Digital Insanity Magazine by Bruno Amaral

The Importance of Proving Authority

Mon, 24 Dec 2018 12:19:04 +0000

Summary

Everyone has a right to write and discuss anything they wish, within the boundaries of human rights.

Publishing platforms, like Medium, work to organize content and suggest it to us. They want to show us something we like so we spend more time using the site. This is also true for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and others.

The problem is that the recommendation algorithm does not take into account a person’s authority on the subject. In this context, a person’s authority is a scale that includes knowledge and experience around a certain topic.

I don’t mean to say that someone with a low authority on a subject shouldn’t write about it. I’m suggesting that a platforms needs to know an author’s authority and the quality of the content written before recommending it to other users.

I am also suggesting that the user should be able to audit why something was recommended by the platform.

In the end, there is a description of the concept of “blind judge”, a possible solution to the current state of social media.

This article does not go into the liability of pubishing platforms for hosting content that is fake or toxic in any way. That would be another subject altogeter.

This having been said, I look forward to know your thoughts.

Authorship and authority

@Medium’s algorithm showed me an article by someone who has 20k Followers. That account was created in September!

Either this person is an amazing writer who made it to 20k followers in a heartbeat or something else. I figured it was someone with a decent following outside of @Medium so I spent some time searching for details.

I got nothing. The author’s profile links to an instagram page and a website under construction.

The site says the person writes for a honourable publication and I did confirm that. What I did not find was evidence that the author had a background around that subject, academic or otherwise. I also don’t know what variables were used by @Medium to suggest that article. Was it the volume of applause it got from my network?

Small side note, this could happen with @Medium, @Facebook or any other platform where this long form content can be published.

And it is also possible that this particular author does have authority to discuss and advise on the subject matter. The problem here is the lack of evidence.

Give me an honest signal!

What I was looking at were signals of some sort of recognition. There was a large numbers of followers. The profile mentioned a partnership with an important publication, to which I grant a good level quality.

This is what Seth Godin would call Signals, from an episode of his podcast Akimbo. In short, we look for signals to help us make up our mind. One of those signals can be the number of followers a person has on social media. If they are getting so much attention, it could be safe to say they provide valuable information. Their following could be the result of the work they do on some other context, some other medium. ¹

Having a large number of followers is not an honest signal. We have seen fake news and some toxic people gather a large following. There are several ways to buy fake followers or you can put some money into a good online advertising campaign.

Instagram's fake signals

It’s not new that people buy followers, for Instagram, for Twitter, for YouTube channels. That is one way to have a fake signal.

Another is in the way content is selected to be posted on the timeline. Looking at some people’s Instagram feed makes it look like they live in a world of constant happiness, where everything is going their way and life is a long deserted beach or a quiet getaway in a luxurious hotel.

At first we can say that there is no harm done. On a second thought, we should consider what this distorted broadcast of reality is doing to us as a society. Everyone wants their niche fame and their awesome job. Those of us that for some reason are struggling with some bad times are also getting hit by this idea that everyone’s life is fantastic except ours.

Studies have been published to analyse the relationship between using online Social Networks and feelings of depression. One study found that Facebook may undermine feelings of well-being. ²

Yet there is also evidence on the contrary. ³

Conclusions: We did not find evidence supporting a relationship between SNS use and clinical depression. Counseling patients or parents regarding the risk of “Facebook Depression” may be premature.

Lauren A. Jelenchick, M.P.H.a,b, Jens C. Eickhoff, Ph.D.c, and Megan A. Moreno, M.D., M.S.Ed., M.P.H.a “Facebook Depression?” Social Networking Site Use and Depression in Older Adolescents

It could be that the stage of life that we are in makes us more or less susceptible to this influence. Some people may be more vulnerable than others to the influence of Social Media.

One thing is true, followers and likes are used by algorithms to determine what is shown to us and we tend to skew that content to makes us look good.

The content and message we see will not determine our opinion, but it will determine what we think about. It’s the agenda setting theory of communication. ⁴

2018: it is now so cool to promote things that people are paying for things and then promoting those things as if they were paid to promote it. https://t.co/6I2gN5EfpZ
— Rami Ismail (رامي) (@tha_rami) December 18, 2018

This article by The Atlantic shows how far some Instagram users go to provide these fake signals.

