The GAFAM Reality Index — September 2026: The Month the Users Lost Ground

When we launched the GAFAM Reality Index last month, we made a promise: the numbers would move only when the documented record moved, never in reaction to a headline or an accusation. This is the first update, and it keeps that promise. The overall Index has fallen by a single point, from 52% to 51%. It is a small move — and where it comes from tells the real story.

The Headline Number: 51%

Averaged across all five giants and all three measures, Big Tech now extends 51% of the respect it asks for in return, down from 52% a month ago. One point is deliberately undramatic. An index that lurched wildly every month would not be measuring the world; it would be chasing it. What matters is not the size of the move but its source — and this month, the entire decline sits in a single dimension.

What Moved, and Why

Two companies fell, and both for the same reason: a documented erosion of respect for their users.

Google slips from an overall 47% to 45%, with Respect for Users falling from 50% to 45%. The trigger is the Pixel 11's Gemini Intelligence and its core mechanism, screen-parsing — a shipped, live feature that gives an AI agent standing read-access to whatever is on your screen, from your banking app to your private messages. Convenience for the user, certainly. But a permanent new window into the most sensitive surfaces of a phone is a shift in how much of the user the company can see, and the score reflects it.

Meta slips from 43% to 42%, with Respect for Users falling from 40% to 35% — the lowest single score on the board. The trigger is documented, not alleged: in late August, Meta agreed to pay roughly $17 billion to settle claims by a coalition of US states that it deliberately designed Facebook and Instagram to be addictive to children. We are careful here. A settlement is not an admission of guilt, and Meta continues to deny wrongdoing. But the size of the agreement — the largest Meta has ever paid — together with sworn testimony from a former Meta engineering director that the company kept users engaged even at the cost of their wellbeing, and the child-safety changes it is now compelled to make, is a documented fact, not a courtroom claim. That is the standard the Index requires before a number moves, and here it is met.

What Held Steady

Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft are unchanged, because nothing in the documented record moved them this month. Their scores remain 53%, 53%, and 63%. Just as important, two of the three dimensions did not move at all: Respect for Europe holds at an industry average of 51%, and Respect for the Future holds at 53%. Refusing to move a number without cause is as much a part of an honest index as moving one when the cause is real.

The Pattern Worth Noticing

Here is the finding beneath the numbers. The entire decline this month landed in one place: Respect for Users, which fell from an industry average of 52% to 50%. Respect for Europe and Respect for the Future stood still. In other words, August was not a month in which Big Tech grew more hostile to regulators, or more reckless about long-term risk. It was a month in which two of the five giants were shown, in documented fact, to respect the people using their products a little less than we thought. A screen that reads everything, and a settlement over hooking children — different stories, same casualty. The users.

We will keep watching, and the number will keep moving only when the record does.

We are not first. We are right.