Silicon Flatiron Panelists Differ in Attitudes on Trustworthiness of Big Tech Companies
February 14, 2021 – A public policy manager for Google defended the search engine giant’s trustworthiness and status during a Thursday panel discussion, even as she reiterated that the company supports a federal privacy law. Speaking at a discussion hosted by Silicon Flatirons, Sarah Holland of Goog
February 14, 2021 – A public policy manager for Google defended the search engine giant’s trustworthiness and status during a Thursday panel discussion, even as she reiterated that the company supports a federal privacy law.
Speaking at a discussion hosted by Silicon Flatirons, Sarah Holland of Google said that . expectations on Google are higher than ever.
Users still trust Google because they still use it, said Holland. But she acknowledged that big tech companies can do more to protect user privacy.
She said Google users are in control of their data more than ever and demonstrated this by touting that users can delete their own search history and be prompted to create stronger passwords. Moreover, Google has expanded features in recent years that allow for more privacy controls, said Holland.
Although Google “is a large company in the discourse, we are still just one company of many,” said Holland.
Others on the panel differed in their approach to the trustworthiness of big tech companies.
There is very little trust right now in tech companies, said Sylvie Delacroix, a law professor of ethics at the University of Birmingham. Improvements in the collection and handling of personal data is not improving in the ways that it needs to. Bottom-up empowerment structures must be made if organizations want to deserve our trust as consumers, she said.
Distrust with the tech industry stems from the ways the industry has used information in the past, said Hugo Teufel, chief privacy officer at Lumen Technologies. Though some companies would have been fine had they simply given notice to consumers about their plans with their data, there are still many cases where no form of data sharing would be deemed acceptable, he said.
In light of recent news surrounding tech companies banning and moderating user’s accounts, some think the companies are making decisions based on politics or ideologies, further eroding their trust in them, said Teufel.