The logic behind it is that being seen as someone who works with brands will get them a contract as an influencer. The extent to which they build this fake sponsored content means more effort than having the actual brand sponsorship.

Whichever the case, it is safe to conclude how unreliable these signals are. Even engagement can be faked through ads, fake accounts, or simply by asking friends and followers.

Track record and reputation

Looking at a person’s track record, experience and reputation is a safer alternative as a signal. We don’t need a full academic record or a full linkedIn profile. The signal can be something simpler like “this is what I learned working six months as a volunteer at this organisation”. It just can’t be “I am amazing and have written this! Look at all my followers which I bought on the internet!”

Readers need enough to be able to make up their minds about the question : “Is this person a reliable source on this subject?” Even if the answer is “no” they can read it and build an informed opinion.

How can we measure this? It’s not a metric that computers can calculate and even in Society we find plenty of cases in which a person’s authority on a subject is not consensual. Relying on the community to provide this information is also of little use, it can lead to the same problems we have seen before.

Instead of jumping to this problem and thinking about the solution, let’s ask instead:

Who should carry the burden of proof, the platform or the author?

My instinct tells me that if the author is pitching something for us to read, the author must come with evidence of authority.

If the platform is making that suggestion, which may influence our behaviour, then that burden of proof lies with them.

A platform can provide proof without disclosing the whole algorithm. A full disclosure would be giving up their competitive edge in making good recommendations. What they can disclose is the major variables at play in making that suggestion and the author’s rank of authority in the subject. This could come from having more information on their profile or by providing details on other sites that link to that article. ⁵

Make room for new comers

This Authority argument does have one caveat. It can pose a barrier for people who don’t have much to offer as evidence of authority. In rare cases, people with a low level of Authority on a subject may have something valuable to share. They may have come up with a deep insight that escaped even the brightest minds in that field.

The ideas I have described in this piece can be an obstacle for these newcomers. Why should they publish something to which they have little to show in terms of authority ?

And it’s also a loss for us, because new ideas come from healthy discussions and people need to be comfortable being wrong for that discussion to happen.

Adults are not comfortable being wrong or failing. ⁶

A third option, the blind judge

The problem with most platforms is that they choose content to recommend by volume and not by expertise. They measure how your network interacts with posts and recommend content based on that. Everyone has an equal vote. While this is good for democracy, it implies that everyone has the same grasp of every subject. In fact, for in-depth articles around a single topic this is not true.

We should make an effort to select who are the key people in a network who are consistent in providing good recommendations for specific fields of study. A bit like what happens in academia.

This idea is still rough and flawed, specially in how it could be implemented and how effective it can be.

It starts with the argument that, when a person knows their opinion or judgement is used for recommendations, it is already skewed by the burden of responsibility. The easy answer is to choose people as judges and not let them know they have that role.

Judges can be chosen per network and per subject. This way not everyone will have the same blind judges.

In this idea, the platform does the following:

Develops an algorithm that determines a group of judges. This can be based on several criteria such as what the subject matter is, how close or far the judge is from the user’s network, and how connected in the platform the judge is.
The judge’s reputation is measured by the success and failure of the articles that he or she finds to be worth of notice.
Recommendations are made based on the signals provided by a number of judges, never just one.
The recommendation is made based on sharing the content.
The recommendation only counts if the person actually read the content.
Authors who provided good content in a consistent way are awarded a measure of reputation that helps balance the ranking by the blind judges. This reputation rank should have different values for different topics and areas of study.

Nothing replaces critical thinking

Whichever the solution that is put forward to fix our broken system of authority, it will never replace the need for critical thinking. Today we need philosophy more than ever, we need to be able to ask questions and to not settle for quick answers.

Platforms can also nurture that critical thinking. For example, allowing us to switch between a filtered and unfiltered list of recommendations could makes us question and explore more.

In my day to day I am making an effort to apply some of these principles. When a friend shares something they have learned I ask why and how. If I don’t agree with a statement I will ask for arguments rather than block it out of the blue.

This is not meant to say that I am better or worse than anyone. The point I am trying to make is that we need to take responsibility and make critical thinking a part of our day.

It is also our fault that we reached the current mess we have on social media.

