posts/future of trust

• take Nadia Eghbal’s idea to the extreme. What happens in a world where media is not all about trust or objectivity but instead about relevance to an audience?
  • We already see this playing out to some degree with left and right-wing media companies catering news to the view of their viewers regardless of the truth of it (i.e. voter fraud)
    • what would it mean for this principle to be taken to the extreme? all the big media conglomerates would be broken up, replaced by small niche media groups which are unafraid to cross any boundaries to be relevant to their viewers. There are lines that fox/NYT/other big news institutions don’t cross right now. What are those lines and what could be crossed?
      • you could see a lot of media just publish straight up that trump won
      • truth could be different from relevance -> maybe people will maintain standard of truth and the core issue will just be relevance where some news simply wont get shown at all
        • world in which unafraid to do fake news completely, another world where we have some type of regulation on media companies to have good faith in telling truth, then what?
          • they can simply omit the news that they dont like, like poor handling of covid
          • but maybe the larger effect of this unbundling and breaking up is that people will be more in-tune with actually providing news for their community and will be truer to what people actually want rather than part of any larger political machine
            • issue is right now that the large media institutions are effectively controlled by billionaires who wield considerable influence over what should be covered. This new world would instihand control back to individuals so in the end probably a good thing?

  • An interesting implication here is that a creator’s relevance (to some niche audience) matters more than quality or trust on a global scale. Early newspaper and media brands built their reputations on the promise of truth and “objectivity,” whereas it seems more likely that future media brands will build their reputations on the promise of relevance. ^UeUZiNmnA

  • also comes up in The Creator Economy needs a Middle Class
• Tie in Martin Gurri’s ideas on political nihilism and [[modern-day society is a degradation of trust]] to describe the current state of the world
  • how will this story change in Nadia Eghbal’s new world? trust will be shifted from large institutions to community businesses?
  • the size of community is decoupled from the interaction model of the community? [[stadium vs. federation]] is irrelevant to size?