As confidence in Facebook plummets, workers' median salary tops $240K

The average Facebook employee makes about 5.5 times as much money as the average American, yet a huge majority of its users doubts the social media giant can keep their personal information safe.

After the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, in which data of some 87 million Facebook users was harvested, a survey by the Ponemon Institute found that only 27% of respondents felt that Facebook is committed to protecting their personal information. Before the scandal, 79% of people agreed with the statement: "Facebook is committed to protecting the privacy of my personal information."

The survey by U.S. think tank the Ponemon Institute, as reported by The Financial times, was based on a survey of 3,000 people. The survey was conducted one week after former Cambridge Analytica employee Christopher Wylie’s revelations about the data access. The prior reading on confidence was in 2017.

Facebook’s employees had a median pay package of more than $240,000 last year, according to a proxy filed by the company, well above the $44,564 average salary for American workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Facebook salary calculations do not include contract workers or workers employed through a third party.

Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg drew a salary of just $1 in 2017, but Facebook paid $8.8 million to cover the billionaire's security and personal travel last year.