Survey: Tech Companies Can't Stop Misuse of Platforms

By John Eggerton
published

Three quarters of respondents (74%) express little or no confidence that tech companies--Facebook, Twitter, Google--will prevent misuse of their platforms to influence the 2020 election. 

An even greater percentage (78%) said they should have a responsibility to prevent that misuse.  

That is according to a new Pew Research Center survey. 

The distrust of tech was bipartisan, with 76% of Republicans or Republican-leaning independents saying they have little or no confidence, while 74% of Democrats and leaners said that was the case. 

Those findings were based on a survey Jan. 6-19 among 12,638 adults in Pew's Americans Trends Panel. The margin of error is plus or minus 1.3 percentage points. 

John Eggerton
John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.