These Technology Companies Have a Poor Reputation

Corporations may spend years or even decades brandishing a positive image that exudes good faith and is paramount to maintaining the respect and trust of their stakeholders.

Yet in an environment where news and information move at high speed, even the smallest of controversies can lead to significant image issues that generate a corporate black eye. 

Even in the most ideal of situations, it may take no end of resources and time to completely recover. For everyone's information, here are some tech companies that have had major scandals that live to this day. 

Uber

Few businesses had a weaker year in 2017 than ride-sharing service Uber. An article written by former Uber employee Susan Fowler in mid-February outlined a pervasive atmosphere of discrimination and sexual harassment at the service.

Uber faced several lawsuits in 2017, including one brought by Alphabet, Google's parent company, for suspected misuse of intellectual property related to self-driving car technology.

The ride-hailing company launched a half-billion-dollar marketing campaign in 2018 to restore its brand. A string of scandals, including the sale of fares during a taxi strike, had sparked a campaign to #DeleteUber, and there were claims that the culture encouraged sexual harassment.

It recruited its first chief marketing officer, quickly added staff, and introduced a nationwide campaign, including television advertisements, to restore its reputation.

As Uber's image has continued to suffer, the company made significant adjustments to streamline its marketing activities and trim costs over the summer.

In a curt video conference call in July 2019, it laid off 400 workers who were primarily responsible for helping boost its public profile.

In Uber's filing before its initial public offering in May 2019, it described the need to retain and improve its brand and credibility as vital to the company's potential success.

Vice Media

Known as a cutting-edge and intentionally edgy, media outlet primarily targeted the millennial crowd, Vice has become a revolutionary force in the world of digital news material.

Unlike several other better-established rival news outlets, including NBC and Fox, Vice has recently been caught in a public relations scandal due to systematic sexual abuse reports. 

A New York Times investigation released in late December 2017 uncovered several settlements in sexual assault cases dating back to 2003.

Back then, these accounts showed in detail a toxic culture of sexism and sexual abuse allowed and sometimes carried out by senior leaders at the organization.

During the Times' report and following the company's own probe into the accusations, Vice dismissed three workers.

The sexual harassment revealed in the Times report has led to the resignation of two senior executives — President Andrew Creighton and Chief Technical Officer Mike Germano.

Facebook

Facebook is, as of now, one of the most well known American social media applications in the world. Established by Mark Zuckerberg, in 2004, it is viewed as one of the Big Four innovation organizations alongside Amazon, Apple, and Google.

As of late, as the startup has started to consolidate different organizations (Instagram, WhatsApp), this has likewise begun to gather a progression of allegations, particularly identified with security of data, absence of control of what can be posted.

Facebook has an awful notoriety in affecting and influencing elections utilizing individual information. Aside from this, Facebook has a bad reputation on conducting mass surveillance through its apps.

Archives distributed by a US parliamentary board of trustees uncovered that Facebook had purposely made it "as hard as could reasonably be expected" for clients to know about protection changes to its Android application.

"Facebook kept on investigating and actualized approaches to follow clients" area, to track and read their writings, to access and record their amplifiers on their telephones, to monitor and screen their use of severe applications on their phones, and to track and test their calls." one court archive says.

Conclusion

Bad reputations and poor customer feedback often stem from one of three reasons: the company's attitude, behavior, or lack of professionalism. 

There is no quick and easy cure for any of them, but here's how to continue to make fixes. You made a mistake – we all do. But sometimes a mistake will hang around and damage your reputation for a long time.