Which Tech Company Has the Worst Reputation?

A new survey of how Americans see big-name brands isn't likely to get any likes at TikTok, Meta, and X, which land in the bottom six out of 100 regarding reputation.

The latest edition of an annual survey of corporate images by the Harris Poll and Axios finds that X, formerly Twitter, has the second-worst image with a "Reputational Quotient" score of 58.8. Only the fraud-ridden Trump Organization and its 54.0 score place lower. 

Meta occupied 97th place in this survey with a 59.6, just above Spirit Airlines (59.1) and below Fox Corporation (60.3), with TikTok’s 60.7 score earning it 95th place. The only other social platform covered, Reddit, barely ranked higher at 90th place and a 65.0 score, which still left it trailing such public punching bags as Comcast (84th place, 67.6) and Boeing (88th, 65.9).

Tech companies that ship hardware or software, however, fared much better. Nvidia ranked first overall with a score of 81.2, Sony came in fourth with 79.8, and Apple and Samsung occupied ninth and 10th place with 79.0 and 78.8, respectively.

If you’re wondering how Apple could fall short of Sony despite the latter firm’s years of also-ran status in consumer electronics, that's a fair question! We’re also not sure how defunct and disgraced Silicon Valley Bank could top TikTok, Meta, and X at 94th place after federal regulators closed the bank last March.

Amazon, Google, and Microsoft also fared well, holding down 16th, 17th, and 18th place with scores in the high 70s, despite a history of concerns over their market power that, in Google’s case, include multiple antitrust cases now in progress.

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Other notable tech brands on the list: IBM (20th place, 77.4), Dell (32nd, 76.2), PayPal (42nd, 75.2), T-Mobile (45th, 75.0), Verizon (46th, 74.9), Best Buy (47th, 74.7), Netflix (48th, 74.5), AT&T (62nd, 72.5), Tesla (63rd, 72.5), OpenAI (68th, 71.8), Temu (89th, 65.3) and Shein (93rd, 62.1).

These results came from two rounds of polling based on a framework that dates back to 1999. The first round, conducted in January, invited 6,273 Americans to name two companies they thought had the best reputation and to pick two with the worst. The second, in March, asked 16,500 Americans to name which brands from the top 100 they knew and then rate two they were "very" or "somewhat" familiar with on nine dimensions of reputation.