[HN Gopher] Trading trust
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Trading trust
        
       Author : ingve
       Score  : 109 points
       Date   : 2024-02-16 09:38 UTC (13 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (seths.blog)
 (TXT) w3m dump (seths.blog)
        
       | bell-cot wrote:
       | Double plus ungood. History suggests that when the social trust
       | goes away, the society will too.
        
       | TomSwirly wrote:
       | That the US military is the most trusted organization in America
       | after losing one war after another against developing countries
       | with Bronze Age technology simply astonishes me.
        
         | flashfaffe2 wrote:
         | Would be interested to know how this was computed. I guess this
         | was a kind of survey and if so, based on the question: are
         | proud of the US army or are you supporting us army action
         | around the world then I wouldn't be surprised to observe
         | difference.
        
           | grotorea wrote:
           | Couldn't find detailed questions for the study, but it says
           | they literally asked for their level of confidence
           | 
           | > In each survey, we asked respondents about their levels of
           | confidence in a host of American institutions, as well as
           | their personal policy preferences, their views on the
           | direction of the country, their support for particular
           | democratic norms, their use of social and traditional media,
           | and a wide range of other questions.
        
         | bell-cot wrote:
         | Whether or not this poll tries to distinguish such details,
         | social "trust" is many-dimensional.
         | 
         | For the military, the most critical forms of trust are "don't
         | attempt to coerce or overthrow our government", and "credibly
         | wage war against our enemies if and when called upon to do so".
         | 
         | Being able to nation-build in Afghanistan, under a delusional
         | do-gooder mandate, is not important. For as long as their
         | orders were (in effect) "pretend it's possible", they more-or-
         | less tried.
        
           | nindalf wrote:
           | If anything they took trying their best to the extreme. They
           | would try no matter the odds, to the point where they would
           | want to stay and try to "win" in Iraq and Afghanistan no
           | matter the situation. The solution to every problem was to
           | throw more soldiers into the fight.
           | 
           | Whereas only a commander in chief who isn't from a military
           | background can say "no, we lost this one, time to take the L
           | and pull out".
           | 
           | But that's good I guess. A military that tries its best to
           | finish the mission and a commander answerable to the people.
        
         | jandrewrogers wrote:
         | The US military as an institution has a long history and is
         | notable as one of the few highly visible parts of US government
         | that goes to great lengths to be apolitical and at arm's reach
         | from the political parties. They do what they are asked to do,
         | usually competently.
         | 
         | Most sensible people realize that the outcome of campaigns is a
         | political decision, not a military one. The US military
         | generally wins every battle they are in but they don't get to
         | choose how to execute a campaign.
        
       | debok wrote:
       | Am I reading that graph right? That confidence dropped in all the
       | measured categories? That's wild.
        
         | bell-cot wrote:
         | It's the American Institutional Confidence Poll
         | 
         | And from the Brookings (linked) article: "For the results we
         | describe below, we rely on a two-wave panel survey in which the
         | same respondents were interviewed twice: first pre-COVID in
         | June and July 2018 and then in the midst of the COVID pandemic
         | in July-October 2021."
         | 
         | That really was not a good time period for institutional trust
         | in America.
        
         | EchoChamberMan wrote:
         | you are reading that right!
         | 
         | "double plus ungood" as mentioned on the root.
        
       | tveita wrote:
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-trust_and_low-trust_socie...
       | 
       | Trust is a technology, the transition to a high-trust society
       | unlocks so much potential that was previously used on "basic"
       | tasks like guarding your property, making sure your food is fit
       | to eat, not getting scammed in a trade etc.
       | 
       | Bruce Schneier has written a book about trust
       | https://www.schneier.com/books/liars-and-outliers/ ; I don't want
       | to oversell it, I didn't find it _amazing_ , but it has some very
       | relevant discussion on how trust has _evolved_ into our society
       | and institutions. Ultimately a society where people can 't trust
       | each other and communicate efficiently will be outcompeted by a
       | society where people can, either through individual altruism,
       | societal norms or institutional enforcement.
        
