*By Carlo Versano* As 2018 dwindles, we're reviewing the year's most extravagant fails as part of Cheddar's Hall of Shame. **5. Victoria’s Secret** The annual tradition of the barely-dressed supermodel strutting down the runway in a primetime “fashion” show is becoming, well, not as sexy as it used to be. This year’s Victoria’s Secret ($LB) Fashion Show saw its lowest ratings ever, as the brand struggles to maintain its relevance in a changing retail environment. Parent company L Brands saw its stock plunge by more than 50 percent in 2018, and a parade of PR debacles battered the brand, culminating with Victoria’s Secret executive Ed Razek telling Vogue that he had no interest in plus-size or trans models walking the runway. He later apologized, around the same time CEO Jan Singer departed the company. **4. Scooters** 2018 was the year of the scooter ー for better or worse. Electric scooters took cities by storm this year, from San Francisco to Santa Monica to Washington, D.C., and to a broad range of reception from locals. The scooter invasion was so unpopular with San Franciscans that the city banned them outright in the spring before granting permits to a pair of start-ups, Scoot and Skip, and shutting out hometown heavyweights Bird and Lime. The rollout in other cities didn’t fare much better, spawning social media hashtags and Instagram accounts, like [@BirdGraveyard](https://www.instagram.com/birdgraveyard/), which posts images and videos of the scooters in various states of being destroyed or vandalized. The irony is that the scooters are viewed by nearly everyone as a good idea, at least in theory. They don’t produce emissions, they cut down on traffic in crowded cities, and solve the proverbial last-mile problem. But the way in which they were introduced to the public this year ー without regard for safety, laws, or feedback from the cities themselves ー squandered much of the goodwill that should have come with an innovative (and cheap) way to help people get around. **3. Snap** In a year of epic tech fails, Snapchat’s ($SNAP) decision to redesign its app in a way that alienated just about all of its core users was particularly impressive. According to YouGov’s brand-tracking poll, consumer sentiment dropped a staggering 73 percent in its key demo after the redesign rollout. The app lost support from celebrity users like Kylie Jenner, just months after Instagram overtook it in daily active users with its copycat Stories feature. Snap spent the year struggling with declining growth and the competition from Instagram, which now has more than double the active users that Snap counts. The stock, which traded as high as $27 last year, is toiling below $5 as the year ends. **2. CBS** Of all the entities and people ensnared in the #MeToo movement, CBS ($CBS) is unique. The network ousted its longtime chairman and CEO, Les Moonves ーone of the most powerful people in Hollywood for two decades ー and is refusing to pay him any of his $120 million severance after decades of his misconduct surfaced. In primetime, the star of one of its most popular shows was publicly accused of getting a co-star written off the show after she complained about his alleged harassment. Its news division was upended ー the morning show spent the year without Charlie Rose, who was fired for misconduct, and Jeff Fager, longtime leader of the venerable 60 Minutes, was canned after he sent threatening texts to his own reporter over an investigation into allegations of inappropriate conduct at the newsmagazine. Meanwhile, the company, led by Moonves, remained locked in a messy battle with its controlling shareholder. **1. Facebook** It’d be hard to have a Hall of Shame in 2018 without giving the top spot to Facebook ($FB), which takes the cake this year for the litany of scandals related to its mismanagement of user data and obfuscation. It all started with the revelations in the spring that 87 million users had their information harvested for use by Cambridge Analytica for political purposes, which serves as a bookend to The New York Times investigation last week that found the company had shared more data with its partners than it had previously been disclosed ー including some data their partners didn’t even ask for. On top of all that, a separate report disclosed that CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg spent the better part of the year minimizing the damage inflicted by a Russian misinformation campaign that continued after the 2016 U.S. presidential election and leveraged the platform to spread fake news and propaganda. Reports also surfaced the company hired a right-wing opposition firm to dig into some of its most outspoken opponents, like liberal billionaire George Soros. The company also took heat from the international community for failing to stop a child bride auction in Africa and genocide in Myanmar, plus a separate data breach that exposed information of 27 million users. And there are still few days left in 2018.
