Distrust of tech companies
- Tiktok and Facebook are the most distrusted companies, and Amazon and Google the most trusted
- Men, conservatives, and more educated Americans show greater distrust
Distrust of government
Following the 2020 election, Republican distrust of the federal government collecting their data has spiked, while Democrat distrust has dropped. Since our last poll, Republican distrust has started to fade while Democrat has only increased.
Trust in government to collect and use personal data has fallen during the COVID-19 pandemic with local government seeing the largest increase in distrust at 8.3 percentage points.
Since our polling began, distrust in the federal government has increased by 3.5 percentage points, the least of the three levels of government. Distrust in state governments to collect and use data increased by 7.7 percentage points.
Content and user moderation
Americans seem to overwhelmingly agree that social media companies are justified in content moderation:
- 70% agree that social media companies are justified in removing users that violate their rules
- 65% agree that social media companies are justified in removing content that they think poses a risk to public health and safety
- 61% agree that social media companies are justified in removing elected officials that violate their rules
- 60% support platforms removing disruptive users and 52% support removing disruptive elected officials
Men are more likely to disagree that trolling elected officials should be removed (42% of men versus 30% of women). A similar trend exists when the user is not an elected official with 37% of men and 23% of women thinking removing trolls is unjustified.
Overall, 60% of respondents agree that social media companies can ban disruptive users unless that user is an elected official, in which case 52% agree with a removal.
Survey methodology
Results for this CGO/YouGov Tech Poll poll are based on web-based panel participants June 29-July 4, 2022. The data is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population. Some numbers provided above have been rounded for clarity. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is ±3.43 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.