very different — marks on the embattled tech industry in 2021.
Frances Haugen, Lina Khan and Elizabeth Holmes — a data scientist turned whistleblower, a legal scholar turned antitrust enforcer and a former Silicon Valley high-flyer turned criminal defendant — all figured heavily in a technology world where men have long dominated the spotlight. Think Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk.
Haugen, a former product manager at Facebook, went public with internal documents to buttress accusations that the social network giant elevated profits over the safety of users. At 32, Khan is the youngest person ever to lead the Federal Trade Commission, an agency now poised to aggressively enforce antitrust law against the tech industry.
Holmes, once worth $4.5 billion on paper, is now awaiting a jury’s verdict on fraud charges that she misled investors and patients about the accuracy of a blood-testing technology developed at her startup Theranos. Her story has become a Silicon Valley morality tale — a founder who flew too high, too fast — despite the fact that male tech executives have been accused of similar actions or worse without facing charges.
Haugen joined Facebook out of a desire to help it address misinformation and other threats to democracy. But her frustration grew as she learned of online misinformation that stoked violence and abuse — and which...
; ; ; agreed to pay $17.07 million to settle federal allegations of illegal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) hiring practices on Friday, marking the Justice Department's first resolution unde...