Stories of Russian collision, double spies, and missions for covert influence have filled cinema screens since the Cold War; but, in the build-up to the 2024 election, they’ve made a not-so-subtle entrance into social media.
Just a few days ago, CBS News reported that the Kremlin had started buying Western influencers via a media company, Tenet Media, which paid right-wing influencers millions for their videos. Forbes, too, came out with an article, suggesting “high-profile influencers were working for Moscow without knowing it.”
Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, David Rubin, and Lauren Southern stepped forward, claiming they had been unaware of the Russian connections behind Tenet Media. The company had, after all, concealed its ties to the Kremlin by using a fake European financier named Eduard Grigoriann as a front. Payments–reaching up to $400,000 a month–were funneled through intermediaries to avoid direct links to Russia. As soon as Tenet Media’s cover was blown, two Russian operatives, Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, were charged with conspiracy for their roles in the scheme, including money laundering and violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). As for the influencers, they still hold they had fallen prey to the Russian propaganda machine.
You might suspect that now that we understand how easily influencers can be bought–and our opinions may be influenced–that the story is over. Not so fast. Perhaps we should consider two factors first.
The Influencers…
The idea that–in the aftermath of this scandal–online personalities will be more cautious when signing deals with media companies is quite idealistic. Sure, we could hope that they would be more vigilant; we could even suspect they would not accept sponsorship from media companies that want to propagate a narrative that no one but a foreign power (like Russia) can benefit from. But believing so would mean we’ve completely disregarded all we know about human nature.
In Misbelief, I elaborated upon an idea that fascinated me – why we are motivated to see what we want to see instead of what is actually there. Taking an avid sports fan as an example, I explained that it’s relatively easy to call a foul against the opposite team; doing so is instinctual. But when the fans on the opposite stands of the stadium call a foul against your favorite NBA team–the Boston Celtics, let’s say–you find it just as easy to reason that this was no foul. You brush off the physical contact as “just a part of the game.” And, worse, if the referees confirm that it was indeed a foul, you find yourself questioning their honesty and impartiality.
“Most sports fans are guilty of this double standard: when a foul is called in their favor, it’s all fair and clear, but when a foul is called against them, it’s biased and poorly judged. And it’s not just sports fans; it’s human nature. We see things the way we want to see them, and we come up with very good arguments for the validity of our views. To put it in the terminology of cognitive science, we all practice motivated reasoning — the tendency to bend reality around us to fit the conclusion we want to reach.”1
But let’s dribble back to the Kremlin-sponsored influencers. For the sake of this argument, we can imagine the Russia fiasco taught them to research media companies that sponsor them more thoroughly. Does this mean they will be more vigilant? Does it mean they will say no to companies that appear to have ties to foreign powers? Does it mean they will purposefully miss the shot when the company’s integrity falls under question?
Probably not. The temptation to reason everything away is in our nature. We are champions at telling ourselves a story that helps us see reality just the way we want to see it. Consciously or not, we allow our emotion-driven biases to affect how we perceive information.
And influencers are just like the rest of us. Even if they initially aspired to remain objective, enter partnerships only with companies that share their values and beliefs, and question the ulterior motives behind every deal… what’s the chance they will do so once money, gratitude, and greed enter the question? What’s the chance they won’t fall into motivated reasoning and quickly come to see the media company as good-natured and well-intentioned? What’s the chance they won’t see this as an opportunity that’s good for them and their followers? Chances are, they will cave. The impulse to reason–and believe–is that strong.
We, the Consumers.
We’re not much better. We, too, fail to act rationally even when we are aware of a given bias, challenge, or threat. Even when we know that social media personalities are biased and often outwardly dishonest, would we sufficiently discount their opinions? Sadly we are unlikely to do so.
Research in behavioral economics has demonstrated that when we are presented with clear warnings about misinformation, we tend to discount the information—but we don’t discount it enough. For example, even after the followers of Tenet Media’s influencers found out about their ties to the Kremlin, they still didn’t lose trust in their content.
So, what are we to do?
This brings us to the key question: How can we, as consumers, make informed choices if we’re so susceptible to cognitive traps?
In Misbelief, I argued that the design of information systems should factor in people’s innate irrationality–which they do not currently do:
“Social networks were not developed to fit with natural human communication methods, and consequently, they have produced some very undesirable results. The good news, as you will see, is that it doesn’t mean we should categorically abandon social networks. Indeed, if we took a different approach and envisioned social networks that would improve communication while keeping human nature in mind, we could create different versions of social networks that would provide wonderful tools for human flourishing.”2
In their current state, social media platforms idealize free communication without considering its consequences. On these platforms, anyone can signal whatever they want, regardless of its relationship to truth and facts. There are no mechanisms to keep communication honest, and there is little to no cost to keep content creators accountable. As a result, people aren’t held responsible for the misinformation they spread.
This lack of accountability has made social networks incompatible with the evolutionary instincts that humans have developed to assess the reliability of information. Historically, we’ve trusted information that came at a cost—signals that are costly to fake are generally more reliable. But the cheap talk of social media has eroded this instinct, leaving us vulnerable to deception–including by foreign disinformation campaigns. While we might hope that disclosure could alleviate this issue, we should also understand that transparency alone is insufficient. Systems must be designed to push both influencers and their followers toward truth-telling, fact-seeking, and critical thinking. Principles like reputation, trust, and cost must be incorporated into social networks, so that they, like nature, reward accurate information and punish deceit. This re-design should also account for other facets of human communication, including conflicts of interest, superficial processing of information, and implicit biases.
Redesigning our social networks–so that they finally align with the ways the human mind processes information–may seem like a minor step. But without it, we could never make the leap to curbing the influence of foreign actors, protecting consumers from disinformation, and holding influencers accountable for their role in shaping public perceptions.
Dan Ariely, Misbelief, page 138.
Ibid, page 260.