The New Trust Deficit: Facebook, Facts & a Frantic News Cycle

The U.S. is facing a number of simultaneous crises -- rising COVID infections, ongoing civil rights protests for BLM, an economy in recession that's driving huge job losses, bankruptcies, supply chain issues that could cause further harm. 

But there's one thing making each of those crisis worse, more dangerous and out of control.

It's that we can't agree on a single set of facts.

Instead, we have a credibility gap making things worse. Different parts of the country can't even agree about how to frame the various crises, including those cited above and others that have been in the news lately.

CNN's Reliable Sources newsletter recently called this a "trust deficit" in a story about Facebook and why some companies have stopped buying ads on Facebook.

For Facebook, the trust deficit is fueled by allowing misinformation and hate speech to spread.

Social media platforms use algorithms to continue to feed you content similar to the kinds of content you click on. This makes it easy to perpetuate your bubble because you continually see posts that fit your narrative.

Part of the problem: some information may have already been debunked only after we've seen it. Which is too late. People who consume the original message, and used that to bolster their narrative, rarely see the correction or update afterwards.

Another problem: we're so inundated by news that we're overwhelmed. We don't have time to process yesterday's news. Which means we don't have time to process today's news, to put it into context, to make sure we understand it -- before we're hit with the latest shocking piece of news, which is replaced by the even-more-recent news.

The result: we now live in a world with strongly held opinions that aren't necessarily based on facts. 

Which means: we might not agree that the top stories that are, in fact, the most important stories. 

We certainly don't agree with the implications of those stories -- whether they are fake news or facts might be debatable if we could meaningfully debate these issues. 

And we definitely disagree regarding any possible solution to a given crisis.

It's a helluva way to celebrate our nation's independence. 

We try to avoid taking political stands in this blog. But we're tackling the trust deficit because we do see it as a potential business threat for marketers.

It means that where you advertise (and where you don't), where and what you post could be seen as supporting or fueling the trust deficit. It's more important than ever to think about how you communicate to your publics while being aware and sensitive to how your marketing plays today and how it might play in a couple of years.

Could it be the work of the Hamburgler: McDonald's Confronts an Online Hoax

McDonald's was the subject of a hoax 

Turns out that that the phone number listed on the false notice actually goes to KFC.

And, it turns out, that the notice was not true.

McDonald's has a strong track record of diversity. And once the company found the hoax, it tweeted a response and then retweeted others who supported the Golden Arches.

But there are some, including Ragan.com's Matt Wilson, who asked, "Did McDonald’s do enough to correct a Twitter hoax?"


Check out the article, but here are some points to consider about McDonald's response:

• People started using the hashtag #seriouslymcdonalds to comment on the issue. In my search, I did not see that McDonald's used that hashtag, so that people looking at that as a trending topic probably would not have seen McDonald's response. Instead, McDonald's retweeted some other folks' tweets that included the #seriouslymcdonalds hashtag. 
• They could have made a temporary change to the link listed in the McDonald's bio; right now it links to the @McDonalds Twitter Team -- but the company could have added a temporary statement about the hoax and its track record in supporting diversity.
• Since this was a hoax perpetuated outside the company -- i.e., was not an employee prank, like that video from KFC's employees or a mistweet by the Chrysler social media agency or the Red Cross employee --- McDonald's could have taken a more aggressive stance in getting out the news that the photo was a hoax, and to have pointed to its decades of diversity success. The company may have wanted to be cautious for fear of unleashing copycat hoaxes, but I think it's an opportunity to tout its record on diversity. And, as some noted in Wilson's article, this hoax is likely to re-appear anyway because it can be difficult to kill rumors (Pres. Obama's birth certificate is just one example).

As for suspects behind the hoax, I'm sure McDonald's will investigate who might be behind it.

I have no way of knowing, but am wondering if ex-McDonald's employee, the Hamburgler may still carry a grudge.