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Facebook, TikTok Least Trusted By Americans, Google Most Trusted, Says Survey (zdnet.com) 148

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Forty percent of Americans don't trust Facebook and TikTok and Google appears to be winning the trust wars, according to a survey from SeoClarity. SeoClarity surveyed 1,057 American residents to gauge trust in tech companies and found a majority of US citizens think social media companies need more regulation. The findings are notable due to how tech companies are stacking up on trust. Google tops Amazon, Microsoft and Apple on the trustworthy scores. Meanwhile, Facebook and TikTok were the most distrusted. SeoClarity also found that half of Americans think that Websites can control where they land in Google searches.
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Facebook, TikTok Least Trusted By Americans, Google Most Trusted, Says Survey

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  • by Sebby ( 238625 ) on Monday March 01, 2021 @10:44PM (#61114460)

    Any day now they'll lock me out of my account for no apparent reason - or it could just happen to you.

    • Any day now they'll lock me out of my account for no apparent reason - or it could just happen to you.

      Indeed, but with 1bn active accounts and the lockouts that get done, you may as well start playing the lottery.

      There's a difference between trust, and likelihood of something occurring.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • It's not a lottery, it's a basic "If you're doing anything unusual like having more than one account or trying to keep distant your online private identity and your public identity, you're screwed" thing.

          Nope. Still a lottery. Your use case is far from unusual. It's actually so common that Google even provide tools for you to manage multiple accounts and transfer stuff between them, and my real name sure as fuck isn't tied to either of them.

          Locking out is common.

          It really isn't. Or you have a very strange definition of common.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      This is Google's (and YouTube's) biggest flaw and it's sad that they are not doing more to address it. If it was just possible to get hold of a human it would resolve a lot of the issues people have with them, especially on YouTube.

  • As far as I can tell Google and Amazon have never sold my information. That's because my information is worth a fortune to them. OK, well combined with yours... They may give others access to me in various ways but only through their networks. The others never see my edress, etc. And the reality is that I'm rarely bothered even in this way.

    • Lol... I look for anything with google and I get random ads on every site I visit and even scam calls about the topic lately.
      I have an android phone and more than once I've just talked about something and started getting ads for it.

      • by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

        I also get scam/ad calls about things I Google... except that I get these calls on my landline, which has nothing do do with Google. And it is obvious the people calling me are clueless about me, they know my name, probably from some old phonebook, but not much else.

        I think it is just a coincidence. People are predictable. They will look for gifts during the Christmas season, tax-related things when it is time to do our taxes, vacation plans in the summer, and whatever is on the news. I am no exception. Lat

        • In my case, the timing is too specific and the items too particular. Google started violating their own standards several years ago. They are now a standard large corporation.

          I've gone to another browser search engine as my first choice as a result. The android phone leak freaks me out a bit more for what it implies and I recall they did some tests that showed too much data was being sent way too often. I have a friend who faraday's there phone and another who keeps it turned off except to make outgoing

  • How does a company that makes the majority of its money on data mining/ads get more trust than Apple, a mostly hardware company that consistently pisses off the data mining companies?

    • Apple sells just as much software as hardware. Generally you can't use one without the other.

      As far as the others go, selling ads would actually one of the more innocent things they do, assuming it stopped there. Of course it doesn't - but it's not the ads themselves I'm worried about.

      The only thing that surprised me here is that the Reality Distortion Field has seemed to failed Apple. Was there something wrong with the survey? Has the loss of their VP of Marketing, Steve Jobs, really hurt them that much? H

    • Not sure if the survey questions were different to the titles being presented but people could interpret that to mean:
      * Do I trust them with my private data (Apple should be ahead of most others here)
      * Do I trust them to get value from their products relative to the price I pay (I'm a big Apple fan but there are a few things priced in ways I can't even start to justify)
      * Do I trust that I will have freedom with the hardware that I buy off them (Also not Apple's strong suit, though I don't think this would b

    • How does a company that makes the majority of its money on data mining/ads get more trust than Apple, a mostly hardware company that consistently pisses off the data mining companies?

      For the same reason you can trust Coke to keep their recipe secret. When your primary business model depends on making money of other people's data, you protect that data.

      That and possibly due to the fact that there's been basically no high profile Google cloud compromises, unlike say iCloud. If I *had* to put a dickpic in the cloud, and were forced to choose, based on past performance the safe money is on Google. Sure you'll get advertisements about penis size reduction surgery, but at least people won't b

      • Google could sell out, or be made to surrender, their large repository of data on all of us, at any time. That's why large large centralized collections of data simply need to be forbidden.

        • Google could sell out, or be made to surrender, their large repository of data on all of us, at any time.

          Cool conspiracy theory. I look forward to reading about how one of the worlds single most wealthy nations would decide to sell out their primary means of making money in your newsletter. That should be an entertaining read.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Look at it from the consumer's point of view. Google offers lots of free services, its ads are not creepy because they are not targeted specifically at you but rather whole groups of people vaguely like you, and because Google is actually pretty good at making everything opt-in and giving you extensive privacy controls.

      Compare to Apple who will charge you 30 Euros for a USB cable and then tell you that it's your fault that your butterfly keyboard broke because you typed on it wrong. Plus I think consumers a

    • 65% to 62%. I suspect that it's also a matter of openness. Google is completely open about what it's doing and Apple, famously, is not.

  • That's like rubbing dead tuna guts all over myself and deciding to jump in a tank full of alligators or sharks.

