The North American Electric Reliability Corp., a nonprofit regulatory organization, has fined some of the country’s largest power companies-such as PG&E, DTE Energy, and Duke Energy-in recent years for inadequate infrastructure protections. As it turns out, some of the country’s biggest power companies may not be prepared in such an event. One evil thing: National security officials have become increasingly concerned about the prospect of a foreign power, particularly Russia, disrupting the U.S. And some people don’t have a problem with Amazon or Apple or even Facebook at all-which is why we included dissents for many of the top companies on our list. Privacy people care a lot about misinformation, but misinformation people might not be so worried about privacy. Companies with the potential to do harm can be as distressing as those with long records of producing it. No one thinks Twitter is the worst thing that could happen to a planet, but a lot of people worry about it a little. 1-our respondents are deeply concerned about foreign companies dabbling in surveillance and A.I., as well as the domestic gunners that power the data-broker business.

tech companies topped the vote-read on to find out which came in at No. Then we added up their votes and got this. Each respondent ranked as many as 10 companies-subsidiaries counted as part of parent corporations-with more points going to the choices they placed at the top. We asked them to tell us which tech companies they are most concerned about, and we let them decide for themselves what counts as “concerning.” We told them to define the category of technology companies as narrowly or broadly as they liked, which is how, say, Exxon Mobil made the list.

Slate sent ballots to a wide range of journalists, scholars, advocates, and others who have been thinking critically about technology for years. There was an industry that insisted it now valued privacy and safety but still acted otherwise. There were hearings, resignations, investigations, major new regulations in Europe, and calls for new laws at home. The list of scandals-over user privacy and security, over corporate surveillance and data collection, over fraud and foreign propaganda and algorithmic bias, to name a few-was as unending as your Instagram feed. Though activists, academics, reporters, and regulators had sent up warning flares for years, it wasn’t until quite recently that the era of enchantment with Silicon Valley ended. Or all those Twitter Nazis, and racist Google results, and conspiracy theories on YouTube. Or Travis Kalanick’s conniption in an Uber.

Maybe it was fake news, Russian trolls, and Cambridge Analytica. Which Company Is Worse: Facebook or Amazon?ĮxxonMobil Is the Most Damaging Tech Company Which Tech Companies Are Doing the Most Harm?

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