Opinion polls published in the United States and Germany cast doubt over the level of trust people have in Facebook over privacy, as the firm ran advertisements in British and U.S. newspapers apologising to users.
Fewer than half of Americans trust Facebook to obey U.S. privacy laws, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Sunday, while a survey published by Bild am Sonntag, Germanyโs largest-selling Sunday paper, found 60 percent of Germans fear that Facebook and other social networks are having a negative impact on democracy.
Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg apologised for โa breach of trustโ in advertisements placed in papers including the Observer in Britain and the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.
โWe have a responsibility to protect your information. If we canโt, we donโt deserve it,โ said the advertisement, which appeared in plain text on a white background with a tiny Facebook logo.
The worldโs largest social media network is coming under growing government scrutiny in Europe and the United States, and is trying to repair its reputation among users, advertisers, lawmakers and investors.
This follows allegations that the British consultancy Cambridge Analytica improperly gained access to usersโ information to build profiles of American voters that were later used to help elect U.S. President Donald Trump in 2016.
U.S. Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in an interview on NBCโs Meet the Pressโ on Sunday that Facebook had not been โfully forthcomingโ over how Cambridge Analytica had used Facebook data.
Warner repeated calls for Zuckerberg to testify in person before U.S. lawmakers, saying Facebook and other internet companies had been reluctant to confront โthe dark underbelly of social mediaโ and how it can be manipulated.
โBREACH OF TRUSTโ
Zuckerberg acknowledged that an app built by a university researcher had โleaked Facebook data of millions of people in 2014โ.
โThis was a breach of trust, and Iโm sorry we didnโt do more at the time,โ Zuckerberg said, reiterating an apology first made last week in U.S. television interviews.
Facebook shares tumbled 14 percent last week, while the hashtag #DeleteFacebook gained traction online.
The Reuters/Ipsos online poll found that 41 percent of Americans trust Facebook to obey laws that protect their personal information, compared with 66 percent who said they trust Amazon.com Inc, 62 percent who trust Alphabet Incโs Google, 60 percent for Microsoft Corp.
The poll was conducted from Wednesday through Friday and had 2,237 responses. (https://reut.rs/2G9hvrv)
The German poll published by Bild was conducted by Kantar EMNID, a unit of global advertising holding company WPP, using representative polling methods, the firm said. Overall, only 33 percent found social media had a positive effect on democracy, against 60 percent who believed the opposite.
It is too early to say if distrust will cause people to step back from Facebook, eMarketer analyst Debra Williamson said in an interview. Customers of banks or other industries do not necessarily quit after losing faith, she said.
โItโs psychologically harder to let go of a platform like Facebook thatโs become pretty well ingrained into peopleโs lives,โ she said.
Data supplied to Reuters by the Israeli firm SimilarWeb, which measures global online audiences, indicated that Facebook usage in major markets and worldwide remained steady over the past week.
โDesktop, mobile and app usage has remained steady and well within the expected range,โ said Gitit Greenberg, SimilarWebโs director of market insights. โIt is important to separate frustration from actual tangible impacts to Facebook usage.โ
