People in the US have less faith in social media companies and their leaders.
A new study from the Pew Research Center on digital privacy views says that the American people no longer trust the leaders of social media companies to handle user privacy in a responsible way.
The study found that 77% of Americans don’t trust companies to publicly admit when they’re wrong and take responsibility for inappropriate use of data.
71% of Americans say they don’t think social media companies will be held responsible by the government for wrongdoing. This means they don’t think officials or lawmakers will crack down.
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Pew told USA TODAY that this severe lack of trust is even more common among Republicans and people leaning Republican than among Democrats and people leaning Democratic.
Three quarters of Republicans, but only 68% of Democrats, think companies will be punished if they misuse or leak personal information.
More than half of them (79% vs. 75%) say they don’t trust social media companies to keep their personal information safe and not sell it without their permission.
And 81% of Republicans, compared to 76% of Democrats, don’t think companies should come clean about their mistakes in public.
Republicans are even more worried about how their information is used by the government.
The number of people who are afraid about how the government might use their data rose from 63% in 2019 to 77% today. Pew said that the number of unhappy Democrats has stayed the same at 65%.
Colleen McClain, a research associate at Pew, warned that the gaps between parties are “fairly small.”
“One striking pattern is how much people don’t trust either side,” she said.
The Pew results come at a time when there is a lot of political talk about internet material during an election year.
When Former President Donald Trump was banned from the major social media sites after the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, it made conservatives very angry with social media.
People think that social media companies are biased against Republicans because Trump made stopping “social media abuses” a big part of his government and reelection campaigns.
This term, the Supreme Court will hear cases about how right opinions and ideas are said to be being shut down and censored.
People from all political views say that social media sites are biased, but it’s hard to show that they are targeting any one group because the tech companies don’t say much about how they decide what material is allowed and what isn’t.
Social media companies say they only go after bad speech that breaks their rules, not conservatism.
