2021 Year Ender | The biggest tech fails of 2021

They can't all be zingers!

2021 was a strange year for the technology industry. Still reeling from supply chain constraints, many companies simply could not keep up with demand. Scalpers and their bots made it even more miserable by cleaning out stores, and selling everything for more than it was worth.

If that wasn't enough, Facebook decided to rebrand in between congressional hearings and trying to build a virtual metaverse, that no one asked for.

Activision Blizzard then stepped in and decided to one up Facebook, when news of the company's frat boy culture almost made us forget about anything else in 2021, almost.

Then the internet collectively lost its mind over tweets and nyan cat gifs. Its certainly been a weird year, filled with more bad than good.

So here are some biggest highlights from technology's blooper reel for 2021. After all, they can't all be zingers!

Also Read: 2021 Year Ender | Here are some of the biggest trends of Gaming industry

Supply chain woes

The supply chain crisis continued in 2021 and many products including PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Graphics cards, and more, kept struggling to find their way onto store shelves.

Worse, scalping continues to hamper potential buyers, with scalpers getting creative and using bots to buy out store inventory and then sell it at absurdly high prices. It's a problem, most companies say will not be resolved until the last quarter of 2022, if we are lucky.

Facebook changes its name 

This was a weird one. In between congressional hearings, where it received pushback on the ill-advised Instagram for Kids venture and squared off against a whistle-blower (Frances Haugen) who claimed the company prioritised revenue over toxicity on its platform, Facebook decided it would be a good idea to change its name.

Announced during the company's conference, Facebook Connect, it decided to go all-in on developing a massive metaverse no one asked for. Then it changed its name to Meta.

The entire conference came off as tone-deaf and it couldn't have picked a worse time to rebrand itself or maybe that was the idea? It's all very confusing.

Big tech's frat boy culture

Last year, Ubisoft was dragged through the mud when news broke out about sexual harassment and abuse that female employees suffered while working at the company.

You would think shining a light on these issues would be a warning to others to mend their ways, instead Activision/Blizzard told Ubisoft to hold its beer.

From sexual discrimination to rape, the dude bros at Activision/Blizzard made Ubisoft look like pre-schoolers. What was even worse was the company's initial response to the allegations, where it decided to push back against them, instead of working with the authorities to rectify the issues.

Then Apple found itself in hot sauce with its own #AppleToo movement that saw stories of racism, sexism, discrimination and unfair practices.

Even Sony didn't escape unscathed.

Tesla was also in the firing line and then Blue Origin topped it all off, to finish the year with a bang!

Apple's no-win CSAM gambit

This is the only fail of the year, where the intentions were good but the execution...not so much.

For a company that advertises privacy as a back of the box feature, it absolutely dropped the ball when it came to convincing everyone that CSAM scanning was the way to go.

CSAM or Child Sexual Abuse Material is an important battle to fight but Apple could not have picked a worse way to fight it.

It announced that it would scan images that are uploaded to iCloud for possible CSAM and will report it to the proper authorities, in case its found.

To think this announcement comes from a company that makes a big deal about not using user data without consent or playing cookie police, makes the whole thing sound worse.

Apple eventually delayed the move and has slowly started to scrub mentions of CSAM from its websites, in the process, angering child advocacy groups. It's a no-win situation for Apple.

The Non Fungible Token (NFT) bubble

It seemed like the internet collectively lost its mind and decided to endorse buying JPEGs and Tweets for millions of dollars. The bigger question was why? The answer isn't simple.

From Jack Dorsey selling the first tweet on twitter for $2.9 million to a Nyan Cat GIF being sold at auction for nearly $600,000, NFT just feels like a bubble about to burst. Then again, we have been saying that since cryptocurrency was first unveiled.

Who knows? Maybe there is a future where people buy and sell digital JPEGS as collector items. Let's just hope, it doesn't come to pass anytime soon.