BloombergBloomberg

The so-called 'techlash' is mostly in the minds of the media

By Leonid Bershidsky

09 Sep 2021 · 5 min read

Remember how, in late 2018, the Financial Times declared "techlash" - the backlash against the giant U.S. technology companies and all they represent - word of the year? It also made Oxford Languages' word-of-the-year shortlist then, but lost to "toxic." To judge by the amount of negative publicity the companies continue to generate, techlash is still with us - but as far as both markets and users are concerned, it's an empty word.

Every year since at least 2018, Facebook has led the S&P 500 companies in the number of days it faced negative news sentiment, and Google and Twitter have been in the top 10. (Bloomberg uses supervised machine learning to determine the sentiment in news stories from the point of view of an investor who holds a long position in a stock. The indicator used here is the daily average news sentiment.)

Sign in to informed

  • Curated articles from premium publishers, ad-free
  • Concise Daily Briefs with quick-read summaries
  • Read, listen, save for later, or enjoy offline
  • Enjoy personalized content
Or

LoginForm.agreeToTerms