And the Covid-19 disinformation? There’s nothing subtle about it. But, first, from WaPo:
Some people are trying to create online bubbles where “NO POLITICS” is the explicit rule. Discussion in a roughly 2,700-member public Facebook group called “COVID-19: Scientific Sources and Reputable News” is filled with Nature articles, trackers and a pinned “hoax post” thread. Comments below a Sunday post promoting a “fireside chat” with infectious-diseases expert Anthony S. Fauci made no mention of the drama unfolding as the White House moved to discredit its own adviser.
Creator Elizabeth Lilly, a 56-year-old Santa Cruz-area resident, said she wanted to attract and benefit people “across the aisle,” though admins say they’re reevaluating whether “NO POLITICS” is possible when scientists are under political attack.
She says she made the group with two friends after watching another online group — despite a similar mission — struggle to weed out posts about unproven miracle cures. She’s given up trying to convince the few anti-vaxxers on her timeline, and one of her fellow admins has had people in an environmental Facebook group dismiss news articles from a variety of countries as “corporate media” with an agenda.
And just how are the miracle cure purveyors doing? Why, these days they have multiple sources of revenue, not just sales of their dubious products, as this dismaying article I ran across last week makes clear:
Ad revenues paid by tech companies to COVID-19 disinfo sites
Household brands are inadvertently funding disinformation sites to spread COVID-19 conspiracies, thanks to ad tech companies that do not effectively screen the sites to which they provide ads services.
New research from the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) shows that Google, Amazon and other tech companies are paying COVID-19 disinformation sites at least US$25 million in ad revenues to carry ads for well-known brands such as Bloomberg News, Crest Toothpaste, L’Oreal, Made.com, Merck and many others. [Global Disinformation Index]
Frankly, there’s not much historical perspective to offer on this sort of problem. My characterization of the problem is that a publisher is used by an advertising marketer to display information, true or false, from commercial entities to the audience. But, compared to historical norms, there’s not much in terms of historical norms to learn from.
Being a publisher used to require a fair outlay of money just to get off the ground, including access to, or ownership of, a physical publishing plant. Nowadays, it’s trivial to put a web site up, and then it’s all down to the vulgarly-named content-generation and getting the attention of your target audience. This category has become vastly inflated, and standards have fallen.
An advertising marketer has the same niche as before, but the advertising volume is such that there is no authentication of information. Not that this always happened prior to the web, but complaints could bring changes or cancellations.
The audience hardly ever pays for content any longer. This has the hidden cost that there is little direct pressure any individual audience member can place on the publisher; if they walk away, they’ll be replaced by another two or three. Letters of complaint? Don’t make me laugh. The publisher is directly beholden to the advertisers only. It used to be that subscription fees gave the audience a way to directly pressure the publisher to publish good-faith information, but that model may be in its death throes. In the model of commercial-ad driven revenues, the publishers must merely convince the buyers of ad space that they have a vast audience – truly or falsely. I used to own the stock of a company dedicated to figuring out the true numbers, before they were bought by Adobe (I think), and I suspect this continues to be a small, but important, conflict zone.
Since commercial entities are now paying the bills, it would appear that’s where the work has to begin, and because they go through the advertising marketer to reach their audience, the latter must become involved. I suggest the latter put in the work to offer a new type of service to the commercial entities: advertising only on socially responsible sites. Perhaps Google, our primary advertising marketer, charges a bit more for the service, but to justify the cost, they proctor publishers for their efforts to offer information that is good-faith best, and not deliberate disinformation.
Why not just ban disreputable sites from receiving advertising? Well, there’s actually one very good reason: the commercial entities should be pursuing socially responsible practices, and not just trying to make money hand over foot. That model of business is gradually becoming obsolete, and some firms are going to require having their faces rubbed in the fact that naked capitalism is no longer part of polite society. This approach clues them into the fact that they need to do more than just make money; they need to not send money to publishers that actively work to the detriment of society. The advertising marketer can enable this choice on the commercial entities‘ part.
Another reason is that cutting off disinformation publishers cold may prove legally difficult, but placing them in tiers of honesty may be more practical, as well as sending a message to society at large that the advertising marketer has a code of ethics that includes respect for science and truth. Simple banning could seem arbitrary.
Just some thoughts on a new problem not really tractable by the theories of the free market.
