Half of People in the UK and US Distrust Libra, Says Survey

Facebook released the white paper for the much-anticipated Liberal token in June 2019 and upon its release, it has caused a ripple effect throughout the financial industry as well as among world powers. They were summoned to US Congress to testify about their plans regarding Libra and various world governments have formed committees and have begun looking into the implications of the token, particularly for the world economy and its possible use for illegal activities such as money laundering.

With all this going on, it has been believed that Facebook is more concerned about users making active use of the token that necessarily appealing world governments but even that seem to be on shaky ground as a report on telecoms.com published on July 22, 2019, shows that almost half of Americans and Britons do not trust Facebook.

The Lack of Trust

The information was cited from a study facilitated by Viber, an instant messaging platform and it states that 49 percent of users in the United Kingdom and the United States responded that they would not trust a digital token put forward by Facebook. It was specified in the survey that they have particularly little trust in Facebook securing their information when it comes to the use of Libra.

This is not entirely surprising as Facebook is still facing backlash for the Cambridge Analytica scandal of 2018 that revealed that they had been mishandling user-data and essentially selling it to outside companies. 

The survey also revealed that 28 percent of people in the UK are still undecided when it comes to Libra but only 4 percent stated that they would trust Facebook. In the US, the numbers were even lower with only 2.5% percent stating that they would trust Facebook.

The results of this survey come to show just how the damage was done to Facebook’s reputation when it comes to the handling of user data and how they have not fully recovered from the effects of the 2018 scandal. As such, they are battling both distrust from the public and from regulatory bodies even before the token is launched. Though they have repeatedly stated that they will put measures in place when the token launches to prevent any mishandling of user data and to make sure it is secure, Congresspeople were not entirely convinced during their recent hearing with some even calling for the token to be scrapped altogether.

With all these in place, it seems Facebook has its work cut out for them leading up until the launch.