“Trust is the cornerstone of all human cooperation”
That was a quote from the late, great Sam Tatam, who was Global Head of Behavioural Science at Ogilvy until he sadly passed way too young.
I am reminded of Sam's words when I think about the state of our newsfeeds, and what could happen if we don't fix them quickly.
Below I have shared the three problems I am seeing, all three are interlinked.
1 - volume is up, but trust is down:
The volume of content being published by companies and people is exploding, while simultaneously collapsing in trust.
2 - quick, easy and trust are not good bedfellows:
There is a concept that behavioural scientists use known as costly signalling. Put simply, signals tend to be more credible when they require some genuine cost - time, effort, expertise or reputation.
Which means that if somebody thinks this was written in 10 seconds by Claude, it has virtually no value, because they could ask Claude themselves. They want to know what you think.
3 - Seeing is no longer believing:
Since the 17th century, and perhaps even earlier, we have used the saying seeing is believing. Even a few short years ago, if you saw a video, you believed it.
Imagine two identical videos of a world leader declaring something ridiculous (a daily occurrence these days, it seems). Depending on who published the content, your reaction will be very different. If it was shared by CNN, then perhaps the video is real because there is a trust that CNN will only publish real content. If it's ‘user 6143’ or some unfamiliar person or company sharing it, we're more likely to believe that it's fake, or at least suspect that.
Without trust, most things collapse.
The solution?
We can only solve the corners of the internet that we can control. In business, that is our personal and company accounts online.
Make them trustworthy by acting ethically and transparently, and only publishing real content under each name. Trust builds over time, and in response to showing yourself to be trustworthy.
If we come to our news feeds every day and leave not thinking we've seen anything authentic or real, we'll stop coming.
I think the value to all of us right now is to publish real, authentic content over time so that people know if something comes from your account, it's real.
Real thoughts, real ideas, real experiences, real lived knowledge, written by real humans.
LinkedIn has the best data on this, as they have 1.3 billion on their platform. Their product roll outs swung from ‘write this post with AI’ to ‘Seems like AI slop’ and I think that should be instructive.
As the old saying goes, trust is like a great, strong oak tree. It could take decades to grow, but can be cut down in a morning.
Is it really worth trusting a predictive, quick and easy button with that?
About Six Sells:
Six Sells is an executive visibility agency for senior leaders in media, advertising & tech. We turn executive visibility into familiarity, trust, and commercial conversations.
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