Listening to one of my favorite podcasts the other day (Rune Soup in case you ask, and in this instance the topic being the end of the X-Files), I heard the following statement: “Do people believe in the truth anymore?”

This got me thinking — and asking more questions:

· What is the truth?

· How is our relationship to it evolving?

· How has this changed in a socially networked, 24x7, connected world?

The immediate, obvious answer is that the truth is based on cold hard facts and first hand empirical evidence. In other words what we can see, touch, and prove. The challenge however is that we can’t be everywhere at once, and therefore have to rely on the reportage of others — people with their own senses, beliefs, attitudes and agendas.

Which is where the problems first begin.

That’s because there are some pretty big agendas loose in the world. Political agendas, financial agendas, social agendas. And what we’ve known since Edward Bernays first wrote his seminal work ‘Propaganda’ in 1928: the art of manipulation, of shaping and guiding group consensus, has become increasingly sophisticated.

Not that this is a modern phenomenon. Herodotus, one of the first Greek historians of antiquity, is today labeled with the affectionate sobriquet ‘The Father of Lies’.

But Herodotus never lived in the Digital Age — a world where opinion, reaction, and judgment have become an almost binary affair. Where memes can be weaponized, where short, easily consumed snippets of information are skillfully used to sway community thinking and prevailing attitudes.

· Where Boris Johnson can interpret evidence of a supposed nerve agent attack to serve his own ends.

· Where the BBC has already been caught fabricating evidence of Syrian chemical attacks as early as 2013.

· Where Cambridge Analytica…

Crafting reality

Equally, we live in an increasingly artificial environment. Where the truth belongs to those most skilled with photoshop or the latest video editing software. It’s interesting to note that when making the Star Wars film Rogue One, Gareth Edward the Director had access to the best hardware/software on the market to create a scene featuring a young Princess Leia by manipulating images of Carrie Fisher as she looked in 1977 (the film came with a $200 million budget). Less than two years later, images of similar quality can now be created using software that’s available for free download on Reddit.

So we can’t trust what we see necessarily, and we can’t trust those bastions of centralized journalistic integrity (the so-called lamestream mainstream media). No wonder truth has become a more fluid, complicated notion, and in so doing has had its importance downgraded.

Connecting truth to trust

Hence why people today naturally turn inwards, and look to those sources in their life that can be trusted: friends and family, personal networks, and communities that have long been vetted and proven to be agenda free (or at least sharing in a common agenda).

Truth is now a more communal value — proof the reserve of the majority. As a result, legitimacy is now more than ever intimately connected to trust (hence why the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica debacle felt so personal). But if truth has gone social, what can be said of social media channels? How can we as users verify, much less authenticate a story when venturing outside our inner circles?

Putting the emphasis on proof

At Howdoo, we’re introducing a little something called Proof of Contribution (POC) — and we think it’s going to have huge appeal. What it essentially does is provide a measure, a rating for every user and service provider (including news sources etc.) based on the sum of feedback from all who engage with it. As a result, each user can see what their community thinks of a story entering their environment.

So for example, if one particular website is pushing out stories that are rated as ‘bullshit’ (technical term) by the community, it receives a low POC score. Users can then decide to block it, or read it knowing the background. Same with users: if someone is spouting extremist views etc. — their POC goes down and they find it harder to reach their intended audience.

POC also helps guide advertisers, who will only want to associate themselves with channels/content creators/news sources etc. that have a good POC — otherwise their own POC will also be affected. So in effect, we’re given full choice and control to the user, to community values, and shared decisions. People able to create their own private groups (as well as public ones), and to carefully select what’s allowed entry.

We do this because the future of social media will be built on trust. We also believe that with truth turning out to be a more multifaceted and nebulous character than first imagined, the best way to uncover reality is to open up the floor to the widest possible body of intellect and experience.

This is Howdoo, and you’re welcome to get involved.