Hillicon Valley — Safety agency probing Amazon facility collapse
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Amazon is facing backlash after a facility in Illinois collapsed, killing six people, after it was hit by a tornado this weekend. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) says it is investigating the incident.
Meanwhile, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was named Time Magazine's "Person of the Year" for 2021, and a Facebook executive averted blame for misinformation spreading on the platform.
Let's jump into the news.
OSHA investigates fatal Amazon collapse
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is investigating the fatal collapse of an Amazon facility in Illinois after it was hit by a tornado, the agency said Monday.
OSHA has had compliance officers at the complex in Edwardsville, Ill., since Saturday to provide assistance, according to agency spokesperson Scott Allen.
Six fatalities: Six people died and one was transferred to a regional hospital after a tornado hit the 1.1-million-square-foot delivery center on Friday, according to officials.
OSHA has six months to complete its investigation, including issuing citations and proposing monetary penalties if safety or health violations are found, Allen said.
An Amazon spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the probe.
Amazon's initial response: After news of the six fatalities broke, spokesperson Kelly Nantel said the company is "deeply saddened by the news that members of our Amazon family passed away as a result of the storm in Edwardsville, IL."
"Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims, their loved ones, and everyone impacted by the tornado. We also want to thank all the first responders for their ongoing efforts on scene. We're continuing to provide support to our employees and partners in the area," Nantel said in a statement.
Tesla's Musk named Time 'Person of the Year'
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has been named Time magazine's "Person of the Year" for 2021.
The magazine's prized annual designation was announced on Monday by editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal, who said Musk was named the Person of the Year for "creating solutions to an existential crisis, for embodying the possibilities and perils of the age of tech titans and for driving society's most daring and disruptive transformations."
Felsenthal added that "Person of the Year is a marker of influence, and few individuals have had more influence than Musk on life on Earth, and potentially life off Earth too."
"Even Elon Musk's spacefaring adventures are a direct line from the very first Person of the Year, Charles Lindbergh, whom the editors selected in 1927 to commemorate his historic first solo transatlantic airplane flight over the Atlantic," he said.
Musk, whose current net worth is approximately $260.6 billion, made history earlier this year after SpaceX launched its first mission to space without any professional astronauts on board.
A 'PEOPLE' PROBLEM
Facebook executive Andrew Bosworth said in an interview aired Sunday that the burden of misinformation spreading on the social media platform fell on individual users.
"I think that Facebook ran probably the biggest COVID vaccine campaign in the world," Bosworth told "Axios on HBO" when asked if he thought vaccine hesitancy would be the same with or without social media.
"What more can you do if some people who are going to get that real information from a real source choose not to get it?" he said.
"That's their choice. They're allowed to do that," he added. "You have an issue with those people. You don't have an issue with Facebook. You can't put that on me."
Bosworth is set to become chief technical officer for Meta, Facebook's parent company, next year. He has been involved in the company's work around augmented and virtual reality.
A SOCIAL CRIME
Police say that some of the smash-and-grab robberies that recently took place in California and Minnesota were organized on social media and were carried out by people who did not know each other.
Local law enforcement said robberies at a Bay Area Nordstrom, a San Francisco Louis Vuitton and a Minneapolis Best Buy were all organized on social media, according to The Wall Street Journal.
For the people who took part in some of the incidents in California, Snapchat was used to organize the crimes as thieves were possibly attracted to the app's ability to make messages disappear. Once law enforcement arrested some suspects, they at times did not know the names or have any information about the people with whom they were working, the Journal reported.
However, Rachel Racusen, a spokeswoman for Snap Inc., told the Journal that the company has not found evidence of such organizing on its platform, adding that promoting damaging property on the social media app would violate its terms of service.
BITS AND PIECES
An op-ed to chew on: A gunpowder military in an information age
Lighter click: Cause for alarm
Notable links from around the web:
Her Instagram Handle Was 'Metaverse.' Last Month, It Vanished. (The New York Times / Maddison Connaughton)
Startup Pitched Tasing Migrants From Drones, Video Reveals (The Intercept / Sam Biddle)
Corner Stores Are the New Darlings of the Global Tech Industry (The Atlantic / Louise Matsakis)
Prison Phone Companies Are Recording Attorney-Client Calls Across the US (Motherboard / Ella Fassler)
One last thing: Modi's Twitter compromised
The Twitter account of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was "very briefly compromised," the Office of the Prime Minister of India tweeted on Saturday.
"The matter was escalated to Twitter and the account has been immediately secured. In the brief period that the account was compromised, any Tweet shared must be ignored," the office said on Twitter.
A screenshot posted by several Twitter users showed a post on Modi's account, which appears to have been hacked at the time, saying that bitcoin was being adopted as legal tender.
That's it for today, thanks for reading. Check out The Hill's technology and cybersecurity pages for the latest news and coverage. We'll see you Tuesday.
