97% of Users Say Social Media Platforms Don't Prioritize Truth

A small startup from Bucharest just handed Asia's marketing leaders an uncomfortable truth.

eYou, a European social media platform, went public this week after 50,000 people signed up to its waitlist. Alongside the launch, the company released survey data that should make every brand manager rethink how they use social platforms.

The numbers are stark. In a survey of 370 respondents, 97% said social media platforms don't prioritize truth or accuracy. Nine in 10 said they regularly encounter fake news. And 93% believe the algorithms designed to serve them content are trapping them in echo chambers instead.

The Trust Numbers Nobody Is Talking About

The eYou data doesn't stand alone. Only 22% of the global public trusts social media companies as institutions, according to the Ipsos Global Trustworthiness Monitor. A separate Cato Institute poll found 75% of users don't trust platforms to make fair decisions about what content to remove or promote.

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Trust in news from social media has fallen to 20% or lower across nearly every country in the Asia-Pacific region, according to academic research published in the International Journal of Communication. That's a decade-long decline, not a recent blip.

Yet the same users who say they distrust these platforms can't stop using them. In eYou's own survey, 27% of respondents described themselves as addicted to social media and 47% spend one to two hours on it daily. That contradiction is the whole problem in one number.

The APAC Paradox Brands Need to Understand

For Asian marketers, the trust picture is more complicated. PwC's Voice of the Consumer survey found that 56% of APAC consumers have purchased products directly through social media, nearly double the 2019 global average of 31%. In Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia, those numbers climb to 73%, 71%, and 69% respectively.

So APAC consumers distrust the platforms they buy on. That's not a stable situation for brand investment.

In China and Hong Kong specifically, 60% of consumers already considered social media ads to not be very trustworthy as far back as 2021. The brands still pumping money into those feeds without addressing credibility are flying blind.

What eYou Is Betting On

eYou's answer to the trust crisis is to give users control. The platform offers a one-click real-time fact-checking feature that appears as a pop-up in the feed, and an editable profile that shows users exactly what signals are shaping what they see.

Grégoire Vigroux, co-founder and CCO of eYou, framed the launch clearly: "Social media is entering a new generation, one that isn't about capturing attention at all costs, but about trust, transparency and giving control back to the user."

eYou isn't alone in this bet. Bluesky has built a user base around letting people subscribe to third-party-curated feeds instead of accepting whatever a central algorithm decides. Meta is now testing user-selectable feed options in European markets after regulatory pressure from the EU's Digital Services Act.

The shift is real. The question is whether it's fast enough to matter for the budgets being committed to platform content right now.

The Signal for Marketing Leaders

For brands in Asia, the immediate implication isn't to abandon Facebook or TikTok. It's to audit how much of your credibility depends on platform trust you don't actually control.

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Brand safety research from eMarketer shows 53% of US media experts now identify ads placed alongside AI-generated content as a top challenge in 2026. The governance mechanisms that used to catch the worst placements have been replaced by community-led systems that are slower and less predictable.

That means the work of building trust has to happen at the brand level, not the platform level. According to Sprout Social, 37% of consumers say brand content quality is the number one factor that shapes how much they trust a brand on social media. Reach without credibility is an expensive way to accelerate distrust.

eYou has €300,000 (approximately US$345,000) in funding and 50,000 users. It won't displace Facebook next quarter. But the survey data it launched with reflects something much larger: a structural shift in how audiences evaluate what they see online. That shift is already happening in the markets where APAC brands spend the most.