One of the defining features of Web 2.0 is user-generated content. The opportunities for expression on web sites, blog sites, twitter, social nets, etc. all seem to be unlimited. And the style of those comments range from short bursts of near spontaneous communication (like twitter) to thoughtful writing on any topic imaginable (like blogs) to a babble of cross conversations on anything in between (any web page that allows user comments). I think most of us will agree that self-expression is a good thing, with the traditional gatekeepers of the publishing and periodical worlds being bypassed so that all of us have a voice. Vox populi, vox dei.
Yet with so many anonymous voices, it’s just impossible to verify or vet any given speaker. More often, the noise of the crowd blends together and an average is taken. This is especially true of product or brand ranking sites, where the average user rating is presented as a measure of public approval. Amazon has been doing this for years, and still does, even after it was revealed several years ago that interested parties (for example, the authors themselves) were creating online pseudonyms and then artificially ranking and reviewing their own works to manipulate the score. Amazon now forbids this chicanery, and does a good job of trying to trace a reviewers on-line reputation and previous reviews (and how helpful they were) – yet the average star rating remains, and is still a powerful influencer of a potential buyers decision.
(Full disclosure: I have a book listed on Amazon too – a self-published suspense thriller, entirely unrelated to IT or my work as a CIO. Some of the reviews on Amazon are from friends who read the book, reacted favorably and whom I then asked to write a review. I never suggested what they write or how they ‘starred’ my book, but I too know the power of the Amazon star!)
Bias on the web is everywhere. I would divide it into two types: the first comes from the class of web denizens who hold a grudge. They may have felt abused by some incident in the past and now want to make damn sure that the company/brand/service/person suffers for it. An interesting article in the NY Times details how hotel chains are battling against online review sites like TripAdvisor, whose user comments, they claim, cross the line from honest criticism to outright libel. Says one spokesman for the industry “The world of the Internet and particularly social media has pretty much outstripped ethical guidelines, and some legal ones as well.”
The second kind of bias is even more insidious: this is offered up by someone or some group who has a (hidden) self interest in the opinion espoused or the outcome advocated – a kind of bias for profit. Authors reviewing their own books on Amazon are small change compared to companies skewing brand and product ratings on what appear to be objective feedback sites. Bloggers with an undisclosed incentive are another example. Microsoft is not the only company to pay bloggers to say nice things about them.
The manipulation of data can be automated too. ‘Clickbots’ can now manipulate web search data, web-ad stats and just about everything where a user response is counted, a practice known as click fraud. And in this case, real money changes hands based on those fraudulent clicks.
At the other end of the spectrum, it was revealed that Kim Kardashian, one of the most followed people on Twitter, was being paid – up top $10K apparently – for mentioning products in her tweets. (With tweets like “We have our v own Kardashian Prepaid MasterCard! We hope u have fun shopping with it!” who would have guessed?) My first reaction – like yours, I’ll bet – is to shrug this off and move on. Yet it’s one more break in the boundary between honest speech and commercial speech: one more communication source that you can now no longer trust.
The conventional wisdom is that bias online will be outted by the crowd. Just as with open source software, the theory goes, enough eyeballs watching will uncover any flaws in the system, whether it be a software bug, or one too many gushing pro-Microsoft posts. I’m not fully reassured by this theory. It may have worked in the examples we can point to, but no one knows the full extent of bias in all that we see online. I think we need to continue to minimize anonymity on the web, and even look to some new gatekeepers (in this case web site owners) to help us ferret out the bias. And soon BI software tools may be turned on the cloud to detect hidden patterns of bias in mountains of data.
Advertisers, brand managers, grudge-holders with an axe to grind – they’ve always sought to manipulate our thinking for their own purposes or gain. The web has given them powerful new tools and many more ways to cloak their behavior. Let the browser beware.
3 comments:
Your reference to "Vox populi, vox dei" is often used out of context, but in this case, I don't think so. In typical uses, it is meant, literally, "the voice of the people [is] the voice of God".
The term can also be traced to a letter from Alcuin to Charlemagne in 798, "Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, Vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit." or in English, "And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness."
Well used, Howard, well used...
There once was a rule of thumb that what was spoken should be suspect, but what was in writing is much more reliable information. "Information" on the WWW has become too skewed to opinion and conversation without the attendant "verification of fact" that goes into material published in hard copy. The real danger here is that many people treat what is said on the internet as fact without the desire or ability to analyze or validate the source or purpose of the communication. To me, sadly, the Internet does not represent a medium that is highly honest and is lacking in integrity.
Well said, Howard! As Dave indicates, many people tend to take what they ready online as gospel, and we have to be as cautious about what we read there as we do in any printed publication or TV "news" journalists. But, I don't think the Internet medium is inherently worse than any other.
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