New Delhi: Meta, formerly Facebook, has been named the Worst Company of the Year (2021) by Yahoo Finance respondents, according to media reports. An "open-ended" survey was published on Yahoo Finance on December 4 and 5. As many as 1,541 respondents participated in the survey, reports said. The survey was performed on Survey Monkey. Yahoo Finance noted that the social media giant received 50 per cent more votes than the runner-up, Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce company.
Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook earned eight per cent of the write-in votes. Respondents were seemingly mad about the Robinhood trading app, and electric truck startup Nikola, which was named the worst company last year by Yahoo Finance.
Yahoo Finance noted that Facebook has had its share of controversies this year. After WhatsApp announced a new privacy policy (Terms of Service), the Meta-owned messaging app got embroiled in a big controversy. This is because WhatsApp said it would collect user information and share it with third-party apps for a better user experience. However, the app modified its policy due to flak and pressure from the public.
Another instance of Facebook receiving criticism was when former Facebook employee Frances Haugen acted as a whistleblower and leaked a series of internal documents which show that the company was aware of the impact that Meta-owned Instagram had on teenage girls, but did not take any action to solve the problem.
"At the same time, some critics, Including conservatives, say Facebook over-policed the platform's speech and stifled their voices," Yahoo Finance highlighted, according to reports.
Facebook and other social media platforms are also blamed by critics for not curbing hate speech that led to Capitol Building riots.
Around 30 per cent of Yahoo Finance readers said that Facebook or Meta could redeem itself. Some suggested that Meta could issue a formal apology for negligence and contribute a certain amount of its profits to a foundation.