Since the Cambridge Analytica scandal, I have been thinking about starting a growth hack agency to create momentum for the little guys who are trying to improve the world.

Imagine using the power of growth hacking for NGO’s like Amnesty International or the create more support for the current Hongkong revolution.

Powerful

Don’t underestimate the power of growth hacking in politics.

Samuel J woods, Jonathan Aufrey, Taruquel Khan, and I agree that Trump used growth hacking for the presidential elections. I believe that he is using political growth hacking as we speak to consolidate his position of power.

In contrast, grassroots movements harness this power to change the playing field, like in the Netflix documentary, Knock Down The House, in which Alexandra Ocasio Cortez beat the establishment against all the odds.

Or Joshua Wong, who used social networks to stir up the population of Hongkong in the Umbrella Revolution against the Chinese oppression.

Growth Hacking Explained

Growth hacking is the space between marketing and sales.

We are the guys who let people convince themselves to buy products and services.

In growth hacking, we have a lean mindset:

a) Every statement is an assumption unless the data verifies the claim.

b) Data never lies, but people can see statistical correlations which are not useful.

c) When something works, you move from experimentation to optimization.

And we have the actual growth hacking.

We use experiments to test every assumption in the pirate marketing funnel.

When the results of those experiments are conclusive, we create content, augment the display, automate the process, etc., to increase conversion rates.

Do not confuse growth hacking with digital marketing as we operate in multiple fields at the same time.

Morality

As you can see in political examples, growth hacking can change the world.

But there many ethical implications of actively influencing popular opinion:

Should a group of people be allowed to nudge a population into making ‘better’ decisions?

Isn’t this better world view inherently biased?

Can the dangers outweigh the benefits?

Nudging

So changing behavior is hard for most people.

We are routine animals who like to conform to the status quo.

Since the dawn of empires, politology has questioned the idea that ‘intellectuals’ of the society should protect the less informed against themselves.

All the dictators of this world act according to the people’s wishes,

China official name is the People Republic Of China; similarly, Russia is called the Russian Federation.

The ‘totalitarian’ governments justify the dominance of power with the Ancient Roman principle of bread and games.

In other words, keep your population in check by entertaining them with the economic gain or military conquest.

After reading a lot of philosophy and biology, I have concluded that the difference in intelligence is a hoax.

Every human can overcome his inner demons, and in all negative aspect of life is a lesson to be found.

The problem lies in the collective thinking about who is and isn’t smart.

I advocate strongly to remove institutional, educational barriers to entry.

Back in the day, your capacity of work depended on your level of craftsmanship, not and fancy GPA. My advice for recruitment agencies is to look for ingenuity over industry excellence and mastery over experience.

When we nudge people into having higher levels of awareness; we allow people to improve their lifestyle and enable them to think beyond themselves.

Hence political growth hacking should be allowed, when the motive is to heighten levels of consciousness of the general population.

Bias

We cannot escape human bias, because there too many mind traps and our object of focus keeps shifting.

Therefore political growth hacking will be biased.

The dystopian novel 1984 of George Orwell, creates the image that indoctrination is evil.

According to me, we should flip this image for the positive effects.

Photo by Jyotirmoy Gupta on Unsplash

If we teach children that fear does not exist because we strengthen their body, mind, and soul; through, for example, martial arts training, meditation, and self-discovery.

Would this learned dogma be a crime?

Not to me, instead of letting children develop according to 18th-century thinking, we should prepare them for modern life.

Modern life is not about information retention but quick learning.

Instead of teaching our children to become the best in our social systems, we should teach them to become authentic.

We have forgotten that meaning is the force that motivates us, not wealth, success, or recognition.

Thus, biases should be used to eradicate fear, anger, anxiety out of this world.

I do not advocate that depression does not exist.

But I believe that if we create a global space of being vulnerable and open, with our thoughts and feelings, we can decrease the suffering.

Combine this with nudging people into healthy eating, exercising, and meditation habits and depression rates will significantly go down.

Danger

For anyone who was still naive, you can see almost everything in the Facebook audiences tool, like political affiliation, marital state, etc.

Google is even worse; they track your locations and are listening through Google Assistant, without asking for consent, according to me.

I had had multiple times where Google Assistant opened when I said something. My latest discovery is that Google Assistant began when someone said something on a podcast I was listening to on my speakers.

So, if I were to be brutally honest, privacy does not exist anymore, for many years.

Just wake up and accept that your data is only a fragment of the many lenses of reality. There will always be people out there to make use of your personality.

Data is neutral, neither bad or good.

For example, because of data, you can match with the best job opportunities on LinkedIn.

But data can also be used against you as Google personalizes your searches to keep you in your information bubble.

Creating a political growth hacking machine could be dangerous in the hands of the dictators.

I bet that they are already using it, so we should use it for global problems. We should raise more awareness and funds for climate change, political change, animal extinction awareness, the Amazone deforestation.

Advancements in growth hacking come from the financial world (cryptocurrencies, venture capitalists, banks), marketing world (design agencies and marketing consultancy), and digital businesses (start-up, scale-ups, multinationals)

The disruptive effect of growth hacking can create a heaven on earth.

But only if we ban the development of growth hacking malpractices like misinformation, speculation, or fake followers.

Questions

You can only grow when you radically accept your current state.

Here are some questions to reflect.

Can you accept the fact that growth hacking can not be excluded out of politics anymore?

Do you see that GDPR (The General Data Protection Regulation) doesn’t withhold companies to abuse your data unless they are caught in the act?

Do you agree that political growth hacking should be used for the increase of awareness of all inhabitants of the earth?

Note: This blog post contains many opinions and claims. I have a background in of two years freelance growth hacking, helping start-ups, freelancers, and organizations. These are my views, which you could use as a tool for reflection.

This blog post is #22 of the 30-day blog challenge