Canadians’ trust in Facebook appears to be in free fall — and it’s a downward plummet that started even before the ongoing uproar over alleged abuse of Facebook data by Cambridge Analytica and other data-mining firms.

An annual “CanTrust Index” is showing a 17-point drop in trust for Facebook in just one year — from 51 per cent trust in 2017 to just 34 per cent in 2018. And in even worse news for Facebook, the figures are based on surveys carried out from late January to early February; long before allegations of personal-data abuse started hitting headlines around the world last month.

“We could guess that trust in Facebook is probably lower now,” said Bruce MacLellan, CEO of Proof Inc. (formerly Environics Communications), which conducts the annual survey on trust.

While much of the 2018 findings show Canadians to be a trusting lot — especially when it comes to government services such as hospitals, police forces and educational institutions — Canadians appear to have growing, serious worries about Facebook and the prospect of artificial intelligence moving into their lives.

Trust in Facebook’s “news feed” is particularly low, with only 18 per cent of respondents saying they would prefer to get their current events that way — another big decline from the 31 per cent who said two years ago they trusted Facebook’s news feed.

And again, this slide was already under way before Canadian data expert Chris Wylie blew the whistle on Cambridge Analytica and kicked off the worldwide rattling of confidence in Facebook. Just this week, Facebook has started alerting about 87 million users of potential misuse of their data and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is getting ready to testify before Congress today.

MacLellan believes that Facebook’s trust slide is rooted in how slowly the social media giant has come to grips with people’s privacy concerns in the past few months.

Paradoxically, however, these trust issues don’t seem to be turning people off Facebook, or at least they weren’t reporting that in the survey two months ago. A full 76 per cent of respondents said they checked Facebook weekly, compared to just 24 per cent for Twitter.

“So people who are using Facebook are probably using it to see pictures of their grandkids or see what their friends are doing on vacation, but it doesn’t mean they trust the company,” MacLellan said.

That’s not the only contradictory finding in this index either. Funnily enough, for instance, Google is not experiencing the same crisis of trust with Canadians.

As a brand, in fact, Google comes in second in terms of trustworthiness — behind only the CBC/Radio Canada, which enjoys a 71 per cent trust ranking in the index. Google is rated at 67 per cent, ahead of Amazon at 63 per cent, Netflix at 56 per cent and Tim Hortons at 53 per cent.

So why is Facebook doing so badly and Google so well when both are in the business of collecting personal data?

“Here’s a private sector company, which has a trust score almost as high as the CBC,” MacLellan said. His theory is that people just like using Google better — whether for on-line searches or mapping — and because it seems to be more open and transparent.

“I think it’s because they’re delivering a great experience that consumers value and appreciate,” he said.

Oddly enough, though, even as people presumably like using Google, they’re extremely wary of artificial intelligence. Only one in four respondents said they trusted AI.

MacLellan said Canadians might trust AI more if they saw it at work in institutions they did trust — hospitals or other public services, for instance.

There’s good news in this survey for the struggling media industry — beyond just the high marks for CBC and Radio-Canada. All that talk of “fake news” by Donald Trump doesn’t seem to be having much of an effect on Canadians, with traditional news media still enjoying about 51 per cent trust levels in the index — second only to the non-profit sector in trust rankings for organizations.

Moreover, when Canadians were asked to identify which sources of information they trusted the most, newspaper or editorial content was ranked third. Word of mouth and sampling the product were ranked the favourite, at 76 per cent, but 54 Canadians said in this survey that they would trust newspaper content, well ahead of the 39 per cent who would look to broadcast ads.

MacLellan said that the survey shows Canadians generally in an upbeat and trusting mood, especially about their government services. Trust levels are particularly high among newcomers to Canada, Quebecers and people between the ages of 18-24.

Politicians might want to take note of where people are placing their trust too — there doesn’t seem to be a huge appetite among Canadians for anti-institutional politics.“It does suggest that a populist uprising isn’t as likely here,” MacLellan said.

“The news media are far from fading away,” he said. “They still have to figure out their business model … but it’s clear that Canadians are still placing a high degree of trust among traditional news media, including younger Canadians.”

He also finds it interesting to see the high levels of trust in the CBC, suggesting that Canadians are comfortable with the idea of government support for the news media.

“So there’s obviously a government funded media model that isn’t solely dependent on advertising revenue to survive and Canadians seem to quite like that.” Could that mean Canadians would be open to more public-sector help for the media? Perhaps, says MacLellan.

What could become a more pointed question, given this survey, is where the government puts its advertising dollars. Newspapers and traditional media have been getting a declining share of that money over the years, while the spending on social media has been climbing — $4.6-million in 2016-17 for Facebook alone.

It will be interesting to see if that spending is sustained next year — given the headlines and and public-opinion surveys such as this one.