The Trust Barometer, an annual global survey from the international PR firm Edelman, found that trust in Big Tech and traditional media has plunged this year. In the United States, trust in the tech sector dropped even further, to an all-time low of 57 percent.
Blaming an “epidemic of misinformation,” Edelman also found a large drop in trust for traditional media of eight points:
Without a trusted leadership source to look to, people don’t know where or who to get reliable information. The global infodemic has driven trust in all news sources to record lows with social media (35 percent) and owned media (41 percent) the least trusted; traditional media (53 percent) saw the largest drop in trust at eight points globally.
Edelman also provided a special tech edition of the study to Axios, showing a similar plunge for Big Tech companies.
Via Axios:
Trust in tech — including companies specializing in AI, VR, 5G and the internet of things — fell all around the world last year, the Edelman Trust Barometer found in a massive survey of 31,000 people in 27 countries.
All-time lows, going back to comparable Edelman polling in 2012, were hit in 17 of 27 countries, including the U.S., U.K., France, China, Japan, Thailand, Brazil and Mexico.
Globally, trust in the tech sector fell six points from 2020 to 70 percent.
In the United States, trust in the tech sector dropped even further, to an all-time low of 57 percent.
Over the past year, Americans have witnessed extensive political interference by Big Tech companies, including election interference on behalf of then-candidate Joe Biden to suppress a negative New York Post story about his family’s business dealings, Google erasing Breitbart News and other leading conservative media from search results, and every major tech platform censoring a sitting President of the United States.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.