TECH: Facebook receives “worst company of the year” award.

The com­pa­ny topped the votes in a poll com­mis­sioned by Yahoo Finance. It thus pays the price of the mul­ti­ple scan­dals that will have splashed it this year.
A poll names Face­book as the worst com­pa­ny of 2021. It was first con­duct­ed by Yahoo Finance, eager to sup­ple­ment its tra­di­tion­al award for the best com­pa­ny. This last dis­tinc­tion is based on the finan­cial per­for­mance and achieve­ments of the past year. Microsoft is respon­si­ble for this edition.

Face­book’s recent name change to Meta has thus failed to obscure the com­pa­ny’s dire image. Accord­ing to Yahoo Finance, which polled more than 1,541 peo­ple, Face­book received 8% of the total votes for the worst com­pa­ny. That is 50% more than the Chi­nese plat­form Aliba­ba. And the vari­ety of griev­ances is extensive.

It must be said that Face­book has accu­mu­lat­ed the balls this year. Sus­pect­ed of being in a monop­oly posi­tion in the social media and instant mes­sag­ing mar­ket, Face­book has been the sub­ject of sev­er­al antitrust inves­ti­ga­tions in Europe and the Unit­ed States. The most crit­i­cal observers even call for its dis­man­tling. At the same time, the com­pa­ny was once again rocked by a series of scan­dals fol­low­ing dis­clo­sures by whistle­blow­er Frances Hau­gen. The group’s var­i­ous plat­forms are sus­pect­ed of hav­ing a dele­te­ri­ous effect on ado­les­cent men­tal health, of fos­ter­ing polar­iza­tion of opin­ion or of not com­bat­ing enough disinformation.

How­ev­er 30% of those polled believe that Meta would be able to redeem itself in the future thanks to its new ori­en­ta­tion towards the meta­verse which could help it to break out of the aging mod­el of social media.