    Both of them are in the same business, the only difference is Google couldn't get its act together enough to create the same social media network Facebook has to propagate conspiracy theories.

    A better analogy is Cobra Commander vs Megatron; an incompetent super villain vs an efficient one.

    • the only difference is Google couldn't get its act together enough to create the same social media network Facebook has to propagate conspiracy theories.

      Actually...this is a really good point. The link to the survey doesn't list out the actual questions being asked, which is critical to understanding the answers.

      Google may be "trustworthy" in the context of "I generally don't get '5G causes coronavirus' content in my search results", but blocking every Google DNS name and IP on my router is going to break far more of the internet than blocking all of TikTok will. Whether one reads the question as "the information I find here" or "the company itself", or how

    • Why Google never ended up with a "social network" identical to Facebook is that Google+ got a late start and suffered from the network effect.

      But I wouldn't say Google has nothing comparable either. YouTube has the majority of features Facebook does, and especially the ones conspiracy theorists thrive on, like algorithms that gradually push to more "engaging" (addictive, extremist) content.

      Facebook's actually adopted more of YT's features over the years (like emphasis on video) than the other way around.

      • Why Google never ended up with a "social network" identical to Facebook is that Google+ got a late start and suffered from the network effect.

        Google literally decided not to have a social network. It was just gaining popularity when they cancelled it, because they finally worked out the stupid. They moved the functionality to corporate subscribers only, it's part of their cloud office offering now. We beta tested it under pretense of getting it for free. Shock, amazement.

  • Let's see the results!

    a) Al Capone (75%)
    b) Tony Soprano (10%)
    c) Bonnie (9%)
    d) Clyde (6%)

    Conclusion: Bonnie wins most innocent!

  • That really isn't saying much at all.
    • by NateFromMich ( 6359610 ) on Tuesday March 02, 2021 @12:19AM (#61114662)

      That really isn't saying much at all.

      It's saying a lot. People are really dumb.

      • by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Tuesday March 02, 2021 @01:44AM (#61114788) Homepage Journal

        I found two cartons of milk in my by fridge, both open. One expired 8 days ago, the other over two weeks ago. In a contest of "most trusted" there is a clear winner. But I'm still going to throw both of them out.

        • Yes, "trust" is a stupid word to use all encompassing.

          I trust both your bottles of milk are still white.
          I trust one more than the other when it comes to taste.

          There are things I trust Google with. There are things I don't. Just like my mother. I trust she's looking after my house back home quite well. I don't trust that she won't throw a full size watermelon at me if I piss her off (a mistrust well placed). I also trust that resulting watermelon issue would be my fault and my job to clean up.

        • by Subm ( 79417 )

          I found two cartons of milk in my by fridge, both open. One expired 8 days ago, the other over two weeks ago. In a contest of "most trusted" there is a clear winner. But I'm still going to throw both of them out.

          I'd trust both cartons of spoiled milk more than Google or any other company on that list.

  • >"Forty percent of Americans don't trust Facebook and TikTok and Google appears to be winning the trust wars

    I so much agree!
    I trust Facebook and TikTok about 0.2% and Google 0.4%

    >"Google tops Amazon, Microsoft and Apple"

    Yes, they are so much less trustworthy at about maybe 0.3%, compared to 99% for both my Mom and my best friend.

  • I trust the cholera a lot more than I trust the black death, yet I'd rather not deal with either.

    It's just a matter of what's on offer. If there was a genuinely trustworthy Big Data company out there, Google would sink to the bottom.

    • If there was a genuinely trustworthy Big Data company out there, Google would sink to the bottom.

      Google is what a [relatively] trustworthy Big Data company looks like. They don't sell your information, they only sell access to it. Of course, access to it is partial access to you; once you load their ad, the advertiser knows some things about you. But that's unavoidable.

      Until Google has its own Cambridge Analytica scandal or similar, it's reasonable to consider it to be as trustworthy as such a service actually gets.

      Of course, it's most important to remember that NSLs exist, and that NO data is safe-by-

      • Google doesn't sell your data? :) That's amusing. One wonders what their revenue comes from then.

        Anyhow, even if they don't sell your data, they're so fucking huge and ubiquitous they're probably quite content to exploit it themselves for profit.

        Either way, they sure ain't trustworthy. If you trust Google respect your privacy, you're mad as a hatter.

        • by dryeo ( 100693 )

          If you want an ad campaign targeting slashdot users 40-50 years old, Google will deliver those ads mostly to slashdot users aprox. 40-50 years old. Facebook will sell you a list of all slashdot users, including their address, job description, phone number and penis size so you can do the targeting yourself.

  • Who trusts Facebook and Tik Tok anyway! They have been subject to many scandals and what happened in Australia makes it even worse for Facebook!!
  • They must not be paying attention.
  • I trust less than half of you half as well as you deserve.
  • What sheep are told to do.
  • Clearly this survey must have been financed by Google. On an equal footing of untrustworthyness are Google & Facebook. Seems they rounded up a bunch of sheepole for this "survey".
  • The winds will change. One service falls out of favor, another takes it's place. Google will have a turn eventually. All it will take is a couple of angry suburbanites with nothing better to do than hold signs in public. I'm surprised the internet giants haven't started hit-jobbing each other at this point.

    I yearn for the days when the internet was young and difficult. The untamed net was a wild and interesting place. Now that any fool can get online the whole thing has become a 6th grade locker-room, presi

  • How is Google more trusted than Apple?

"The vast majority of successful major crimes against property are perpetrated by individuals abusing positions of trust." -- Lawrence Dalzell

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