Facebook gets that information and revenue, too. However, all the measures people might take in the wake of these scandals to protect their privacy and decrease their exposure to divisive ads is moot if they're also using Instagram. The bigger a data and advertising company is, the harder it is to detangle its tentacles from your life. The situation was helped along by Russian operatives' use of Facebook to manipulate the 2016 election in favor of Donald Trump and inflame political sentiments overall.
This has caused backlash against Facebook in the form of declining sentiment and stagnating growth. Why does it matter if people know the extent of Facebook's ownership in the social media and messaging world? People are starting to become wiser to the amount of data Facebook harvests from its users, and its highly personal advertising targeting practices. Many of those Instagram users are young people: 75 percent of 18-24 year olds say they use Instagram. Meanwhile, 37 percent use Instagram and 20 percent use WhatsApp. Another Pew survey found that 69 percent of Americans use Facebook. Respondents who had graduated college answered correctly 41 percent of the time.īut even these numbers on the higher end of the spectrum demonstrate a lack of knowledge by people who are likely regular users of the various platforms. That spread extended to education level, too. Nearly 40 percent of people in the two younger groups responded affirmatively to Facebook's interest in Instagram and WhatsApp. Younger Americans (18-29 and 30-49) were more knowledgeable about Facebook's business tentacles than older ones (50-64 and 65+). The survey also recorded demographics information, like age and education level. It included questions like knowing the function of a web cookie, identifying an example of two-factor authentication, and whether people could identify Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in a photo (nope! Only 15 percent of people got that one!).Īt least people * mostly * know what phishing is? Credit: pew research center
So there is relatively low levels of familiarity with the company’s assets – and that is true across demographic groups."įor the survey, in June, Pew asked a nationally representative sample of 4,272 US adults the ten questions. "Only around 20% correctly identified WhatsApp and Instagram as two companies owned by the company. "We found that even as a majority of American adults use Facebook, they aren’t that knowledgeable about some aspects related to the business side of the company," Monica Anderson, Pew's associate director of research, told Mashable. Pew says that this result indicates that people's use of social media is out of joint with their understanding of the companies. While 22 percent answered incorrectly, nearly half - 49 percent - responded that they were "not sure" whether Facebook owned Instagram and WhatsApp. Rather than being misinformed, however, most Americans are actually under-informed. That's not the most stable foundation of public knowledge for any potential future anti-trust inquiries into Facebook's ownership of Instagram and WhatsApp.Ĭongress wants internal records from Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google Just 29 percent of people surveyed correctly answered in the affirmative - meaning that over 70 percent of Americans don't know that Facebook owns Instagram and WhatsApp. Pew asked survey respondents whether they thought that Facebook owns Instagram and WhatsApp (it does). One question concerned Facebook's sprawling business interests.
Called the Americans and Digital Knowledge report, the results were pretty dismal: a majority of respondents could answer fewer than half of the ten (for the most part very basic) questions correctly. Leading non-profit public opinion research organization Pew Research Center released a new report Wednesday measuring the digital literacy of American adults across topics like cybersecurity and the tech industry. Most Americans apparently just don't know that truth also extends to the tech sector. The illusion of consumer choice is as American as apple pie.
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