In this week’s ThrowForward Thursday episode, we look at six ways we can respond to a post-truth world.
How should we deal with a world full of fake news, deep fakes, and things we can’t be sure are actually real?
My name is Graeme Codrington. I’m your tour guide to the future, and this is a ThrowFroward Thursday.
Last week, we had a look at the problem of deep fakes and fake news, and that it is now the reality of the world that we live in. We live in what I call the post-truth world, in which we can’t believe, not just things that people write or photographs which could easily be photoshopped, but we actually can’t believe videos anymore. Did it really happen? Is it real or is it AI who can tell?
So, this week, what do we do about it? And I think there are six things that we can do if we acknowledge that we live in this post-truth world. Three personal habits.
Number one, be sceptical. That’s got to, sadly, be the starting point. We’ve got to just accept that something that we are seeing, a video that was sent to us, something even on the news, it might be fake, it might be manipulated, it might be actively false. We know that there are people out there. Vladimir Putin came into power nearly 30 years ago with this belief that what you need to do is flood the news system with just disinformation, things that might be true, bits true, not true at all, because you want people to become sceptical. You want people to not trust anything.
And then Steve Bannon, during Trump’s first term, who was his campaign manager. He used the phrase, he literally just said, outlined exactly what he was going to do. We are going to, quote, “flood the zone with shit”. That’s what he said, and that’s what has happened, and sadly, that is the reality. So we have to apply critical thinking. We’ve got to, first of all, say, is it true? And then apply a number of filters, is it linking into our biases, what we want to see? Or could it be false?
That then leads to the second thing you need to do, and that is to be more curious. Now, this is a huge umbrella statement that could apply to multiple things, but maybe let me break that down quickly. How do we be more curious? Well, curiosity forces you to ask, what if I’m wrong? Curiosity says, what else should I be thinking about? Curiosity says, are there other sources of insight and information? Diversify my sources. And curiosity says, how would somebody else experience this information? Try and see the information from somebody else’s view. But basically, what I’m saying is just ask yourself, take a moment to ask, if this isn’t true, where is it coming from? If it is true, why am I reacting to it the way that I am? Just ask yourself a few questions. Be curious about the experience before we get to verification. We’ll get to that in a moment.
Third point, slow down your reaction. This flooding the zone, and this information actually just relies on everything happening at the speed of emotion. And especially if you have a strong emotion to some information or a video, whether that strong information is anger or fear on the negative side, or even, and maybe even more importantly, if it’s delight or vindication on the other side. We have to be sceptical of pictures of pink dolphins beautifully framed between palm trees on a sunset. That might be beautiful. It might delight us. We might have strong emotions, but it might be completely fake.
Now, if you share that and say, this is a beautiful picture. I don’t know if it’s real or not, but I like the picture, as if you were posting a photograph of a Picasso painting. Well, then that’s fine, right? But you framed it not as, this is true, this actually happened, this is real. You’re framing it as, I appreciated this. But slow down your reaction, especially when deep emotion is involved, because that’s an indication that maybe you can just wait till tomorrow. You’re not a breaking news studio. You don’t have to comment on everything as it happens or as it happens to you.
Which then leads to three social habits, and this flows on. Number four is check before you share. If you don’t have enough time to do a quick verification, then you shouldn’t be sharing the content. And I’ve put this in as a social habit because this is our contribution to each other. This is our contribution to society. And I really, really do think that we should make a commitment to doing this. If you don’t have enough time to check whether it is real, you shouldn’t be sharing it, because it has to stop with you. We can’t hope that they, them, someone out there, will fix the misinformation problem. You are the one who can fix it by just not sharing, whether that’s on a WhatsApp group or to your family or your friends or on a social media platform.
Even though the fact checkers might be biassed, use them. Use verification tools and strengthen your digital literacy to be able to do that. Know what it means to do a Google reverse image search. Get some training on this. It’s not difficult, but work out two or three things that you can do to verify whether a news story is valid. The journalists will always say you’ve got to have at least two independent sources and doing a Google search for some content and finding that only other Facebook pages or only TikTok videos, that’s the only reference to this thing, well, that might be an indication that it doesn’t have a true source. Check before you share and frame what you share when you share it. So say to people, I don’t think this is real, but I enjoyed it, or I haven’t been able to verify this. No, if you haven’t been able to verify it, don’t share it.
Right. Fifth thing you can do as a social habit is to support journalists and people you trust with the truth. And by support, I mean give them money. We can get free news, we can get free information out there, we can sit on free social media platforms. And I’m not saying you should give all your money away to thousands of different places and sources and journalists, but pick a few. Pick a few people who make their living by trying to find the truth and are good at sharing the truth with you, and if they have a way for you to contribute to them, maybe they’re a journalist at a particular newspaper or online news source, and you can give a monthly donation to that.
Maybe they’ve got their own Substack, and you can go there or Patreon, and you can give them a little bit of money. And I’m talking just, find $5 a month or something like that. Just to say to them, I appreciate that you are a source of truth, and I want to support you, hopefully, with everybody else doing the same for them. If there are a thousand people supporting them, it could turn into a career, and they could be paid for being truth tellers and truth finders.
And then, finally, number six, be a truth teller yourself. Teach and model good practice. Let people know what you do to verify the truth. Train other people to do it as well, encourage it. If you’re a boss at an office and you’ve got a team under you, if you’re a parent in a family, or if you are a child and your parents are the problem, well, teach and model good practice. Be a truth teller who attempts to bring goodness and truth into the world. And correct, kindly, if you can, correct those people who are flooding the zone.
There we go. Fake news is a problem. Deep fakes are an existing, current, real reality in our world. We can’t just wish that it wasn’t. We need to make sure that we take responsibility for removing as much falsehood and misinformation in our world as possible, and share the responsibility with the communities that we are in.
I hope you’re enjoying our new season, season 6 of ThrowForward Thursday. We’ll go back and revisit some of the things we’ve seen before. We’ll then do more than we’ve done in the past of saying, what does it mean for us in our world today?
Make sure you come back next week, because I have an interesting look at the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe. I’ll see you next week.
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For the past two decades, Graeme has worked with some of the world’s most recognised brands, travelling to over 80 countries in total, and speaking to around 100,000 people every year. He is the author of 5 best-selling books, and on faculty at 5 top global business schools.