6 Of The Worst Tech Failures & Scandals That Occurred In 2024

2024 was a very eventful year in the tech world. As was the case in 2023, generative AI continued to dominate the tech news cycle, for better or worse. Perhaps most infamously, Google started topping its search results with an "AI Overview" that theoretically summarized the best answers to the search query. However, the keyword is "theoretically," as it constantly pulled — and continues to pull — from sources it fails to understand. That wasn't the only significant change to the average person's online experience, as X, the former Twitter, redefined the function of the block button, which caused a massive growth period for rival BlueSky with its far greater controls over blocking users.

Offline, on the hardware side, Apple launched the Apple Vision Pro headset, but with a hefty price tag — it starts at $3,499 — and production that was halted within weeks of release. At the intersection of hardware and software, Sonos greatly offended its loyal user base with an app update that removed numerous features, both major and minor, eventually leading to an executive suite shakeup at the start of 2025. More seriously, the world stood still in July when Windows enterprise security software received an update with a fatal bug, destroying the back-end systems of everything from airlines to banks, grounding flights and causing all sorts of other chaos. This just scratches the surface, though, so let's look over 2024's biggest tech blunders in detail.

Blocking is a vital function of any social media platform and one that's required to keep the platform's app on major app stores like Apple and Google. To have a functional social media platform, users need tools to combat harassment, and blocking is a key component of that. However, not every platform handles blocking the same. Facebook and Reddit tend to be less obvious about telling people if they've blocked each other, while X, the Elon Musk-owned platform formerly known as Twitter, has always made it very clear when you click on someone's profile if you've blocked them or vice versa. Instagram, meanwhile, adds a layer that feels extra secure: When you block someone, you're prompted with the option to block every account that person will ever make.

In November 2024, though, X went in the opposite direction by changing what blocking does. It still keeps an account from being able to interact with you, but it no longer prevents someone from seeing your public posts. Realistically, with how trivial it is to make a burner account and switch between multiple accounts on X, this isn't necessarily a huge change. But it seems like the larger symbolic gesture of the move made users feel a lot less safe: That was the beginning of similar microblogging platform BlueSky seeing a massive influx of new users. With BlueSky having much more traditional and robust blocking options, like blocklists you can subscribe to, it certainly feels safer to many.

One of the most anticipated pieces of new tech in 2024 was the Apple Vision Pro, Apple's virtual reality and augmented reality headset. Early reviews of the Apple Vision Pro were very positive, touting an incredibly rich, unique experience whether you used it in the more old-school virtual reality mode or walked around with it in the real world and allowed it to augment the world around you. Nobody denied that it was an impressive piece of technology, but the cost was a big problem from the jump, retailing for $3,499 plus tax for the base model, which includes 256GB of storage. Apple fans are willing to pay a premium for the company's products, but low to mid-four figures for a fun diversion of an accessory was an unusually big ask, especially with competition like Meta's Quest 3 retailing for $500.

Sure enough, by October 2024, it was clear that the Apple Vision Pro had been a bit of a bomb. That's when The Information (h/t Reuters) reported that Apple had ceased making new Apple Vision Pro headsets all the way back in May, just a few months after launch. Reportedly, Apple had enough components on hand to get 500,000 to 600,000 headsets to market. This came on the heels of a June report that Apple had stopped work on the Apple Vision Pro to focus on a less expensive headset earmarked for a release before the end of 2025.

When it comes to sheer scope, the biggest tech blunder of 2024 came from enterprise security software company CrowdStrike. In July, CrowdStrike pushed an update to 8.5 million Windows devices running its software, but that update was buggy. How buggy? CrowdStrike's update crashed those 8.5 million computers into the "blue screen of death." That'd be bad enough, but the fact that it was CrowdStrike specifically wreaked a lot more havoc than a similar issue with Norton or McAfee would have. That's because, as an enterprise solution, CrowdStrike was running on mission-critical systems, forming the backbone of the computing infrastructure of numerous airlines, banks, hospital systems, TV networks, and more. This led to downtime for the airlines, banks, and everyone in between, grounding flights, among other things.