         | nonrandomstring wrote:
         | Trust is a valuable and precarious thing, It's hard and slow to
         | build but easy to destroy. It's our greatest advantage against
         | authoritarian regimes, and that's why destroying trust is a
         | long term strategy of non-linear warfare against our culture.
         | 
         | Like fossil fuels that take millions of years to form, but can
         | be burned in half a century, trust is burned (enshitification)
         | as cheap accumulated social capital by those without higher
         | loyalty. This for me is why financialisation sucks the life out
         | of nations and why greedy and selfish big-tech companies are
         | some of the most treacherous of all entities.
        
           | graemep wrote:
           | Fiancialisation and short term incentives are part of the
           | problem, but not all of it.
           | 
           | In tech (and increasingly elsewhere) businesses have realised
           | there are other ways to keep repeat customers without needing
           | customer trust: lock-in, buying out competitors, network
           | effects, being the best for long enough to obliterate
           | competition (at least in customer's minds), branding tied to
           | identity etc. Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google etc. have very
           | little to gain from trust or products that are better for
           | consumers as people will use their products regardless.
        
             | ghaff wrote:
             | Of course businesses require some level of trust. If Amazon
             | simply took your money half the time and didn't ship your
             | order, they would have problems. Of course, we can debate
             | the degree to which they should be selective about and have
             | more controls over third-party shippers, etc. But tradeoffs
             | (and there are almost always tradeoffs) are different from
             | saying that trust doesn't play a role at all.
        
               | graemep wrote:
               | Yes, but I am talking abut the long term trust the
               | article talks about not rip offs that are quickly
               | apparent to customers.
        
               | nonrandomstring wrote:
               | > long term trust the article talks about
               | 
               | Yes this goes beyond ordinary sharp practices. A larger,
               | more dangerous phenomenon nibbles at our way of life.
               | 
               | A couple of buzzwords/concepts rattling around my circles
               | are "epistemic trust" and "systemic abuse" [0], the
               | former is an effect of the latter. To cultivate it, in
               | old-fashioned psyops talk, is "sapping". Epistemic
               | mistrust changes the way we process all future
               | information and is long lasting.
               | 
               | [0] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psych-
               | unseen/202012/...
        
         | opportune wrote:
         | The level of trust in society is game theoretical and unstable
         | at the extremes. I don't really consider it technology either,
         | you can easily envision hunter gatherers having high or low
         | trust perspectives towards other bands based on eg prior
         | interactions, shared language/beliefs/culture. Calling this
         | technology is like calling language technology, maybe it is,
         | but I think it's also something we developed evolutionarily
         | because it was advantageous.
         | 
         | From the game theory perspective, a high trust society makes it
         | easy for bad actors to abuse that trust for personal gain,
         | which at large scale lowers trust at the societal level. A low
         | trust society incentivizes people to build subcommunities of
         | higher trust to get things done (which can grow to encompass
         | lots of society) or can be outcompeted by a higher trust
         | society, as you say. Maybe this is all covered in that book.
         | 
         | Clearly there is enough variance to say that societies do not
         | all gravitate towards a fixed equilibrium though. I think a lot
         | of this is due to institutions (eg religion, government,
         | educational systems, militaries) and cultural factors (some
         | cultures value cunning and ruthlessness, others conformity,
         | etc. which can be influenced even by language or the physical
         | environment). Many edgy internet commenters seem to equate
         | low/high trust with race and ethnicity, but if you have ever
         | been in a well run technology company or the US military, or a
         | low-trust homogenous society, you'll see this obviously wrong.
         | 
         | What I've been thinking about a lot lately while I bootstrap is
         | whether it's possible for a group to be resilient to "selfish"
         | bad actors by making cooperation strictly more optimal than
         | defection. At small scales I think this can be accomplished
         | through a BDFL but I'm really interested in figuring out if
         | another approach can scale into the ~thousands.
        
