Ads and the post-truth society
When selling beliefs is so easy, we have to choose not to buy
I’ve never been trained as a marketer, but I can recognize when I’m being sold something. Growing up on the outskirts of a city whose main highway was lined with huge billboards, and passing them regularly from a young age, I’ve become extremely sensitive to the various methods — some more subtle than others — used by advertisers to evoke a feeling of need, or desire for their service, product, or belief.
Fast forward twenty years and I am now once again confronted with an awareness of the ads around me, but for a different reason.
In a society where capitalism goes unregulated on an individual level (blind consumerism driven by an endless loop of pop culture and unchallenged convention), ads can — and have — become a weapon, made possible and even encouraged by the largest companies in the world and the individuals who run them.
Ads and Beliefs are a dangerous mix
The incredibly accurate targeting of ads on social media platforms have allowed small businesses to boost their sales and make a profit, but have also been exploited by parties wishing use that same targeting mechanism to sell ideas, not products. By knowing what audience is seeing your content, you can tailor an ideologically driven message from an angle which most resonates with those who are seeing it. This is how Trump got elected, and how Brexit was passed.
Personal data is no longer being used to place desirable products next to each other at the grocery store; it’s being used to spread ideas in order to gain power or influence. If ads can be bought and the result is not a purchase but adoption of a belief — the one with the most money rules not only the market, but the minds of the people within it. And what better belief for a market driven society to impose on its people than one in wherein blind consumption is good, and thinking twice about one’s consumption decisions is unnecessary?
Rapid information propagation makes for sloppy belief internalization
Let’s take a step back — The United States is a constitutional republic founded on the principles of freedom of expression. Such principles have led us to achieving not only the fundamental goals of any nation — economic prosperity and regional autonomy —but also to becoming the biggest economy in the world, with some of the largest contributions in science, arts, and, of course, commerce and marketing.
What has changed? Why, all of a sudden, are the principles that have led to our prosperity, now leading us into a spiral of ethical self-destruction?
The answer is simply the rate at which information can be spread as a result of social media. When the most effective medium for advertising changes from physical to digital (e.g. from a billboard which requires hours of manpower to post, and reaches one thousand people a day to a social media ad which takes minutes to post and reaches a hundred thousand), the channels through which ideas are spread are susceptible to be corrupted. Using advertising methods to spread ideas rather than products is also not new, but the impacts of such methods do not scale linearly when it comes to the speed at which ideas can be spread digitally.
Let’s look at an example scenario — If a billboard ten years ago stated that the world was flat, at most a few people might internalize that belief and propagate it. But online, where not only is the initial idea so easy to spread, but further resources and arguments — however factually lacking — are available at the tips of our fingers, the ideas gain traction quicker. Meanwhile, opposition to the idea spreads just as fast, bringing the existence of such idea to more people than it would originally be exposed to, such that even if a small number of people refuse to agree with science, the sum total of people who do so ends up far greater than it would be without the tools for rapid idea propagation.
It time for us to stop blaming, and instead take the blame, for social media exploitation
It’s clear by their actions that governments do not completely understand the root causes of the recent social media controversies, and technology companies themselves, who although may not have originally intended for such consequences, will not do anything to change the phenomenon on a large scale so long as their profits are growing, or, at least, remaining stable.
The solution lies in what we do as consumers to regulate the impact of the ideas which are spread via online channels. Just as we choose which products we want to purchase based on how it fits within our lifestyle, we should choose which ideas to adopt based on how they fit within our framework of principles. With products, it’s easy not to buy something — the disincentive of losing money on something you don’t like or won’t use is enough of a regulator in most cases. But with ideas, the disincentives for adoption are not so easy to perceive, because they payoff in the long-term, and humans are notoriously horrible at predicting long-term consequences of their actions. What might feel immediately benevolent an action, might later result in the voting in of an autocratic leader or a xenophobic party.
At an individual level, the solution is simple: by moderating our personal actions — the sharing of politically sensitive content on social media, or liking/commenting thereof — in a way that does not fan the flames of the argument (i.e. cause polarization), we can prevent adoption of extreme ideas.
But on a systematic level, it is a bit more complex. In order to systematically disincentivize the propagation of polarized opinions or factless arguments, one would have to create a platform based on principles in opposition to everything social media currently thrives off of — facts and reason instead of likes and emotional appeals; quality of content rather than quantity of engagement. Instead of rewarding the popularity of a comment or piece of content, reward the veracity of the claims it contains, and amount of logic (not emotion) that has informed its standpoint. Is it my opinion that future social media platforms will — and should — attempt to do so in order to combat the current trend of disinformation and sensationalism leading to politically and socially negative outcomes. And when the time comes, it is our responsibility, as individuals, to support such platforms, rather than those making profits on the data being used to allocate undeserving influence to those who seek it.
