How Much Can Social Media Be Trusted?

While researching my latest book – “Making News in the Digital Era” – I conducted interviews with people who run companies that manipulate opinions and perceptions in the world of online social media. It is “the shadowy side” of the online world, as one described it, and it is big business.

These are people who are hired by motion picture companies, car makers, PR-marketing-advertising agencies, clothing designers, computer makers, perfume companies, partisan special interests and anyone with an agenda or something to sell. Their job is to find ways to manipulate what you and I think through online social media.

Even though some pundits have said the media has been democratized by the digital revolution, there is lots of pure propaganda being preached, manipulated and presented those who work nonstop on the “shadowy side” – twisting perceptions and ideas on Twitter, Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon, MySpace and, yes, places like Yelp.

We never know really who is in the shadows, promoting an agenda. An innocent-sounding yet anonymous “international flight attendant” on Twitter who promotes right-wing hate nonstop may actually be a college kid at a computer screen in DC or London, getting paid hourly to work his way through school and just working off a sheet of talking points. Hey, it’s just a job.

Yelp is at the center of controversy now for allegedly offering to sell more favorable reviews of business while burying critical comments. If half of what is being written is true today about Yelp’s efforts to make money by manipulating reviews, the company’s credibility in the online social media world is seriously damaged.

Social media is facing a showdown with trust. What online resource can be trusted? If a service, like Yelp, stumbles once, can it regain our trust?

Can we trust what we read on Twitter? Perhaps but only if we know the source and dismiss those with vague-sounding profiles and no online link.

We know about Yelp because the alleged behavior by some of their sales people got caught publicly. But each second of every hour, hundreds are working on the shadowy side of social media to influence how we think.

Can we today trust Yelp? The jury is out, and I don’t believe it looks good. Can we trust social media? Perhaps but only those who operate out in the open in a transparent manner.

Related posts:

1. Is Social Media a Mile Wide, Inch Deep?
2. Rules of Social Media
3. Social Media’s Extraordinary Leaders
4. Are There Rules in Social Media?
5. Next Gen of Social Media has Arrived

Category: Featured, Social Media