Slashdot Mirror
Who Do You Trust Least?
Mister Furious points to a story on Yahoo! "about how a recent study found AOL to be the least trusted site on the net. It even got lower trust ratings then Microsoft." It would be good to see the actual survey questions and results, since they're referred to only in vague terms. Partly because of that, the story could proabably appear in the Onion without raising many eyebrows -- it seems to tacitly acknowledge that to these companies, perception is more important than reality. If you don't use AOL or MSN, one's current ISP is always a good recipient of distrust.
The way I gauge how to trust is as follows
Ask for email address without apparent reason=back away slowly avoiding eye contact
Others=trust
:)
The Borg assimilated my race & all I got was this lousy T-shirt
...when you see on the "Always trust content from Microsoft Corporation" checkmark?
Adversive
My cat's breath smells like cat food.
"...consumers said they were highly distrustful..." I appreciate the news article is summarising, but really, I reckon they sorta need to define trust. I mean is it in terms of privacy, is it reliability of service? I.M.H.O. it could be taken to mean any number of different things by those being surveyed. I'm not sure you can seriously look at figures like that to mean anything (of course, it could just be a jounalistic summary of a more in-depth survey).
Nevrar
The story mentions first 37 and 29 percent and then 15 and 17 percent, drawing HUGE differences -- Microsoft is referred to as nearly as trusted as online brokerages, while AOL is paraded as completely untrustable.
Is 2% (or even 8%) really that significant? It may seem huge, but it really depends on the survey size and how the questions are asked. Does anyone know more about how these surveys are done, their margins of error on average, etc?
I think they are jumping to conclusions on this one, unless they know more than they are telling. It almost seems like they are jumping on a "let's hate AOL" bandwagon. (Not that that's necessarily completely unfounded)
-nicole
AOL are no saints, but they do seem to have developed some scruples as a sort of reponse to potentially bad publicity.
I sure don't trust slashdot for the correct spelling (english is not my mother tongue).
i dont trust any place whose domain ends in .mil or .gov
That has never happened to me and I visit the CNN site on a daily basis. I distrust CNN for another reason: they are a little to friendly with the US government and often act as a PR machine for the US military.
Jilles
It's happened to me twice in the last two weeks. I know, I wouldn't have believed it either.
Nope. Every time I see a link that looks interesting, it leads me to site where this guy is bending over with his ass wide open!
... anything ending in .gov.
Perhaps Yahoo! weren't too far behind AOL and M$FT in the ratings.
That would have to be my mother-in-law.
Oh - on the net. Still my mother-in-law.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
Hmmm... must have been them dead people answering them surveys. How else can you explain it?
Also, most of their articles touting new products, etc are really thinly-veiled adverts for MS, Intel, etc. and never seem to badmouth anything too badly. Their "videos" are also little more than mouthpieces for company spokespeople to get their point across.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
Does anyone else find it interesting that the two companies who are prime examples of consumer lock-in (AIM/Windows & Office) are the most distrusted companies on the 'net? Both have the "walled garden" approach, and while all the suits seem to be talking up how great the idea is, this speaks differently.
Perhaps this study just goes to show that, while they may be complacent, people aren't completely blind to what these companies are potentially denying them.
Freedom and empowerment is more important than a friendly "You've got mail". The problem is that in order to be empowered in the sense of having access to the net, many people are willing to go the easy route (i.e. AOL) and it puts them at someone else's mercy. Same idea applies to many of Microsoft's customers.
People sacrifice complete freedom and empowerment for the ease and extra free time gained by using AOL and Microsoft's products. And while many are quite satisfied with the choice (as the AOL rep stated in the article) it doesn't take away distrust of what may potentially happen or be happening to them. That's still fertile ground I think.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Do NOT EVER trust what you see on CNN! They manipulate everything. If you want news, go BBC World!
Greetz
Menteb
AOL may suck, but they're hardly the least trustworthy site on the net.
What about www.scientology.org, or www.worldnetdaily.net, to name two?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
It might suprise some people but microsoft are very low on my list on this one - i can trust them totally as they keep doing business the same way - they are predicatble.
The site i trust least is c/net - might sound strange but think about it this way - think of all the beat up stories you have seen - Optus@home looking at peoples downloads, code red, etc and look at the stories they run - and dont even talk about product reviews or releases - they are almost entirely re written PR blurbs - you cannot rely on them at all for 'news' without bias.
Companies i trust least - Compaq - Another one some wont agree with but i have reasons - they still persist in proprietary systems, their support (speaking from a corporate point of view) is mosty abysmal, their website is confusing, slow and badly thought out (try finding the drivers you want - i dare you) their products are prone to failure (Armada notebooks, prolinea desktops to name 2 i have had major problems with)
Now you may not agree - thats cool - but they are the ones i dont trust
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
Ok look for dirvers for a prosignia 1650 or any thing older than 12 months or so - or better yet ring their support.
You have one laptop ?
How nice i have 394 of them (mainly dell but about 50 are compaq of various ages and types) and yet every time you upgrade one you can never find the right drivers only to ring up and find that no that product is more than 18months old so we dont support it with drivers for newer OSes
Try it on the hard side sometime - i resent the mc donalds crack as well but im not going to flame you as i want to show maturity and i like my karma the way it is - thanks for your post in reply to mine
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
I really do not understand this. The ISP:s are not Angels, but are they Archdaemons?
