The Creator Economy Grows in a Misinformation Dilemma

Media is drowning in the cult of personality, and it will never be the same.

Before influence marketing became the Creator Economy, there was a sense the cult of personality would change the future of the internet. This is because what rules the internet is digital advertising and algorithms found sentiment amplification is the best behavior modification trigger.

Who best can amplify sentiment among audiences and consumers? It’s controversial and famous people.

Everyone from Joe Rogan to Elon Musk mixes their own truth with a few lies for financial gain or for their own peculiar sense of ideological authenticity. While YouTubes and Podcasts are breeding grounds for misinformation and algorithms performing behavior modification at scale, there are no rules around how that works.

Recently more than 80 fact-checking sites signed an open letter to YouTube urging it to take serious action against misinformation. “YouTube is allowing its platform to be weaponized by unscrupulous actors to manipulate and exploit others, and to organize and fundraise themselves. Current measures are proving insufficient.”

However whether its Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Spotify or others, these powerful influencers in the Creator Economy are highly profitable for their bottom lines. Misinformation ends up being incredibly profitable, as user generated content fuels the kind of sentiment amplification content that truly sells and entertains the most. It raises Ad dollars as Facebook’s relationship with misinformation historically shows.

With the story of Joe Rogan vs. pandemic misinformation, unlike many platforms, Spotify doesn’t have a clear policy prohibiting misinformation. However misinformation still proliferates on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok and other platforms of scale. Having rules against misinformation is insufficient to protect the internet from its own greed.

Tabloid media have reincarnated on the internet as clickbait. Even journalism as we know it is changing. The cult of personality is now engrained in how media works and sells. We like controversial content, influencers with radical ideas and strong opinions. We like the saucy Creator Economy of TikTok, Snap and the unreformed parts of the Metaverse GenZ has grown up with already.

In a world of audio events, memes, deepfakes and content that will quickly be created more by AI than by people, what will “truth” on the internet even become?

Misinformation is a passage from one internet into the Metaverse. The Creator Economy is just one of the names we give to how people have more of an individualistic voice, and the power of that personal brand.

When children grow up wanting to be personal brands on YouTube or TikTok or developers on Roblox, you know the Metaverse will fuel a new era of the cult of personality that will be much more embedded in misinformation that even the era of Donald Trump.

Justin and Ben Smith have formed a new media company where the writer’s brand will have more importance. Also the two Smiths will run a global news media company that promotes “unbiased journalism.”

Everyone with a voice in the Creator Economy is biased, so I’m not sure what unbiased journalism feels like any longer. In an era of media startups that feel more like entries into the Creator Economy, you have to wonder at what media and information will become.

We live in a world where a CBC journalist explains why she left CBC to join Substack. Is the Creator Economy going to eat Media for lunch? Even regular news organizations are opening up Newsletter products to compete with Substack and trying to lure back talent with more work-life balance.

Is the cult of personality all that we will have left? The clickbait influencer rule of thumb is all about personal brands becoming more clickable than corporate brands. Who cares about news in a world in the attention economy where you must compete with TikTok, Netflix, YouTube and an increasingly fragmented social media user experience.

Tara Henley’s post about why she left CBC for Substack was great publicity for Substack, also has over 1,700 comments on her substack article.

Joe Rogan bringing right-wing (Conspiracy) views mainstream fulfills a niche, and podcasting, audio platforms and Creator Economy platforms are showing information is truly personality rich.

In the clickbait supremacy of the digital advertising internet of America, misinformation is probably even better for growth than strong opinions. It’s what I think people like Donald Trump understood all too well to manipulate public opinion. Sometimes lies are more powerful than truth, as misinformation spreads faster in an algorithmic system designed to incentivize sentiment, rather than cold hard facts.

When Google and Facebook were making backroom deals on how digital advertising auctions would work, I’m not sure this is the world they envisioned. Digital Ads created incentives that corrupted the very fabric of the internet, the truth.