While Mark Zuckerberg spent all day yesterday answering awkward questions about Facebook from his booster seat, Recode published a new poll showing which tech companies are trusted the least when it comes to handling your data. You can probably guess which company came out the worst, but the data really shows that Facebook is in a league of its own of bad public opinion.
Respondents to Recode‘s survey were asked to choose which company they trust the least with their personal information, from a list of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Lyft, Microsoft, Netflix, Tesla, Twitter, Snap and Uber.
56 percent of respondents put Facebook, with the next-least-trusted company being Google, with a paltry 5 percent. Uber and Twitter finished tied 3rd, with 3 percent, while Snap, Apple, and Amazon were stuck on 2%. The big winners are Microsoft, Lyft, Tesla, and Netflix, who didn’t generate enough responses to even be significant.
Even though Facebook could be widely expected to lose this contest, given the current scandals it’s fighting, the survey does show the rift between Facebook and the rest of the tech industry. Facebook’s current struggles are being framed in some circles as a popular backlash against overly powerful technology companies, but it really goes to show that this is a Facebook problem, not an industry problem. The wealth of information that Google collects on its users is arguably more terrifying, but the survey seems to show that the company does a much better job of getting informed consent from users, and more importantly from stopping nefarious third parties from accessing data without your knowledge.
