Most media outlets, ourselves included, tend to think the answer is simple: not a whole lot right now. Fake news, election interference, profiting from data collection, and an ever-tightening grip on, well, all facets of our daily lives are, it can be argued, very big problems for Big Tech. They’re eroding public and political trust, and that will eventually cause a revolt. Silicon Valley, the story goes, is lining itself up for a very big fall indeed.
But how justified is that position? A new survey carried out by The Verge suggests the answer is: not very. According to the site’s stats, which are taken from 1,520 representative Americans, people:
- Trust Amazon as much as their bank
- Would care “very much” if they couldn’t use Google’s services
- Think news on Facebook is about as accurate as from any other source
That all tallies with another recent survey, reported by Wired, which showed that consumers trust the likes of Google and Facebook as much as they ever did.
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