Misleading content is born out of deceptive incentives
We are all tired of false news, conspiracy theories, denials, utopias, regardless of “left or right” positions, and we know how dangerous they are. My thoughts are about a different kind of bad, less dramatic, yet toxic, online content.
I call this content “misleading” because it is not intended to actually cause harm. We don’t like it anyway, but we need to understand what motivated this exaggerated growth. The real issue — I believe — lies in bad incentives, which distort morality by design.
My mother-in-law is a curious 70-year-old lady. She often uses her smartphone to keep up with the news, check out a new recipe, or check curious things about history or exotic places.
One of these mornings, she told me a beautiful story she read somewhere on Facebook, about how Isaac Newton’s thrived during the pandemic, changing the world as we know it.
I told her it was a beautiful story, and it is true that Newton isolated himself during a pandemic, it didn’t happen that way. The story was nice, but not true, like the apple hitting his head.
She was upset and started to scroll her smartphone screen to find the story and prove me wrong. “Look this!” — she said — “the story is on this page, with tons of followers, likes and everything!”. “Yes,” — I replied — “but even so, this is misleading, sorry.”
It didn’t make it any easier. No one likes to feel cheated and, even worse, in front of someone else. She was upset about “being corrected”, even though I was careful when I did it. Especially at this age, people tend to see themselves as a burden. They want be seen as an active rational being (and she obviously is) rather than a “naive old child”.
A few hours later, I apologized. “You don’t have to, my son. I think you’re right, because you’re more up to date than I am. You know what? I don’t think I’ll even read these things anymore …” — she said, resigned.
That was terrible to hear. It was not my intention to stop her from arousing her curiosity, let alone offending her. I tried to fix it, saying that I just think it’s important to visit fact-checking sites, to make sure you’re not being duped by some idiot or scoundrel out there.
She said, “I understand, but don’t you think it sucks to have to double check everything?” — she continued — “We used to buy a newspaper to inform ourselves, and we believed that the people behind it valued their credibility, even though I knew that there were no angels. Isn’t there good faith anymore?”
It was like a slap in the face. I’m 48 years old, but I still remember the same feeling back then. When we thought about content creators (journalists, authors, etc), there was a sense of credibility and responsibility on the part of writers in general. If they ignored or underestimated this, their career would be jeopardized, because no one — at any time — has ever been happy to feel cheated (including news companies and advertisers).
Over the years, content creators (in traditional media) have not been able to resist the online business and still survive. On the other hand, it represented an opportunity for millions of new content creators. This may seem just a change in the business model, or ‘new normal’, if that buzzword sounds better to you, but it goes much deeper than that, and changed the game entirely.
Let’s think about it, using the lens of that recent past: you visit a website and see an interesting story. You believe that no one would publish anything that could compromise their credibility, and ended up being seen as an idiot, incompetent or a scoundrel. Why would anyone do something so stupid, right?
This idea still exists, but it has become more difficult to maintain, because there is no relevant news every hour of the day, throughout every day of the year, solid content takes time to produce. If the production of something increases, but there is not enough raw material, becoming too expensive or taking too much time to be handled, the way is to mix it with other materials that are simpler, easier and cheaper, and go ahead.
“Keep posting” is now the mantra.
It has also become more difficult to appreciate these values, because compensation used to based on the relevance of their content, and credibility came from their consistently serious work…but now they’re paid based on CPC (Cost Per Click) or CTR (Click-through Rate).
These metrics don’t care much about what you post (unless it’s clearly criminal): what matters is just the traffic you generated, whether through fans or haters, whether with serious, intentionally false or just inconsequential content. It does not matter anymore.
Yes, even serious magazines or newspapers used to have pseudo-scientific or absurd articles like “10 safe ways to find the love of your life”, or a horoscope section telling you to eat fish today if you want find your dream job. Yes, these magazines and newspapers needed to sell thousands of issues to attract advertisers. What’s the difference?
I believe it is about deceptive incentives.
Until a few decades ago, no one would believe the horoscope columnist as a reliable source for talking about public health, just as the economics journalist would never talk about eagles extending their lives by removing their beaks. Could you change your career? Sure, but you needed to work hard to build your relevance and credibility for that.
Regardless of whether you know what you’re talking about or not, just talk often, generate traffic and earn “Likes”, which are valuable credentials for social networks, and a source of revenue for advertisers. Hard work is no longer in quality, but in “growth hacking”, “Launch” formulas, and the like.
More important than being, is what you seem to be.
Of course, there were authors and journalists with obscure intentions at the time, but they still needed to be careful. One slip would be enough to ruin the reputation they have built over the years, something very difficult to recover. Today, what do they lose, except 15 minutes of credibility, some CPC / CTR and a few hundred followers? What is their “skin in the game”, as Nassim Taleb would probably ask?
Just wait a day or two, publish another nonsense, perhaps an apology for the previous publication, and that’s it. If it generates traffic, the social media will reward you again with exposure in the timeline, regardless of what happened a couple of days ago, and with more exposure you gain hundreds more followers, and with that you generate more CPC / CTR.
Everyone is happy, including you, but they keep the money, and you just feel like you’re consuming something good, and for free. Clever.
Another way to think about it: imagine that a meat producer convinces a local market to give meat for free, as he will be paid by the car manufacturer placing an ad on the packaging, and the store will receive more visits than the competitor, potentially buying more things on impulse.
Would you be responsible for ensuring the health of the meat on your own or would you consume another brand? Would you accept it or do business with another store? What if all markets do the same? What if the only markets that don’t do that decided to charge not only for the “certified” meat, but also for entering the store? Would you accept it or just stop eating meat?
People don’t want the responsibility of checking facts every time they read something, and I don’t even think they should, not only because it’s hard work that contradicts the nature of the entertainment they’re looking for, but also because they don’t have access to credible repositories, either because of paywalls or lack of accessible language.
If we demand so much skepticism, all the time, from both the older and the younger, we will end up scaring them. This can result in two undesirable situations: one is that they will no longer consult you, being misinformed because only the deceptive content will speak to them. The other is that they will stop looking for information, being unable to believe anything, becoming uninformed. Two dangerous profiles.
On the other hand, we must be vigilant with exposure to false news and conspiracy theories, which are really dangerous. I do not know how to balance this in the best way, and I cannot expect a revolution in this sector. I can only remain vigilant, and hope that these incentives will quickly become unsustainable.
Until then, the only way is to be more tolerant and keep them close to us … or we are going to let someone — probably without worrying about our well-being — do it on our behalf.
Deceptive incentives distorted our values, by design, and nothing makes more sense to me than seeing misleading content born out of it. Changing values is time-consuming and difficult. Change the incentives and, silently, values change together.
By Ricardo Costa, founder of Humane Techne.
