What You See is Not What You Get

The other day I suggested to my 10 year-old daughter to build a website for her drawings. She then told me Squarespace is the best way to build a website. I was like .. where does this come from?! It turned out she heard this from a Youtube commercial (over and over again). I have been dreading this conversation about advertising/online information since she was literate. The moment finally came. How do I properly tell a 10 year-old the harsh reality that a non-trivial percentage of content she consumes on the internet is not truths if not outright lies? What could she do with the information? What’s there to believe?

The internet has become increasingly complicated in the past decade. Truths are buried in a sea of lies, advertising and propaganda. Ten years ago, if you searched on Google, you wouldn’t get flooded with low quality advertising. YouTube was not filled with conspiracy. Facebook was not so addictive. Instagram was just getting started. There were not that many instagram influencers perpetuating the myth of a perfect life. As an adult, I struggle to deal with all these myself. I basically have to treat every piece of content on the internet with suspicion and try my best to judge it with critical thinking.

To my knowledge, most free content on the internet is not created to advance human knowledge or public interest. A significant percentage of online content is created to serve a certain private interest or agenda and is primarily falling into three categories: marketing, propaganda and public relations.

• Does this piece of content try to promote a product or service? → Marketing
• Does this piece of content try to further a cause or a political agenda? → Propaganda
• Does this piece of content try to burnish the public image of an individual or a group? → PR (Public Relations).

Marketing. This is a relatively harmless category. The content is created primarily to help sell a product or service. Marketing comes in various forms. It could be a piece of paid advertising that we see everywhere on Google or Facebook. It could be a case study published by a company or a founder story featured on a VC website. Basically it’s what we refer as content marketing. It could be a product reviewed and endorsed by influencers. I would think most adults on the internet could tell if a piece of content has marketing intent and is thus biased. My daughter now definitely understands that Squarespace is completely biased to think its website building tool is the best. The biased perspective of the marketing material often doesn’t reflect a complete picture for decision making. People need to do more research about competitive products and services to make good decisions.

Propaganda. Things get complicated when a content is created to peddle a certain narrative. Authoritative regimes have been using propaganda to brainwash their people to believe things that seem absurd from outsiders’ perspective. In the democratic world, politicians use propaganda to win elections and gain power. If you pay attention to American politics, you will notice politicians often make big claims without giving proper context or evidence and use simplified compelling stories to win the popularity contest. The public can be easily swayed without critical thinking and deep expertise on a subject. I would avoid making any political examples here but a good non-political example is the propaganda on sugar. Fifty years ago, Sugar industries funded research to downplay the risks of sugar and highlight the hazards of fat. It resulted in an increasingly higher obese rate of Americans in the past few decades. This kind of propaganda is really hard to debunk but it’s where we really need to pay attention because a lot of damage could be done. When you think you are acquiring some new knowledge, make sure you verify the source and always take it with a grain of salt. When you are about to make a judgement about something, make sure you gather all the facts, examine the potential biases and look for information that’s critical but missing and be ready to change your mind when new facts present themselves.

PR (Public Relations). Having worked at a billionaire foundation, it is mind blowing to see how much an organization could spend to burnish their public image. I have been thinking about why people would spend so much money and resources on managing perception instead of using that money to actually change reality. My hypothesis is that PR is easier than the time, effort and perseverance required to make real changes happen. Virtue signaling is easier than virtue doing and the public usually couldn’t tell the difference. If an organization can spend X dollars to create a glitzy PR campaign about diversity and inclusion and win the diversity award of the year, why would they spend ten times more to improve their internal HR systems to truly make a difference in the long run? Having known some public figures in real life, I could tell you there’s usually a gap between a person’s public persona and who they really are. After all, we are all humans with our struggles and imperfections. A carefully crafted public image is in the end just an image: a snapshot from a particular angle. Reality is multidimensional. Please take everything you consume in the media with a grain of salt. In fact, if you see a series of positive profiles about an individual, you will have to wonder why this person spends so much effort trying to win the crowd’s heart. Most talented and hardworking people are busy making the world a better place and have no time for glitzy public profiles.

Is it possible that a piece of content is created without any hidden agenda? It’s certainly possible. But Instead of reading free internet articles, I recommend you to read books, which have a higher probability of having content that is informative, educational, thought provoking and less biased. You have to pay for it but oftentimes it’s cheaper than the hidden cost of free content. In our culture of attention, even without an explicit agenda, a lot of content is solely created to generate page views, high engagement and virality. Creators and their bosses want their content to have a wide audience so we end up seeing a lot of content on the internet that is viral and engaging but can also be pointless or even harmful. Furthermore, we also see articles that are recklessly titled to attract eyeballs: such as this paid Bloomberg article of Ditching Bridgewater Route Nets Chinese Hedge Fund 258% Gain. I don’t think the article itself falls into any of the marketing, propaganda or PR categories but it’s trying to get us to click on it to purchase a Bloomberg subscription!!!

Despite all these, a good amount of content on the internet is created with the true intent to inform or entertain. Humans like to share their stories. But even that, it often comes with am implicit agenda. For example, as I am writing this article, my intent is to share my thoughts about how to think critically about the information we consume on the internet on a daily basis. But if this article does its job to inform and provoke thoughts, unavoidably I would be creating some good impressions of my public image, which you can consider as an implicit agenda. I can’t argue with that.

In the internet age, the overwhelming amount of information coming in our way is a complicated tangled mess. Think critically and understand the motivation behind every piece of information. Do your research and make your judgment carefully. Ultimately, on the internet, what you see is not what you get.

Also, spend more time reading books! It’s much better than mindlessly browsing the internet!