A majority of U.S. voters hold unfavorable views of Amazon founder and executive chair Jeff Bezos and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, according to a new survey from The Tech Oversight Project.
Sixty-five percent of registered voters said they have a somewhat or very unfavorable opinion of Zuckerberg, who runs the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. Another 59 percent said the same of Bezos, the survey found.
Slightly less than half — 45 percent — said they have an unfavorable opinion of Google CEO Sundar Pichai, while 44 percent said they hold negative views of Apple CEO Tim Cook.
“As Americans continue to see the dangerous effects of social media platforms on youth, the creation of AI scams and harmful algorithms, and tech companies undermining national security by catering to China and Russia, it should come as no surprise that the American people do not have faith in the status quo of our digital lives,” said Sacha Haworth, executive director of The Tech Oversight Project, a nonprofit that seeks to hold Big Tech accountable.
Several CEOs of major tech companies were hauled before the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this year to discuss children’s safety online, where they were grilled by lawmakers from both sides of the aisle for nearly four hours.
Zuckerberg, who appeared alongside the CEOs of TikTok, Snap, Discord and the social platform X at the January hearing, faced the brunt of the criticism, with Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) accusing him of running a product that is “killing people.”
The survey was conducted by Public Policy Polling with 568 registered voters on March 26 and 27 and had a margin of error 4 percentage points.