The Biggest Tech Fails of 2019

For one crazy week in June, PCMag found itself unexpectedly in the middle of an international incident. When our UK reporter tried to ship a Huawei smartphone to the US for testing, unclear regulations and trade blacklisting rules from the Trump administration gave a package handler a panic attack. The phone was returned to sender with a message reading: "PARCEL RETURNED BY FEDEX, DUE TO US GOVERNMENT ISSUE WITH HUAWEI AND CHINA GOVERNMENT."

The news went viral, and kicked off a weeklong saga of Huawei and the Chinese government publicly denouncing the move, FedEx and the UK's Royal Mail pointing fingers at one another, and we at PCMag putting the phone back in the mail and tracking its progress as it was once again rejected, then finally delivered. Oh, FedEx also sued the US Commerce Department over the debacle.

After a yearlong Bachelor-style contest to see which cities would receive the rose of Amazon's second US headquarters or HQ2, Amazon split it between the two least surprising choices: Crystal City, Virginia, across the river from Washington, DC, and Long Island City, Queens, across the river from Manhattan. But as it turned out, LIC didn't want Amazon back.

After protests and criticism from local residents and lawmakers like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)—who scrutinized the closed-door negotiations, the proposed HQ's effects on the neighborhood, and the generous New York state tax breaks and incentives thrown into the deal—Amazon decided it wasn't worth the trouble. The company canceled its plans for the NYC HQ2. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

It's getting repetitive to say "it's been another long year for Facebook." But here we are. In 2019, Facebook announced a "pivot to privacy" as Mark Zuckerberg aims to weave Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp more closely together in the face of regulatory scrutiny.

Facebook was also fined $5 billion by the FTC for the Cambridge Analytica scandal as it continues to deal with misinformation on its platforms, including emerging forms like deepfakes, while also weathering criticism about its effect on the coming 2020 elections and refusal to ban political ads.

All of this came to a head in October when Zuck appeared before Congress to answer questions about Facebook's ambitious and controversial digital currency initiative, Libra. While the CEO did field questions about Libra, he spent most of the hearing being berated about all the issues listed above and taking his lumps as Big Tech's most visible punching bag.

At the same time, regulatory pressure and criticism led to several high-profile payment companies dropping out of the Libra Association in the days before the hearing as Facebook presses on with its attempt to launch a global cryptocurrency. Yet despite all the headlines and vitriol, Facebook's profits have gone nowhere but up. (Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

It's become increasingly clear that no organization holding US citizens' sensitive data deserves the implicit trust we give them. In June, it was reported that US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) suffered a data breach involving hundreds of thousands of photos and license plates from drivers crossing border checkpoints, thanks to a third-party contractor based in Tennessee. A few months later, Vice reported that a private company had created an entire surveillance network of license plate scans uploaded by private investigators. At this point you may as well assume that if you drive regularly, your license plate may be in any number of unofficial data troves. (Credit: Johannes Eisele/Getty Images)

Facebook Portal is not a bad product; it just suffers from the misfortune of being manufactured by Facebook. To counteract the flood of bad reviews criticizing Facebook for releasing a smart home device in light of its data privacy scandals, Facebook employees astroturfed their own five-star reviews on Amazon expounding on how much they love the devices.

Mark Zuckerberg's own verbal gaffe then made the Portal rollout even more laughable. In February, he said during an onstage discussion that "We definitely don't want a society where there's a camera in everyone's living room"...momentarily forgetting that Facebook Portal exists.

Facebook just can't stop hoovering up user data (because that's its entire business model.) This time, at least it asked permission. TechCrunch reported that Facebook was paying teens as young as 13 to download a root-access VPN that monitored all their online activity. Facebook's "Onavo" VPN was first banned by Apple's App Store in 2018, but Facebook re-branded it as Facebook Research to skirt Apple's rules.

Apple responded to the deception by revoking Facebook's enterprise developer certificates for a short period, breaking all of Facebook's developmental and internal iOS apps. It was the most heated exchange in an ongoing cold war between the two tech giants, who have traded barbs over data privacy and more over the past year. Facebook shut down Onavo/Facebook Research for good in February.