Meta, formerly Facebook, was voted the worst company in 2021 by Yahoo Finance’s annual Company of the Year survey. It looks like even Facebook’s name change couldn’t make users forget its past transgressions.
The end of the year sees Yahoo Finance select a “Company of the Year,” based on the firm’s achievements as well as market performance. Microsoft won the title this year. It also chooses a “Worst Company of the Year,” a title which ultimately went to Facebook.
Yahoo Finance polled its readers to find out which company irked them the most. The survey was posted on its website on December 4 and December 5, via Survey Monkey. 1,541 people responded, of which eight percent wrote that they deemed Facebook as the worst company among the lot.
Second place went to Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce company. Its investors weren’t exactly happy with the company’s 50% drop year-to-date. Respondents also expressed their dislike towards Nikola and Tesla (not to be confused with the Serbian-American inventor) in the survey. The former was also voted worst company of the year in 2020 due various allegations of fraud. Tesla has been fraught with numerous scandals, making it one of the worst companies. Trading platform Robinhood also made its way to Yahoo’s “naughty list,” following its GameStop controversy.
Facebook was no stranger to controversy this year, with its antitrust probe and allegations by whistleblower Frances Haugen. Conservatives claimed that the company stifled their voices with excessive censorship. Whereas those on the left said that Facebook spread hate speech and fake news. Politics aside, many respondents raised their concerns regarding Facebook-owned Instagram’s ill effects on teenagers and their mental health.
Do you think Facebook earned the title of worst company of the year? Let us know in the comments.