5 Biggest Tech Fails Of 2016: Facebook Fake News, Galaxy Note 7 Explodes, Yahoo! Hacked And More

We’ve seen a lot of awesome tech come out of 2016 - like the Amazon Echo, the NES Classic Edition and Star Wars battling drones. However, we also saw a lot of tech burn up in flames. Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 caught on fire due to a battery flaw, Yahoo! got hacked twice and fake news was widely shared on Facebook during the election. Here’s a list of the biggest tech fails of 2016.

Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 Explodes

Samsung released its highly anticipated Galaxy Note 7 back in August. Less than two months after its debut, the South Korean company recalled more than 2.5 million Galaxy Note 7s because of a risk they could explode or catch on fire due to a battery flaw. After shipping replacement phones that had the same issue, Samsung said it would discontinue the Galaxy Note 7. Samsung’s next flagship the Galaxy S8, is expected to launch in Spring 2017.

Yahoo! Gets Hacked

In September Yahoo! announced hackers stole personal information from half a billion users accounts back in 2014, and that it took the company two years to discover the breach. Since the data breach, several Yahoo! users threatened to leave Yahoo! because of all the negative news surrounding the company. Yahoo then made it hard for customers to leave its service by disabling its email forwarding feature, which would allow users to automatically redirect incoming emails sent to their Yahoo! address to another account. Yahoo! reversed its decision to prevent Yahoo! Mail users from being able to automatically forward their emails to another address. The company disclosed in October it discovered yet another data breach of more than one billion user accounts that occurred in August 2013. The breach is separate from the theft of data from 500 million accounts Yahoo! reported in September.

Twitter Is Shutting Down Vine

Twitter said in October it was shutting down its six-second video app, Vine. After announcing its plan to shut down Vine, Twitter received a large number of bids from numerous companies, including the popular messaging and gaming company LINE. While the deal never happened, the company said “transitioning the Vine app to a pared-down Vine camera.”

Facebook Fake News

Mark Zuckerberg didn’t believe Facebook, the largest social network, could have influenced the outcome of the presidential election. The Facebook CEO said "Personally I think the idea that fake news on Facebook, which is a very small amount of the content, influenced the election in any way, I think is a pretty crazy idea.” Facebook took a lot of heat this year for allowing Fake News in its News Feed, where 1.18 billion people read every day. To take action, Facebook unveiled a plan to let users fact-check articlesposted on the service in partnerships with ABC News, Snopes.com, FactCheck.org and PolitiFact.

GoPro Karma Drone

When GoPro launched its Karma drone earlier this year, it seemed like the perfect drone. Until, Karma units started losing power mid-air. While there were no reports of injury, GoPro urged Karma users to return their drones and get a refund. GoPro also cut 15 percent of its staff, and shut down its entertainment division, in an effort to control costs.