Survey of 1,200 US adults: 66% view Facebook favorably, down from 71% in 2020, compared to 79% for Apple (down 2%), 87% for Amazon (down 4%), and 90% for Google
After a year of the pandemic, we asked Americans if their trust in big tech companies has changed — and if the biggest ones should be broken up Tweets: @reckless , @nickconfessore , @nkulw , @tysonbrody , @reckless , @mslopatto , @russellbrandom , @backlon , and @reckless Tweets: Nilay Patel / @reckless : I always think of this question as the “Is Twitter real life” question. But look at how badly Facebook is doing out there in reality https://t.co/ipl0U725h7 https://t.co/a5HzRIPNtv Nick Confessore / @nickconfessore : There's a whole class/money story to the delta here between Facebook and Amazon. https://twitter.com/... Noah Kulwin / @nkulw : These polling questions are dumb because in “reality” I don't yet see Facebook or anyone else actually getting punished yet https://twitter.com/... Tyson Brody / @tysonbrody : Twitter under water as a net negative only reinforces my belief to stay here https://twitter.com/... Nilay Patel / @reckless : It's time for our third VERGE TECH SURVEY - attitudes about tech from a nationally-representative sample of people. For the third year in a row, Google and Amazon remain beloved, above Apple and Microsoft, and far above Facebook and Twitter. https://www.theverge.com/... https://twitter.com/... Elizabeth Lopatto / @mslopatto : over the course of the pandemic, there was an increase in negative sentiment toward facebook, and an increase in “break em up!” sentiment toward big tech in general. AND this survey was conducted BEFORE the revelations of whistleblower frances haugen. https://www.theverge.com/... https://twitter.com/... Russell Brandom / @russellbrandom : Facebook is still popular, but it's getting less popular fast (from our annual tech survey) https://www.theverge.com/... https://twitter.com/... Dieter Bohn / @backlon : Google is made out of Teflon https://www.theverge.com/... https://twitter.com/... Nilay Patel / @reckless : This question is so revealing, every year. Showing up and doing something useful for people every day is way more valuable than almost anything else https://www.theverge.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The Verge has been running these sentiment surveys since its first big-tech trust study in 2017, when election interference and misinformation concerns were already dragging the sector's reputation down. A follow-up wave in early 2020 found 72% of respondents saying Facebook has too much power and 51% backing a Google-YouTube split, so the appetite for structural remedies predates this year's numbers.
What changed in the latest wave is the divergence: Facebook fell five points to 66% favorable while Amazon (87%), Apple (79%), and Google (90%) held near their prior levels — consistent with the sector-wide erosion BuzzFeed documented back in 2017, but now concentrated on one company rather than spread across all of big tech.
First-order effects
- Facebook now carries a 11-to-24-point favorability deficit against Apple, Amazon, and Google among the same surveyed population, making it the clear reputational outlier rather than merely the lowest scorer.
Second-order effects
- Regulation advocates gain fresh evidence: with an earlier Axios poll already showing 55% of Americans favoring government regulation of big tech, a widening Facebook-specific trust gap gives lawmakers a popular target that spares the better-liked platforms.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, 'big tech' stops being treated as a bloc in both polling and policy, splitting into a distrusted social-media layer facing targeted scrutiny and a trusted commerce/device layer that escapes it.
The trend: American sentiment toward big tech is bifurcating, with Facebook absorbing a disproportionate share of the trust decline its peers avoided over 2017–2021.