           | whatshisface wrote:
           | What concerns me is the possibility of a zero-trust society
           | that nonetheless shambles onward by having a lot of law
           | enforcement. It's kind of like that in Russia, where you're
           | often buying adulterated foods at the grocery store, but
           | there is nothing you can do about it and the mafia (a.k.a.
           | the government) won't let it get bad enough to outright kill
           | everyone. So, it goes on forever. China might be another
           | example, where the history of communism followed by
           | capitalism under cultural authoritarianism has virtually
           | eliminated the social fabric, but the system clings on
           | through extraordinary measures.
           | 
           | In fact, if you look at these "low-trust" societies, all of
           | them have some reason why they haven't been replaced by the
           | high-trust subcultures that you mentioned, reasons usually
           | involving guns.
        
         | drewcoo wrote:
         | "Trust is a technology?"
         | 
         | I had no idea that other social animals were so high-tech!
        
       | eimrine wrote:
       | Why there is no any religion organizations? Afaik USA is a deeply
       | religious nation.
        
         | darrmit wrote:
         | The religious "trust" scale would likely look largely the same.
         | While "deeply religious" may have been the reality for the US
         | at one point, I think it would be hard to argue that with each
         | generation we don't move a little further away from that. As
         | someone who was previously "deeply religious" and am now "non-
         | religious", I still wrestle with whether that's a good thing or
         | not.
        
           | Nevermark wrote:
           | The politicization of religion could be argued to be a
           | detriment to the country and also to religion.
           | 
           | The partisan side of politics (as apposed to the policy and
           | persuation sides) has a way of undermining or sidelining the
           | virtues, and the ability to operate with nuance, for any
           | movement that over-identifies with either party.
        
           | Night_Thastus wrote:
           | There are some definite benefits to religion. It _can_
           | promote a sense of place and belonging in people, facilities
           | communities, cooperation, etc.
           | 
           | It can also do the exact opposite at times. It will be
           | interesting to see how it all plays out in the long run.
        
             | whatshisface wrote:
             | Virtually any organization can promote a sense of place and
             | belonging in people, facilitate communities, encourage
             | cooperation, etc. Only one type of organization does it by
             | arranging very serious lectures about things that didn't
             | happen.
        
       | CM30 wrote:
       | Watching large tech companies seemingly just destroy everyone's
       | trust in them has been equal parts fascinating and depressing to
       | see. People actually liked Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc at one
       | point. Sure, they didn't like them all equally, (Google's
       | reputation was usually a lot better than Facebook/Meta's), but
       | there was something of an expectation that they did good work and
       | offered good products/services.
       | 
       | Now it seems an increasing percentage of the population outright
       | loathe them, and see them as basically everything wrong with the
       | modern internet. Criticism of Google search is way more common
       | now, criticism of Google shutting down products quickly is way
       | more common, complaints about knockoffs and poor quality goods on
       | Amazon are way more common, etc.
       | 
       | It's just wild to see.
        
         | euroderf wrote:
         | A contributing factor might be the financialization of
         | everything, including SV.
        
           | jerf wrote:
           | I think the "financialization" and the mindset it comes with
           | is a major contributor to the ability of executives to sit in
           | a board room and with deliberation choose to trade trust for
           | money.
           | 
           | More old-fashioned and perhaps less "sophisticated" ways of
           | doing business might just bluntly prioritize trust over many
           | other things, and leave money on the table in the short term.
           | It isn't just that they choose maintaining trust over making
           | the most possible money, it is that they lack the toolset to
           | even really conceptualize what they could make by breaking
           | trust.
           | 
           | Not modern MBAs, though. They'll quantify how much trust
           | you're trading away for how much money no sweat. Even if
           | they're wrong about the exact values they sure are completely
           | capable of conceptualizing the question, and if they notice
           | the externality of transferring a general lack of trust onto
           | the society around them, well, so much the better for being
           | able to monetize an externality, which is the
           | financialization equivalent of hitting the jackpot.
        
