From COVID-19[1] to economic rollercoaster[2] to election mayhem[3], 2020 is a year we'd all rather forget. But before we start looking ahead to a brighter and better 2021, and with Thanksgiving this week, it's time for Jason Cipriani[4] and me to hand out our annual Tech Turkey awards[5]. That is, tech products and services that didn't live up to their promise, overblown hype, or just flat out failed.
Facebook, Twitter, and Parler Fail on Human Decency and Controlling the Spread of Toxic Misinformation
Last year, the two major social networks ranked as No. 2 on the Tech Turkey list[6] for failing to limit how their respective userbases spread misinformation and toxicity. They've managed to eclipse that poor performance in 2020, with information related to both the coronavirus pandemic and the ensuing presidential election. These services took zero responsibility and failed to keep their networks safe from would-be authoritarianism, racists, misogynists, antisemites, hatred of LGBTQ people, and toxic conspiracists. And, this year, we get to add Parler to that list as well, which utterly thrives on such content under the guise of freedom of speech. Only when taken to the task in the final months of 2020 did the social networks take any corrective action by issuing advisory messages on posts of prominent misinformation agents and throw them off their services when they should have done it years ago.
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2. The Microsoft Duo and Motorola Razr 2
I think the Microsoft Duo was the wrong phone at the wrong time. Even in the best of years, when people are out being mobile and commuting to work, this device would have many problems. Despite an impressive industrial design, the hardware was outdated when it was