consumer services

With a seemingly bottomless feed of goof-offs, dance-offs and good-natured pranks, TikTok bills itself as the happiest place on the internet.Fueling its success: an exacting management style and demanding internal culture that belie its buoyant public image, say employees at its U.S. offices. The employees, many of them veterans of other major tech companies, say TikTok emphasizes relentless productivity and secrecy to a degree uncommon in the industry. As TikTok continues its torrid growth, those conditions…

At least 15 advertising-technology companies had sufficient information to detect that publisher Gannett Co. GCI 3.19% provided inaccurate data to advertisers for more than nine months, but the firms failed to connect the dots and alert their clients, according to researchers who studied the incident.Gannett, owner of USA Today and news outlets in 46 U.S. states, said it unintentionally provided the wrong information in online ad auctions, due to an error that affected…

A camera recognizes employees’ faces and hails an elevator programmed to bring them to their floor. Sensors on the walls measure particles and CO2 levels in meeting rooms, pumping in fresh air when levels rise too high. Higher levels of certain particles mean it is more likely that viruses could be present. In a control room, big screens show every floor in the 23-story building. The headquarters, completed in 2021, is at the forefront of a quiet revolution sweeping through commercial buildings across the U.S. Office…

The precise movements of millions of users of the gay-dating app Grindr were collected from a digital advertising network and made available for sale, according to people familiar with the matter.The information was available for sale since at least 2017, and historical data may still be obtainable, the people said. Grindr two years ago cut off the flow of location data to any ad networks, ending the possibility of such data collection today, the company said. The commercial availability of the personal information, which…

The nearly nonstop series of new U.S. sanctions being levied in a bid to halt Russia’s war machine have complicated events for companies facing their own external threat: ransomware attacks.The ever-lengthening lists of sanctioned entities pose risks to U.S. companies that want to pay to get their systems back online after an attack, experts said. Ed McNicholas, co-leader of the cybersecurity practice at law firm Ropes & Gray LLP, said ensuring that ransomware payments aren’t going to…