In the circles that are dominated by members of the Republican Party, these folks have been out of the tech industry since the end of the 2016 election season. Far-right media houses such as Project Veritas and Breitbart have leveled accusations on the industry on grounds that they have gone a long way in silencing the voices of Republican Party members, bankrolling the campaign efforts of the Democratic Party and advocating for more open doors. It is also funny that a new study infers that the tech backlash in capitalizing on the far-right states and that it has also escalated on liberal home turf that is characteristic of the tech industry.
According to the annual Trust barometer for the Golden State by Edelman, there has been a steep increase in the number of residents from California and from the Bay area who have made calls for more stringent regulations in the tech industry over the entire 2017. While the state has had their highest level of trust on the tech industry and even from around the world, there is a feeling in the Bay Area and California at large that the huge success that has been achieved in Silicon Valley does not trickle down to the middle-income California resident. The opinion is very grim for the social media firms in particular which have been tagged as the most untrustworthy industry by residents from Bay Area.
The opinions by Bay Area residents have placed the level of trust for social media companies below some industries which are much time vilified such as financial services, telecommunications, and the giant pharmaceutical industry. The Managing Director for Public and corporate affairs at Edelman’s Bay Area, Stacey Zolt has said that the idea that the idea that is often propagated during political campaigns that politics is a local affair is no longer relevant for the multi-billion dollar tech industry.
Out of all the residents in California who were involved in the survey, 62% of them said that they had trust in the tech industry. However, that figure dropped significantly when it comes to the social media corporations with only a mere 37% of the respondents expressing their trust in them. The number was even lower when the Bay Area residents were tallied to 35%. The disparity in the trust levels by citizens in both social media firms and the tech industry as a whole has been attributed to the spread of fake news, especially during the 2016 presidential elections.
Dil Bole Oberoi
