According to a yearly survey conducted by Yahoo! Finance, Meta, formerly known as Facebook, has bagged the title of the worst company in the world in 2021. The social networking company surpassed Chinese e-commerce platform Alibaba, the runner up, with 50% more votes.

Microsoft, on the flipside, topped the list as the world’s best company of 2021. The survey, performed via the Yahoo! Finance homepage through Survey Monkey, received 1,541 responses from December 4 to December 5, 2021.

Facebook-turned Meta has faced backlash ever since its rechristening in October 2021. Users call it the “free-speech police”, and express various other issues with the platform, such as promoting right-wing extremist ideologies and posing a threat to democracy.

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One respondent from the survey suggested that the company can do some damage control by acknowledging and apologising for the problematic nuances it has caused, and by being charitable and giving back to society. Most of the responses focused on the company’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg.

Many respondents are doubtful if the company will ever rise to its original prominence. As the rebranding seemed unnecessary to many Facebook users, many seem to have moved away from the platform.

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The survey suggests that the company has hit a never-seen-before low. Facebook has been a part of quite a few allegations and scandals in the past year, with many giant advertisers stepping away from the platform, causing a massive plummet in funding. The company created an agitated storm among users after the US Capitol siege on January 6, 2021. Many accused the platform of promoting far-right groups and permitting them to attempt to halt the Congress certification of now President Joe Biden. The riot caused multiple deaths and arrests. The extremist group had created a page and formulated the plan on a Facebook page that gained over 365,000 members in merely two days.