2 Presidents and the wisdom of crowds
Let me begin with the tale of two Presidents
- Former President of the US, Donald Trump launches his own social media app which is called Truth Social. It is a Twitter-like platform that has been created as an alternative social media for people who feel that their views are censored on mainstream platforms. The posts are called ’Truths’ and ‘Retruths’, similar to Tweets and Retweets.
- Let’s move back in time, circa 2011, at the Tahrir Square in the city of Cairo, Egypt. Protests were held by the common citizens spearheaded by the youth of the country which eventually led to the downfall of the Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak. This was at the time of the Arab Spring which was sweeping across the Middle East.
Social media is the common variable that is tying both the instances together. In the case of the former US President, the launch of his social media platform came after more than a year of him being barred from Facebook and Twitter in the wake of the January 6 events. In case of the former Egyptian President, social media played a pivotal role in the uprising by enabling people to communicate, coordinate and share key information in real-time — eventually leading to his resignation.
Fake is infectious
Coming back to the times that we are in, the magnitude of misinformation that floats around on social media, television, print media and the omnipresent WhatsApp is a huge challenge that we as humanity are facing. At the onset of the pandemic, there was a glimmer of hope that since this was a global crisis everyone will focus on the common good.
Alas, it did not turn out that way and the anti-vaccine movement is a case in point. Social media platforms played a major role in amplifying false narratives being peddled by politicians and other stakeholders that have the power to influence people at large. The recent fiasco of Joe Rogan and Spotify and Novak Djokovic at the Australian Open are incidents that are constantly blurring the lines between what is fact and fiction.
Humans are meaning making machines
Information, both good and bad, can spread in many different ways. First, it can travel broadly, with individuals passing it along to a great number of people. Online content often achieves breadth by spreading through network “hubs” — sources with a great number of followers.
Alternatively, information can also travel deep, flowing through networks of people who not only consume it but then share it with others who share it further on, as in a game of telephone.
Social media has not always been this way. In the early years of the past decade, social media became an important tool of communication, within a country and across the world too. Something changed along the way with the recognition of the potent power that social media offers. It has been lapped up by politicians, authoritarians, dictators, and the key opinion leaders at large. It has now turned into an effective tool for propaganda, setting off narratives, the spread of misinformation, targeting opponents of the regime, etc.
The wisdom of crowds
Having said that, there have been attempts made by social media companies to moderate content and flag-off misinformation. but has found little success. There is an alternate way being suggested by researchers Gordon Pennycook of the University of Regina in Canada and David Rand, a professor of management science and cognitive sciences at MIT.
They carried out a research survey and a field experiment on Twitter to understand why people share such misinformation and what role does accuracy play in this. The findings were published in the journal Nature^.
Based on the findings, they are now proposing to crowdsource verification of information to the larger community aka “the wisdom of the crowds”. The argument is that if you ask enough independent sources a tough question, people converge on the right answer. Does that hold true for social media? Not necessarily.
They recognise the fact that social media misguides our crowd-seeking compasses. If we look at the construct of social media. It is designed to provide us with cues to trigger us based on a well-defined narrative. Since it’s mostly a one-way street and provides anonymity, it enables people to freely propagate a lie, bully people, etc. without worrying about the accuracy of the information.
The implied “wisdom of crowd” phenomenon turns on its head owing to the design of social media which is based on firming up our pre-existing opinions. Crowdsourcing only works when each person is thinking independently.
“Most people often share misinformation because their attention is focused on factors other than accuracy.”
It’s a people attention problem
A large number of studies have shown that our choice of news media can shape opinions, especially one’s political leanings. If we look at it in an Indian context, there is a twist. A recent survey by YouGov-Mint-CPR has found a fundamental link between news sources and the tendency to support a political party. Those who do not identify with any political party were the likeliest to rely on social media feeds and messaging apps for news.
A bulk of people are genuinely seeking information that is factual in nature, but how does one go about it?
- How must we read when we do not know much about what we wish to read?
- How can we find an approximation of the truth?
- How do we decode propaganda that is disguised in the form of opinions?
This is where the research by Pennycook and Rand turns interesting. The participants in the experiment were presented with the headline, lead sentence, and image for 36 actual news stories taken from social media. Half of the headlines were entirely false and half were true, and similarly, the headlines were chosen equally to be favourable to Democrats and Republicans. They were then randomly assigned to either judge the veracity of the headline or the probability of them sharing the headline.
Their findings indicated that people improved the accuracy of their sharing when asked to rate the accuracy (task 1) of the headline. When it came to the probability of sharing the headline (task 2), participants were pre-disposed to their existing ideologies and beliefs.
What this means is that if there is enough impetus on shifting people’s attention towards accuracy, there is a positive correlation with the curbing of fake news. Sounds good, but what do we do next?
This is where I bring in the business design lens and try answering the following question:
How can the research insights be integrated in existing business models or can we reimagine a completely new business model from ground up?
To begin, it is important to understand what drives the revenues of social media companies and media companies at large? Advertising is the fodder that drives these companies, especially the digital media companies. The last decade has transformed some of the technology companies into behemoths with the user becoming a commodity that is been harvested without their consent. How do we keep the user engaged? It’s simple, feed their biases with click-bait information.
As a result, we have witnessed a slew of legislation enacted or are proposed across the globe that is centred around user data and privacy. Consent and end-use are the cornerstones on which the legislations are structured upon. There are indeed a few companies that are designing their business models in such a way that users are provided with an option to watch ads or share their personal information in exchange for monetary benefits or rewards. In turn building trust and credibility. But there is a much broader shift that is taking place in this realm that is spearheaded by Apple.
Consent and end-use are the cornerstones of such legislations aiming to build trust and credibility.
The rise of ASOCIAL Apple
Apple, with its total control over its ecosystem (hardware + software), has taken an ASOCIAL stand. They believe that users should be able to enjoy the utility of apps without giving away personal information to the developers. This is the spirit on which they have made recent changes to its iOS with the introduction of an app tracking transparency (ATT) feature.
ATT consists of popups that ask users whether they want to be tracked when opening up an app. If the user says no, the app developer can no longer access the IDFA, a device ID that’s used to target and measure the effectiveness of online ads.
This contrarian stand has found a lot of traction with users exercising their rights of not being tracked. A study from ad measurement firm AppsFlyer in October suggested that 62% of iPhone users were choosing to opt out of sharing their IDFA. Early this month, Facebook parent Meta during its fourth-quarter earnings call mentioned that the feature change is expected to hit their sales by about $10 billion in 2022.
This can be described as a watershed moment in the brief history right to privacy and data ownership. Things are bound to get interesting going forward. This is also an opportune moment for social media companies to truly enable their users to differentiate between factual and false information, along with giving them a well-rounded perspective on the information they are seeking.
What do you think about this? Would love to hear your thoughts.
Until next time!
~Sajid
(Sajid is a Strategy Consultant and founder at Le Monturé Strategy, who works at the intersection of human behaviour, business design and innovation strategy. He blogs at sknotes and tweets @sajidkhetani)
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^Pennycook, G., Epstein, Z., Mosleh, M. et al. Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online. Nature 592, 590–595 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03344-2
