Comment: The return of real

Friday 23 February 2018

Smart, succesful, sophisticated and so far, single, Fenella Bond is living the life of a 21st century professional woman in Jersey. This month in Connect magazine, she discusses the breakdown of trust, the rejection of fake and the return of the real.

"At a recent dinner party, several people asked what I thought about BitCoin. At another event, more people brought up the subject. And at another party, a few more. Crypto-currency may have reached a tipping point for discussion; however, it remains something most people still have little practical experience of.

"Cybercrime though, is sadly something more of us encounter. When cyber criminals sent out a spate of SMS last year, purporting to be from banks such as NatWest and Lloyds, Channel Islanders lost hundreds of thousands of pounds in a few hours. The criminals relied on one thing to get people to click on their fake links, and hand over their bank account log in credentials – trust.

"Trust is an interesting commodity. We all have different levels of trust – both in how much we trust others and how much others trust us. Supply can be flexible, and yet finite. We may trust until our trust is broken. And then, start out all over again. This is how hearts get broken, and bank accounts get emptied.

"Thankfully, most of us bounce back after a bad experience. We become resilient, ask tougher questions, and learn that if something looks ‘too good to be true’ it probably is. Our trust, next time around, is more measured. We’re a bit more suspicious about text messages that claim to be from our bank, just as we would be more suspicious if a new girlfriend or boyfriend started behaving strangely too. We ask for more, and are prepared to walk away faster if it looks like it’s going wrong.

"While this is something people in relationships have had to deal with since forever, it’s a relatively new experience for large corporations and financial institutions. What, you don’t trust me any more? Equifax might ask when customers deserted it after one of the biggest data breaches of 2017. Come on, give me another chance, Appleby might say to HNW clients who saw their names all over the media.

Pictured: Several scams targeted islanders over the festive period resulting in losses of up to £217,000.

"Fat chance, loser, we may reply. When you have options, you move on. You choose another company that at least seems to take better precautions with security. However, when you’re failed by your government, or your health provider, you don’t have much choice. All you can do is be vigilant, and call the authorities out if they let you down again.

"With every breakdown in trust we need more proof to enter a transaction. We need tangible evidence a request is real. We’re getting fed up of being tricked and fobbed off. And companies and institutions had better listen, fast, before the general public reject internet banking, online payment systems, and even email, faster than you can say, “Donald Trump has been elected and Britain is leaving the EU.”

"Organisations that have built their entire model around online delivery will cease to function if this happens. Companies will have to revert to real people delivering services.

"Just imagine how much it would cost if banks had to provide all clients with relationship managers who actually know what you look like, what your voice sounds like, and how you generally behave. Of course, AI can play a huge role in detecting anomalies in data, and flagging them up for managers, but if customers ignore messages to ‘please call your bank’ because they assume they’re fake, relationship managers will suddenly get very busy.

"The rejection of fake has its positive side. After decades of decline, professional journalism is having something of a resurrection…in the USA at least. Readership figures for the New York Times and the Washington Post are up as people get fed up of the hype, spin, and lies they’ve been fed through fake news on social media and return to news written by real journalists.

"Digital subscribers at the New York Times rose by over 300,000 in the first quarter of 2017, while in the second quarter, ad revenue grew by 23%.

Pictured: "After decades of decline, professional journalism is having something of a resurrection…in the USA at least," says Fenella.

"Following revelations Russia might have influenced the 2016 US elections by buying fraudulent ads and placing fake news stories, Facebook is stepping up manual reviews of politically motivated ads. The re-insertion of people into a process that had been driven by algorithms shows how AI and machines still lack the nuance of human judgement required to decide if something should, or should not, get shown on social media.

"Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, has said fake news is killing people’s minds; the German government has proposed laws that would see the likes of Facebook fined up to 50 million euros for failing to respond appropriately to fake news; and the UK’s Committee on Standards in Public Life has called for laws forcing tech companies to report those responsible for illegal content.

"However, a lot of damage has already been done. The 2017 Edelman Trust Barometer, a global annual study, showed media saw the greatest decline in trust of any institution from 2016-2017, falling to just 43%.

"Last year’s Ipsos MORI poll of trusted professions showed the British public had the least trust in politicians, with just 21% trusting our elected representatives to tell the truth, followed at 25% by estate agents and journalists.

"Considering an awful lot of people who become journalists, initially go into it with good aims, such as exposing corruption, holding people who ‘run’ society to account, and generally trying to find the truth for each story, something has been going wrong long before fake news or social media were invented.

"Could it be that media organisations, like politicians, are reaping the repercussions of decades telling the public what they wanted to hear? That blurring of the line between public interest, and what the public find interesting, in order to get scoops, has come back and bitten the media on the arse faster than Freddy Starr could eat a hamster - the sort of ‘man bites dog’ headline of the pre-clickbait era.

"If people realized how much content today is not even generated by journalists, but is created directly by companies and punted to media via PR firms, they might hanker back for the ‘good old days’ of a nice spot of phone-tapping and ‘celeb-papping’.

"Whether it’s despite the growth of online consulting, and websites devoted to every illness you could imagine, or because of them, doctors still top the poll of trusted professions. 89% of people in the UK trust doctors to tell the truth – perhaps an indictment that becoming an expert in your profession, through years of education and training, and sticking with what people need to know, not what they might want to hear, is ultimately of value.

"Maybe crypto-currency will help reduce fraud, maybe AI will help us process information. In a world of fakes, authenticity still counts, and in order to find it we need all the help we can get if we’re to find our way through the lies and the scams, the puff and the nonsense, and work out what is really real."

Read more from Fenella Bond in each month's Connect magazine. Click for the latest edition.