A new poll shows that Facebook is experiencing difficulties maintaining user trust. Facebook is often utilized as an echo chamber, a place to spread conspiracies, and a news source for more than half of all adult Americans. However, the Cambridge Analytica scandal has perhaps permanently tainted Americans’ view of Facebook and privacy policies. Cambridge Analytica, unfortunately, was not one isolated event. Facebook conducted an email harvesting operation, taking information from millions of users without consent. Another incident resulted in hundreds of millions of Facebook passwords stored in plain text with zero encryption.
The poll found that out of several tech giants, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook, users tended to trust Facebook the least and disagree with statements supporting the idea that Facebook has strong privacy policies and maintains users’ privacy. In this small-scale polling process, 77% of respondents stated that they trusted Facebook the least of all four named companies.
