Ok, confession, I'm a bit soap box about this one. The internet doesn't actually serve you, it's about creating money for advertisers and promoting the views of those who need public opinion swayed. Here's why you need to treat what you read with a wagon-load of salt.
A little history for context
The internet brought with it a promise of all information available for everyone. Every dissenting opinion from large corporations to one-man conspiracists would be offered up, for free in one equitable pool of information.
What we missed was the accessibility of that information.
The amount of information online quickly became so vast that search engines arrived as navigation tools. There to provide a connecting path from the question you enter to the answer (it thinks) you’re looking for. Search engines took in the words in your question, ran around the internet finding as many websites as possible which also had some of those words, and served up as many as could be found as the “answer”. The downside of this approach was that often the results had little to do with the question. Imagine typing “most friendly dog as pet” and getting every website which contained the word “friendly” in it.
Enter Google who shifted everything with one word: “relevance.”
This started simply, grouping words into phrases (“most friendly dog”). The websites presented as results were ordered from most to least likely to match. Effectively breeding the expectation of ‘most relevant will come first.”
This is when the commercial game started. Businesses who needed customers began trying to optimise their websites to appear as close to the beginning as possible — to appear the most relevant and because customers were becoming increasingly less likely to go beyond a few pages of results, well they won’t be as relevant right? How do you ensure your business comes up on page one of the search results as the solution to the problem typed in? You need to know what questions your customers might be typing in? What words are they using? What is most important? It takes effort, time and most importantly, money. (SEO) Companies which could “help you” optimise your website sprung up, charging large sums. So inevitably the larger companies who can invest in that, do. And those who can’t, disappear to page three, four, or further. As the internet grew, search engines found a new revenue stream: charging for your business to come first (SEM). Concurrently, the internet (more specifically Google) became the way to find out everything. Google, with its “relevant” results became the expert detective for everything and because the results had logical relevance, no one looked further. And even if they thought to, how would you? We trusted the expert.
We wouldn’t accept this behaviour from anywhere else. Imagine going into your local library with a query, the librarian selects four books telling you they contain what you need to know and behind them you can see another 1,000. “Oh those? You don’t need to bother with those.”
Then came social giants, where everyone could find a group of like-mindeds. There was a Reddit thread for every passion from surfing to cat pic enthusiasts. We were watching. And businesses would pay for our attention. Then things became monetised. Ads were served up. The attention economy was here.
Your eyeballs are for sale. And digital giants are at war to get them.
Advertisers are hungry for your attention. Digital giants are desperate to monetise that. So they fight to get better. To “know” you. To segment to the best possible pairings of customers and businesses. Growth departments are created. And they learn and improve, experimenting on what hooks you in, keeps you there and brings you back. The ellipses when someone is typing, the promise of new content when you swipe down on Instagram (or across on a dating site), encouraging you to ‘look at this” “listen to that.” Behavioural stimulus glue similar to slot machines. All so the most likely to purchase can be served up to advertisers. Suddenly this relevance thing has become the oil well of the internet.
But imagine a world where the only things you heard about were things which reinforced your opinion? As this learning evolves, we’re living in an ever-tightening ring of relevance. Every ad you click on, picture you like, story read or dismissed, video watched… the internet learns. We’re now constantly fed our own opinions. Shown evidence of things we already thought, agreed or disagreed with. Our thoughts reiterated and, in our minds, likely confirmed and reinforced. When was the last time you read something you completely disagreed with? Would you even know where to look to find it? Those 100 books are hidden somewhere. We’re steadily becoming more polarised in our own thoughts and prejudices.
But let’s be clear, this is no different to classic advertising. I’ve spent years of my life helping businesses appear in front of customers. Working to understand the people whose attention they want, testing behavioural triggers and drivers to get their attention and discovering where to find them to serve that perfect message. The method isn’t new. We (and the algorithms we’re building to help us) are just getting very very good at it, and it’s all people are seeing, seeing that is, unquestioningly.
When relevance becomes too relevant
Reading what you agree with is comfortable. It’s like sitting in a soft armchair of self-assured belief. But put that tightening grip of relevant content in the context of someone who is feeling sad, disliking their weight, worried about how their life is turning out compared to others. Every site they visit, article they read, picture they click on reinforces that feeling. The internet listens, learns and serves up similar clickable content, more pictures of things you envy, groups of people who share your point-of-view to belong to. Shows you more weight loss ads, more diet ideas, more lifestyle options you wish you could afford but can’t, and makes money in the process. Put that in the hands of teenagers. Suddenly this relevance becomes insidious, dangerous even.
Then add in the context of education. Unless you have the privilege of further education in a course which shows you how to find the 1,000 books and query, most of what you learn is by rote. This is what happened in history, learn it and repeat it in the exam to succeed. You’re not taught how to think and assess critically. How to question and interrogate. And even if you are, how many people know how to look beyond their current “relevant” content?
We need to stop thinking of digital as a technology proposition. It’s about people who are looking for things and those who will pay to have their things seen. Digital has become more than a resource, it’s the community of content we trust and believe deferentially. That sounds insidious, because it is. Perhaps we need a bit more irrelevance.
Update August 2022: If you're wanting to know more on this beyond my rant, there are a number of great documentaries and commentaries about this now. Including Netflix's The Social Dilemma (2020) and The Great Hack (2019) and Fifteen Minutes of Shame (2021)
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