Most Americans don't know that Facebook owns Instagram and WhatsApp, new Pew survey says
The illusion of consumer choice is as American as apple pie. Most Americans apparently just don't know that truth also extends to the tech sector.
Leading non-profit public opinion research organization Pew Research Center released a new report Wednesday measuring the digital literacy of American adults across topics like cybersecurity and the tech industry. Called the Americans and Digital Knowledge report, the results were pretty dismal: a majority of respondents could answer fewer than half of the ten (for the most part very basic) questions correctly.
One question concerned Facebook's sprawling business interests. Pew asked survey respondents whether they thought that Facebook owns Instagram and WhatsApp (it does). Just 29 percent of people surveyed correctly answered in the affirmative — meaning that over 70 percent of Americans don't know that Facebook owns Instagram and WhatsApp.
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That's not the most stable foundation of public knowledge for any potential future anti-trust inquiries into Facebook's ownership of Instagram and WhatsApp.
Rather than being misinformed, however, most Americans are actually under-informed. While 22 percent answered incorrectly, nearly half - 49 percent - responded that they were "not sure" whether Facebook owned Instagram and WhatsApp.
Pew says that this result indicates that people's use of social media is out of joint with their understanding of the companies.
"We found that even as a majority of American adults use Facebook, they aren’t that knowledgeable about some aspects related to the business side of the company," Monica Anderson, Pew's associate director of research, told Mashable. "Only around 20% correctly identified WhatsApp and Instagram as two companies owned by the company. And around half reported being unsure. So there is relatively low levels of familiarity with the company’s assets – and that is true across demographic groups."
For the survey, in June, Pew asked a nationally representative sample of 4,272 US adults the ten questions. It included questions like knowing the function of a web cookie, identifying an example of two-factor authentication, and whether people could identify Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in a photo (nope! Only 15 percent of people got that one!).
Overall, people were mostly just confused about what was going on, with a popular response to many questions being "not sure."
"Although the share of Americans who can correctly answer these questions varies from topic to topic, in most cases the share providing an actual incorrect answer is relatively small," Anderson said. "Users are more likely to indicate that they simply are not sure of the correct answer which indicates an unfamiliarity with many of these tech-focused concepts."
The survey also recorded demographics information, like age and education level.
Younger Americans (18-29 and 30-49) were more knowledgeable about Facebook's business tentacles than older ones (50-64 and 65+). Nearly 40 percent of people in the two younger groups responded affirmatively to Facebook's interest in Instagram and WhatsApp.
That spread extended to education level, too. Respondents who had graduated college answered correctly 41 percent of the time.
But even these numbers on the higher end of the spectrum demonstrate a lack of knowledge by people who are likely regular users of the various platforms. Another Pew survey found that 69 percent of Americans use Facebook. Meanwhile, 37 percent use Instagram and 20 percent use WhatsApp. Many of those Instagram users are young people: 75 percent of 18-24 year olds say they use Instagram.
Why does it matter if people know the extent of Facebook's ownership in the social media and messaging world? People are starting to become wiser to the amount of data Facebook harvests from its users, and its highly personal advertising targeting practices. This has caused backlash against Facebook in the form of declining sentiment and stagnating growth. The situation was helped along by Russian operatives' use of Facebook to manipulate the 2016 election in favor of Donald Trump and inflame political sentiments overall.
The bigger a data and advertising company is, the harder it is to detangle its tentacles from your life.
However, all the measures people might take in the wake of these scandals to protect their privacy and decrease their exposure to divisive ads is moot if they're also using Instagram. Facebook gets that information and revenue, too. Incidentally, user numbers show that as people sour on Facebook, the popularity of Instagram continues to explode.
That's an especially urgent problem considering that just Tuesday, a Bipartisan Senate report detailed how instrumental Instagram is especially in disseminating Russian information campaigns.
Amid these scandals, there have been calls from political candidates, like Elizabeth Warren, and current government bodies, to investigate big tech companies including Facebook to determine whether they are a monopoly. In addition to concerns about anti-competitive behavior, Facebook's consolidation with Instagram and WhatsApp presents a problem for consumers, too: The bigger a data and advertising company is, the harder it is to detangle its tentacles from your life.
Even if users aren't wholly aware of Facebook's dominance, that doesn't mean they don't want action. A previous Pew survey found that half of Americans think tech companies should be subject to more regulation.
Other surveys have noted Americans' less than comprehensive knowledge of Facbook's business practices before. But the Pew survey places it in context: not only do people know about who's running the internet, there's also a dearth of knowledge about how to protect ourselves.
