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

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

While Microsoft (MSFT) aced the race by shattering the $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 the polling for Yahoo survey. 

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

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

The United States capitol siege of the Jan. 6 was another hit at the reputation for the social media platform as it was accused of failing to prevent far-right groups from planning resurrection and attempting to halt the Congress certification of the US President Joe Biden. The riots led to five deaths and dozens of arrests, and an internal report accessed by the US broadcasters found that the right groups hatched the plan on Facebook, and despite banning the ”Stop the Steal" group, the platform was unable to stop the riots. The campaign Stop the 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, the company’s product manager, Frances Haugen, a previously anonymous whistleblower released a trove of internal documents to the media that revealed how facebook’s policies caused harm to the general public, and the company, despite having the knowledge, put its own interests first. “I’ve seen a bunch of social networks and it was substantially worse at Facebook than what I had seen before,” the 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. 

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