Can Technology Bring The Credibility Back To Online Content?
The internet has reached peak clickbait. Emotional arguments have become so ingrained in social influence that accuracy and honesty now feel more like roadblocks than requirements for “successful” online content.
As City A.M. recently reported, a YouTube and Instagram influencer who built their personal brand on veganism was publicly shamed when footage of her secretly eating fish was leaked online. The influencer has since confessed that she ate the fish for health reasons.
On the one hand it shows that there’s no love lost in the cutthroat world of influencer marketing: the footage was allegedly filmed and spread by a competitor.
On the other hand it lays bare the current state of online content: a good story will beat honesty in the race to virality. Promoting a diet that aspires to veganism but in reality is supplemented with fish for added nutrition would have been a more accurate portrayal of her own lifestyle. Perhaps also a more truthful recommendation based on her own experience. In that scenario, the leaked footage of her eating fish would have caused less controversy because she was already transparent about her own diet preferences. Instead she chose to promote a raw vegan diet without disclosing that she herself did not stick to it, and used this to build her online influence and follower base of 3million.
According to Adweek, we know that the influencer marketing global market — had an estimated worth of $2 billion in 2017 and is on pace to reach at least $10 billion by 2020.
Social influence is big business. But the above example begs the question: is it actually possible in today’s online environment, to build social influence using accuracy and honesty rather than simply stories and emotions?
Addressing the honesty deficit
One technology currently being applied to address this question is blockchain. Proponents see the potential to use this as a means of elevating and safeguarding the honesty of content created and shared online. This has particular significance for young creators seeking out a way to build their social influence.
Many analysts believe that a shift towards distributed ledger technologies that delegate control away from central, authoritative locations and groups, will gradually occur in advertising and marketing. This is also because the current honesty deficit has created a shift in trust among young consumers online.
In the future your personal brand won’t be tethered to advertising platforms like Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, or Twitch the way they are today.
Decentralized blockchain technology can make it easier for social influencers to build audiences that aren’t trapped on a specific platform that monetizes via interruptive advertising. It can also free them from sponsorships and ties to brands that compromise the honesty of their content.
As I’ve written about previously, tokens are the native currency of the decentralized network and they provide a way to incentivize social influencers to fuel the supply side of honest online content.
In the example of the WOM economy, creators have a reason to produce content recommending products and brands —they are rewarded in tokens—and they also have a reason to provide recommendations that are honest and that they are prepared to stand by. Every piece of submitted content goes through a validation process from other members of the community and if the validators do not reach the consensus that the content is genuine, the creator not only fails to get rewarded, but could lose the tokens they put down as a deposit to take part in the economy. The validators have a reason to quality-check the content —earning tokens for their effort — and they also have a reason to behave fairly. If their content ratings veer away significantly from the majority they also stand to lose the tokens they deposited before taking part.
Shaping the future of social influence
Blockchain and emerging token economies are likely to give online creators more choices, freedom and the ability to be rewarded more fairly for their digital contributions — no matter the app or the genre, or the medium of the message.
The technology also places greater emphasis and value on honesty as an ingredient for successful online content, charting a better path for social influencers to tell stories based on truth more than fiction.