All the political/religious/environmental wacko pages, you ever visited them?
Many oppressive 3rd world governments also have their sites, you ever heard of them?
Sites mentioned in spam, (get-rich-now etc.). Or have you never received spam?
EOF (end-of-flame)
My biggest fear would be someone who is *not* under public scrutiny like larger companies. Look how many small companies constantly try to fly under the radar and install spyware onto your computer in their latest release. The whole Gator thing is a perfect example of this, they start off initially as a company who helps people autocomplete forms on websites, then they start sending rival adds to pages that you goto, then they intentionally build an app to go over the existing banner add on the page.
A company like Microsoft would *never* be able to get away with a gator like stunt, someone would be suing the heck out of them (the government would have their antitrust lawyers out like a pack of ravenous wolfs). Only people who seem to get away with doing stuff like this is the small little company that nobody seems to really care about; but that company is the first in line to screw you over in dirty little tricks.
Gartner has acted as Microsoft's hatchetman before, this fits well as another MS move to counter AOL getting an icon on the desktop on Windows XP via the OEMs.
You shank my Jengaship!
It's not the consumer lock-in that makes them distrusted, it's their abuse of the power that lock-in gives them.
Many other companies have something akin to consumer lock-in, and don't get the negative feedback. To give an obvious example, Java is a proprietary technology, and Sun does retain a high degree of control. However, Sun have never seriously screwed the Java community in several years, and have only really used the authority they have to defend the language, e.g., against Microsoft's Visual J++. As a result, people are much more prepared to give Sun credit for being trustworthy.
Much the same is true of Borland and C++ Builder, which has sufficiently many extensions to C++ that porting to another platform would be tricky. However, again, Borland have consistently maintained the product and thus kept their customers happy.
Now compare and contrast these with MS, whose new OS and office suite offer precious little new functionality and the same old bugs, as reported in numerous reviews by the IT press. And yet, in exchange, they're looking for a blank cheque from your company HQ, because they're Microsoft and so they're obviously worth it. Is it surprising that people distrust such a company?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Of course, a lot of the problems I've run into with AOL are conflicts between Windows and the AOL software, so it could just be something along the lines of two cancers fighting each other or something. Dunno.
Anyway, food for thought.
- Jonathan
They're working hard at being mediocre, and that's good enough for me.
The article on Yahoo! appears to be a report based on--turn off JavaScript before you go--this press release from Gartner.
The press release isn't much more detailed, as it is a teaser for a Gartner symposium in October.
It does mention Amazon, but for the most part is framed as a battle between AOL and Microsoft over instant messaging clients.
"If you don't use AOL or MSN, one's current ISP is always a good recipient of distrust."
What the hell does this mean? Are we supposed to have a certain amount of distrust that MUST be assigned to someone or something?
If I didn't trust my ISP I wouldn't be using them.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
You know how people distort statistics. Actually, what's more significant than the raw numbers they're throwing around is the set of questions. What exactly do they mean by "Trust"? How do you measure it? Do you trust the people who run the site, or the members who contribute to the site?
For example, if I have a MS application, and I need a patch, I have a fairly high level of trust that I can go there, download updates and patches, and they will fix the problems they say they will fix. On the other hand, I have absolutely ZERO trust in their marketing and PR machines and the opinions they express.
So, depending on the underlying agenda of the people funding the "survey", you could interpret (i.e., "twist") my response any way you want.
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Maybe not trusting your ISP is a side-effect of using one of the large, faceless companies as an ISP. I use sonic.net (www.sonic.net), which is relatively small, has great tech support, provides equipment status (and failure) notices on its home page, and is currently fighting SBC to overturn its new, restrictive DSL contract.
I pay about $5/month more for my DSL with Sonic than I would with SBC, but I get a static IP address, no limitations on running a server, a shell account, 50MB of web space on their server, and I get a nice warm feeling from supporting a mom-and-pop company.
If you don't trust your ISP, you've got to wonder why you're giving them money in the first place.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
My distrust of CNN goes back much further than AOHell's buyout of Time Warner, though that certainly doesn't help things any. (I tend to avoid anything tied to AOHell...it was a minor annoyance when they bought Mapquest and Nullsoft, but I couldn't have cared less about Netscape or Mirabilis.)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Best example I can think of: the elder George Bush routinely asked "Who do you trust?" when running against Bill Clinton. Of course we know the outcome.
sulli
RTFJ.
cough...linux on ipaq..cough
By that logic, I guess your mistrust Sun, HP, Cisco, Nvidia, Sony, IBM, as well...just to name a few. Whose routers are those 394 laptops running on? You have your own opinion, that's fine, but in my case dealing in proprietary systems doesn't make one less trustworthy, just short sighted.
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Perhaps some American could explain to me why so many of you have such a problem with left of centre politics. There are many countries in the world where 'communist' isn't an insult -- why is it one in America?
Ask the people in Sweden for example, how they balance their very high taxes against their incredible high quality of life. I'd prefer to be taxed and happy than untaxed and disease ridden. I live in the UK, and as far as I'm concerned it doesn't tax enough -- and what it does tax is in the wrong areas (VAT -- sales tax -- is, relatively, a much bigger tax on the poor than on the rich).
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.