References

milkovi 444287

Akimbo - Honest Signals episode ↩︎
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0069841 ↩︎
https://www.csus.edu/faculty/m/fred.molitor/docs/social%20networking%20and%20depression.pdf ↩︎
McCombs, M; Reynolds, A (2002). “News influence on our pictures of the world”. Media effects: Advances in theory and research. ↩︎
This happens with blogs that use trackbacks to link places on the web that have a link to that article. It’s a way for the community around that subject to keep itself honest. If you don’t agree with something that a blog published, and have proof of the contrary, you can publish a response. A link to your article shows up in the original piece. This practice was lost because it was also used for spam. ↩︎
I’m sorry but I am lacking a reference as to where I read this. It is something that I have observed when I teach: everyone in my post-grad class is afraid to get the answer wrong. Even after I explain that we are not there for right or wrong answers! ↩︎

In defense of in-depth writing

Sat, 24 Nov 2018 11:59:26 +0000

The spark for this post comes from an article I read on Medium by @tomkuegler. “How To Become Ridiculously Self-Aware In 20 Minutes” is an article where he describes what made him turn to Journaling.

It’s a nice piece of writing and will give you some good insights about what journaling can do for you. The critique I can make is that it’s an article worthy of more depth. For me at least, it left me with a number of questions about his method, his routine and frequency in journaling.

This happens too often. A good writer will give you a nice headline and thought provoking piece that only skims the surface.

There is an important point to make. I don’t know Tom and from the little I saw about him, he looks like an Okay guy who I would share a drink with and have a good talk. This is not about him, it’s about us and how we don’t invest enough depth in most of what we write.

You have seen this happen a million times and it has happened to you. An article spikes your interest and 1 242 words later you don’t feel like you’re taking away more than some nice thoughts to keep in the back burner of your mind.

If the writing is good it will, at the very least, make you smile and leave feeling like you had a nice talk with a friend. Most of the times the writing is average, the information lacks substance, and you feel like you took a bite of a stale cookie. And this is not new. The stale blog posts are a great part of what populates the web and some areas are worse than others. Self help, entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship blogs, social media and many other niche areas are filled with half baked content and stale articles. It is exhausting.

We have turned the web into this mass of click bait headlines and publications like Medium are trying to break through that clutter.

The scenery looks bleak, and even when I was listing good examples, the only ones that came to me were “Wait But Why”, and The Atavist Magazine. Although my list of podcasts and YouTube channels would add to this list, it falls outside the scope of written content. Please don’t let my lack of good examples discourage you. There are people who write with their heart, who make in-depth content easy to understand.

Some do it in a consistently and others are more sporadic in producing excellent content. That’s how life is, and it’s another reason why we should seek them out and shine a spotlight on their work.

We are not going to dive into the specificities of what should be “good content”. For now, it is enough to talk about articles and blog posts that offer some kind of rich content, insightful and useful. This vague definition is a result of my own shortcomings in writing, and it’s a way to include the casual bloggers into what is “good content.”

The burden of shining the spotlight into what is good content needs to be shared between writers and readers. In a way, that is what Medium tries to do. Writers get metrics on how they perform with each article, and readers get suggestions of good articles to read. Yet this model is breaking. What happens is that writers find ways to gather applause and recommendations. And on the other side of that fence, readers seem to have a low standard for what is worthy of that applause and recommendation. It’s just a click.

It seems that making it too easy to give recommendations is working against us. It should be a filter against click bait and witty titles when in fact it amplifies them.

Shared responsibility

If you are a writer of any sort, your name is always on the line. Your readership could be a million of people across the world or a small group of friends, you should always aim to do your best. This is a generic comment that should be on the mind of everyone, but it isn’t. It seems we invest less time in the quality of content because the barrier to write is so low.

Education and culture play a big part in solving this part of the equation. Writing, journaling or blogging in any way should be encouraged and given a level of importance high enough to warrant dedication. The pitfall in this idea is that it may discourage others to share their work because they feel it’s not good enough.

For publishers, the task at hand is to be able to filter what is worth the readers time and to not focus solely on the number of readers, page views, recommendations or books sold.

