By Jake Nole
NEW ROCHELLE, N.Y. — Social Media is an essential tool for many Americans that is used to communicate with others from far distances for both personal and professional reasons. Despite the usefulness of social media, Americans have grown to distrust many social media websites, notably Twitter and Facebook, ever since the advent of the 2016 Presidential Election. Americans distrust social media on a variety of issues from how it handles the news to the inconsistent enforcement of their terms and services. There are other issues people have with Social Media, some even saying that it has divided the country, despite this there are many people that still use social media even with these issues prevalent.
Social Media, in particular Twitter and Facebook, has been seen as a factor in doing more damage to divide America through spreading lies, falsehoods, and unfair attacks based on a poll conducted by NBC News conducted in March 2019. The poll shows Twitter and Facebook in particular being rated the most unfavorably of five companies, the other three being Amazon, Google and Apple.
The poll itself was conducted in America with over 1,000 respondents and Facebook is considered less trustworthy in comparison to the Federal Government whereas Amazon and Google are seen as more trustworthy in comparison to both the government and Facebook. 57% of respondents say that Social Media does more to divide the country, 82% says that Social Media wastes our time more, 55% says that it does more to spread lies and falsehoods and 61% say that it does more to spread unfair attacks and rumors against public figures and corporations.
In terms of political news, Facebook and Twitter are considered the least trustworthy according to a poll by the Pew Research Center that sampled 12,000 American adults between October 29th to November 11th, 2019. Facebook and Twitter are the least trustworthy in terms of social media platforms in regards to political news with Facebook being distrusted by 59% of adults while Twitter is experiencing distrust at 48%.
The distrust likely stems from misinformation that spreads on both services especially in heated political seasons, mainly election seasons. It does not help that to combat the disinformation, social media has been by policing political ads yet Facebook has taken the position that politicians are allowed to lie in political ads. For Republicans they distrust Social Media more with 62% of Republicans or Republican-leaning respondents distrusting Facebook and a 51% distrust rate when it comes to Twitter. In contrast, Democrats or Democrat-leaning respondents distrust Facebook at a rate of 59% with 46% also distrusting Twitter as well.
Facebook’s distrust is at a much higher rate than most social media platforms, and that is likely because of Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica Scandal which according to a survey, the trust in Facebook has dropped by 66%. This scandal was notable in that Cambridge Analytica was a firm for data analysis that has collected data on tens of millions of Facebook Users that would later be used to give them ads based on the user’s personal data with the issue that the ads were inherently political as well as violating the privacy of the user.
Despite this, not many people stopped using Facebook with only 9% of users quitting the platform while 31% claimed to likely stop using it or use it less, but it is not likely given how ingrained Facebook and by extension Social Media is in people’s lives that would be hard to abandon. Furthermore, starting from scratch on another Social Media platform would take more effort for many people especially with other platforms sharing similar privacy practices that Facebook does.
It is clear that there is an inherent distrust when it comes to Social Media especially in the light of the Presidential Election with many users distrusting Facebook and Twitter in particular for massive amounts of disinformation. Not only that, but Social Media has become shady to many Americans due to how the spread of divisive information has made people more divided and the sharing of private data as shown by the Cambridge Analytical Scandal makes people weary of their privacy.
It is hard to tell if Social Media can create more distrust in the future, but it is likely to be the case given the trajectory things are going even today.
Data Journalism 395 