Facebook ranked 'worst company' of 2021 in latest survey; users say Meta 'stifles voices'

Facebook (FB), operated by CEO Mark Zuckerberg under parent company Meta, has been voted as ‘worst company of year’ on Yahoo Finance’s annual survey of 2021 that shortlists ‘Company of Year’ based on performance and achievements of firms worldwide.

While Microsoft (MSFT) aced race by shattering $2 trillion market capitalization this year and up to 53% surge in its stock price as of December, social media giant Facebook rebranding this year to Metaverse, has seemingly irked and upset its users, according to polling for Yahoo survey. 

Facebook's connection with major scandals sinks its reputation in 2021

As many as 1,541 respondents were unhappy with company’s policies and way it operates, sinking firm's reputation to lowest for first time in its history.  It is not unknown that Facebook h been linked to some of major scandals such as 2020 boycott that took place during month of July 2020. Several vocacy groups, under ‘Stop Hate for Profit’ campaign boycotted Facebook that pushed prominent vertisers to reduce ir spending by millions of dollars on platform. Of total 100 big vertisers that joined boycott, at least nine companies formally announced a pullback in paid vertising by slashing funding to $507,500 from $26.2 million, reports suggest. 

United States capitol siege of Jan. 6 was anor hit at reputation for social media platform as it was accused of failing to prevent far-right groups from planning resurrection and attempting to halt Congress certification of US President Joe Biden. riots led to five deaths and dozens of arrests, and an internal report accessed by US brocasters found that right groups hatched plan on Facebook, and despite banning ”Stop Steal" group, platform was unable to stop riots. campaign Stop Steal started via a group on Facebook and in just two days congregated over 365,000 members. 

Facebook neglects safety issues, disinformation, stifles voices for own growth: Responder 

This year, company’s product manager, Frances Haugen, a previously anonymous whistleblower released a trove of internal documents to media that revealed how facebook’s policies caused harm to general public, and company, despite having knowledge, put its own interests first. “I’ve seen a bunch of social networks and it was substantially worse at Facebook than what I h seen before,” 37-year-old who previously worked at Facebook said in an interview with “60 Minutes”. “Facebook, over and over again, has shown it chooses profit over safety,” she shockingly revealed. 

results of open-ended survey where Facebook received just 8% of favourable votes were posted on Yahoo Finance on Dec. 4 and Dec. 5 and outlet urged that company has found itself under  antitrust microscope among its users. Users believed that firm neglected safety issues and focused on growth. Some even accused platform of stifling voices and spreing misinformation.  company was followed by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba in second place that also has a litany of grievances from buyers and its consumers. As many as 30% of Yahoo Finance survey responders believe that Facebook still can redeem itself.