A way to do this could be to have editors and reviewers who don’t even know they are taking on that role. Imagine for example that Medium could pin-point a number of its users who have a keen eye for top articles. These people, who are the first to share and recommend what is quality content, could serve as their sounding board to find new featured articles. These users would not know they had such a role to play, and in that way wouldn’t let it influence their opinion.

For readers, it is easier. Simply don’t share or recommend something just because it is cool, it sounds right or it was written by a friend. It’s about keeping or critical sense at all times and not just when trying to sniff out fake news.

This last one will take longer to implement. Culture and society don’t change overnight and the current business model of most of the web gives more resources to writers who rely on ads. That is the subject of another post, about Jaron Lanier and how we need to remake the web.

On the process of Journaling

If you will allow, I would like to go back to my reaction to Tom Kuegler’s post. Otherwise, you can end your reading here without any hard feelings.

I’m not exactly sure that what I do is journaling. Most of the times I use this blog to drive attention to my work, to share small experiences and stories I like to write. A good writer will probably read some of those stories and consider them atrocious, which makes me part of the problem I have just outlined above.¹

Yet I like to record these things and I don’t like to keep them to myself. Except for a part of what I write. When I miss someone who I can’t reach out to, I will sit down and write them a letter. All those letters are kept, yet it doesn’t make sense to share something so personal.

For the personal writing, it’s a matter of sitting down and getting thoughts out. Other things, that require research, begin with an empty text file where I dump all the relevant links and some ideas I would like to get across.

What follows is usually an afternoon spent writing until I am too tired or feel blocked. I then move on to finding the right photo or the right way to explain something. Some of the stories you find here have photos that were taken by me, sometimes after the content was written.

One example is the story of “Rafiki”. That photo was taken on purpose in the same airport where I happened to start scribbling down the story on my notebook.²

Another, the photos you see in the CryptoNovel section. Wether it is stock photography or some photo I took, I make sure that they all follow the same aesthetics. If you go into each chapter you will see that some of them are encrypted. It’s a puzzle story, where you have to unlock each chapter with clues from the previous. This means writing the story, programming the puzzle and testing to make sure it works across all computers. It’s for sure my most time consuming project.

Even while writing this post, I stopped halfway to programme the small pull quote you see near the 7th paragraph. That sentence didn’t add much to the line of thought, but it still felt important to mention.

My process of writing turns out to be a back and forth of code and words. And the things I write about are such a big disconnected mess that I have given up trying to label it all. Instead, I have long ago named this my “Digital Insanity” and made peace with it. To keep things somewhat in context, some of the writing is split into sections called stories.

It doesn’t make me feel super self aware like Tom Kuegler’s article suggests. It allows me to organize my head and to keep the published version as organised as possible. Sometimes, like today, the article will begin with one goal in mind, and finish at an unexpected destination.

Mike Tinnion

This is not fishing for compliments or any measure of false modesty. It’s an actual uncertainty about the quality of what I produce. ↩︎
I had seen a man pushing a heavy cart, and he did ask me to watch over his stuff while he went for a smoke. From there, I began to imagine what was the story behind his trip. ↩︎

Why I am trying to publish on Medium

Tue, 03 Nov 2015 17:23:36 +0000

I have been pushing myself to write more and there are two things keeping me from the goal of 1 good article a week.

One is that I want to share content that is meaningful, that brings the reader something they can use in their work or in their personal day-to-day tasks.

The other, that it is getting harder and harder to drive readers to this blog.

The Social Media landscape looks like it is going through a lot of changes. The Buffer team shared some of their insight on this on a recent blog post. The amount of content we produce keeps growing and filters are failing.

Medium offers a new way of organising and suggesting content and for long I have been meaning to give it a try.

What tipped the scales and made me publish an article there was actually a conversation between the team and Mike Monteiro. Mike asked a question and pointed out an issue he sees in the current design.

Update: Mike’s tweet with the ID 659047324895703040 as since been removed.

What followed was an healthy discussion and a first step in Mike lending a hand with his expertise.

Update: Mike’s tweet with the ID 659470028647985152 as since been removed.

That’s what won my trust. Being transparent, working on building something and listening to what users are saying.

If you want to read my first contribution to Medium, it’s just a click away.

Photos were kindly provided by Mário Pires, of Alves&Pires. Give them a call if you are looking for a good content creation team in Lisbon.

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