Specifically, the CrowdStrike update bug didn't play well with Microsoft Azure, an enterprise cloud computing system. To get systems back online, Microsoft quickly put together a recovery tool. The damage, financially speaking? Over $1 billion according to an expert that CNN spoke to.

CrowdStrike's attempted apology for the outage, meanwhile, added to the increasing backlash against the company. "To express our gratitude, your next cup of coffee or late night snack is on us," it read, offering $10 Uber Eats gift cards for everyone's trouble. In a statement to SlashGear, CrowdStrike claimed the gift cards weren't an apology, just a gesture of support for "teammates and partners who have been helping customers through this situation."

Generative AI has been taking the world by storm since ChatGPT's public launch in November 2022. It has its critics, but it's clear that, at least for the foreseeable future, it's sticking around. That means having to deal with some friction as it encroaches on the average person's internet experience, and nothing in the GenAI world encroached on an established user experience quite like the introduction of the AI Overview in Google Search did. The existing Google info boxes that tried to integrate the information users were looking for into the search page were already somewhat flawed, but adding GenAI to that process made the experience significantly worse.

The worst mistakes that Google's AI Overview made in its early days quickly turned into memes. Perhaps most infamously, it couldn't discern context close to well enough to understand humor, which meant that it suggested things like using glue as an ingredient to keep cheese from sliding off of a pizza and eating rocks. It was also drawing from information sources that it absolutely shouldn't have relied on, like the comment section of Reddit posts. AI Overview, as a component of Google Search, always includes citation links, which means that when it says something ridiculous, you can usually try to figure out why it happened. Often, this made the results even more ridiculous, highlighting the flaws in GenAI. Thankfully, though, you can remove AI Overview from your Google Search results if you so desire.

The Internet Archive, the venerable internet library that's best known as the host of The Wayback Machine repository of old websites but features a lot more where that came from, did not have a good year in 2024. On one front, there was the lawsuit that various book publishers had filed against the archive, which the non-profit had been appealing an adverse ruling in, with oral arguments in June.

At issue is that, for years, the archive has operated a collection of scanned books that it calls the "Open Library." Consisting of books that the archive owned physical copies of, it operated on a principle described as "controlled digital lending" (CDL for short) where the Open Library would, at a given moment, only loan out as many digital copies as it had physical copies. Publishers spoke out against this for years, but didn't sue until June 2020, after the archive pushed too hard by temporarily removing the CDL restrictions while the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered physical libraries.

Though CDL arguably has a common sense rationale in its favor, it didn't have enough real basis in law to survive judicial scrutiny. "[N]o case or legal principle supports that notion," read the district court ruling in March 2023. "Every authority points the other direction." Come September 2024, the appellate panel in the Second Circuit agreed. CDL is dead, killed off by legal challenges and, arguably, the Archive's mid-pandemic hubris that seemingly moved the publishers to sue.

As tech companies go, Sonos has long been pretty well-regarded. Though its product line has broadened in recent years, the company is still best-known for its whole-home music playback solutions, mainly via its wireless speakers. The combination of ease of use and very nice sound quality for the price is really appealing. The ecosystem's tied together by the Sonos mobile app which serves as the primary controller to feed music to Sonos speakers and amps. That app, though, got a major update in May 2024, and much to the consternation of many users, it removed a slew of features without a clear explanation.

Sonos promoted the update as streamlining the app and allowing for more customization, but that wasn't exactly a fair consolation prize for what was removed. Not only were quality of life features like sleep timers removed, but basic playback functionality took a hit, with the app losing the ability to edit the queue of songs to be played. Even the volume control lost its numerical volume level indicator, so settling on your preferred listening level got a lot harder. And that just scratches the surface.

Come October, Sonos announced "new commitments" to making up for the changes in the user experience, including extensions to coverage of all in-warranty products and more checks and balances for app updates. It wasn't enough to save face, though, as Sonos CEO Patrick Spence resigned from his post two weeks into January 2025 in the fallout.