Culture
Uber, Lego, and Sony are among the most hated brands on Twitter
Product review site Rave Reviews analyzed more than a million tweets about 100 of the biggest global brands to find the ones that receive the most hate.
You may not be surprised to hear that Uber is among the most hated brands on Twitter. The ride-hailing service is controversial for its poor treatment of drivers and wildly pricier rides during the pandemic. But you might be more surprised to learn another brand that’s subject of ire on Twitter is none other than Lego, the seemingly innocent and very popular toy brand.
That information comes courtesy of Rave Reviews, a product review site that used social media analysis tools to study the sentiment surrounding one hundred of the biggest brands. The website looked at one million tweets and tagged them for being positive or negative towards brands, then calculated the percentage of each that a brand received.
Negativity is loud — According to the research, a lot of the negative tweets relate to a negative customer service experience. People tweet negatively about Lego when a piece is missing, or they think the toys are too expensive.
Negative tweets about Uber — which account for nearly 50 percent of tweets about the brand — usually relate to canceled rides or a driver’s car that smells bad (!). Sony, another most-hated brand, has received a lot of negativity over PS5 shortages. And people tend to tweet more about bad experiences than good ones. If your Uber ride goes totally fine, you’re probably not going to tweet about it.
It’s also worth noting that larger brands are intuitively going to be tweeted about more often than small ones because they have more customers.
Mixed bag — In a sense, it’s not a bad thing that large brands are receiving lots of negative tweets. It means they’ve made it into the big leagues. And brands are able to employ customer service agents to respond directly to complaints on the platform; Twitter has built tools into DMs specifically for this purpose.
That probably reinforces the use of Twitter to air complaints: customers know they can get a response there. For people who use the social network, it can be easier to find customer service there than looking to a company’s website, where you might have to use a janky live chat tool.
So, being the subject of much negativity on Twitter probably isn’t what it seems. Because really, who actually hates Lego?