             | MichaelZuo wrote:
             | I wouldn't entirely blame the executives though, there are
             | 192 other countries in the world, and eventually their
             | counterparts in at least one of them would do the same if
             | they didn't.
             | 
             | It's a coordination problem since there's no way to ensure
             | honesty is 100% rewarded 100% of the time even within the
             | US, let alone across the Earth.
        
           | lukas099 wrote:
           | Was Silicon Valley not financialized before? What changed
           | exactly?
        
         | JackC wrote:
         | I think I had a set of wrong heuristics that were like,
         | companies won't break the thing that made them rich. Google
         | won't blur the line between search and ads, Facebook won't be
         | creepy about things you share, etc, I predicted, not because
         | they're saints but because they'll build their processes around
         | protecting the thing that made them dominant. I now have the
         | opposite heuristic -- if a startup has a unique selling
         | proposition, that's the thing that will be cashed in when the
         | founders cash out.
        
         | pgwhalen wrote:
         | People definitely complain about Amazon in real life now, but
         | is criticism of Google search something that actually happens
         | outside of HN? It's not something I've seen.
        
           | empath-nirvana wrote:
           | Yes I have heard from multiple non-tech people that they only
           | use chat gpt and never use google any more.
        
           | CM30 wrote:
           | It happens all the time, especially online. See lots of posts
           | on social media sites about how Google Search is terrible now
           | and how they can't find anything useful there. Heck, it's
           | even gotta notable enough that even some of the folks most
           | directly responsible for the issue (the SEO industry) are
           | questioning Google's results quality now.
        
         | _huayra_ wrote:
         | I recently had to explain to some Gen-Z folks what things were
         | like ~12 years ago when I worked for Twitter. Their initial
         | reaction was as if I said "Yeah I worked for the Galactic
         | Empire on the Deathstar project a while back".
         | 
         | It was truly amazing that one could start / join a conversation
         | with so many relevant and insightful folks (depends on the
         | community; there was always useless noise). I remember trying
         | to learn Erlang a bit and whenever I'd tweet something about
         | it, Joe Armstrong himself would often start a short thread with
         | me to resolve my misunderstanding.
         | 
         | I think the term "enshittification" really covers the process
         | well [0] to explain what happened.
         | 
         | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
        
       | grotorea wrote:
       | > The first is that focused and persistent propaganda is able to
       | shift public opinion about institutions they don't have direct
       | interaction with.
       | 
       | I don't get why the author says this, confidence dropped for
       | everyone. Who is doing this successful propaganda?
       | 
       | And one interesting quote from the linked survey
       | 
       | > Finally, the drops in American confidence may be merely
       | harbingers of wider shifts across the globe, where these
       | companies already operate and where the majority of their future
       | growth is expected to arise. In a special report addended to
       | their annual Trust Barometer, Edelman found that while technology
       | remained the most trusted industry, 14 of their 22 sampled
       | markets around the globe had reported drops in trust in tech
       | companies since the year previous.8 While the U.S. experienced
       | the largest drop, it was followed closely behind by most of the
       | advanced democracies. In these countries, respondents also
       | reported adopting new technology at a much lower level than in
       | countries where tech confidence was higher. This is deeply
       | problematic for companies whose rare new innovations require
       | large-scale adoption to be profitable.
        
         | skinkestek wrote:
         | > > The first is that focused and persistent propaganda is able
         | to shift public opinion about institutions they don't have
         | direct interaction with.
         | 
         | > I don't get why the author says this, confidence dropped for
         | everyone.
         | 
         | I stopped a little to think, and my answer is:
         | 
         | Exactly. It wasn't what I started out with but I think it is a
         | main takeaway:
         | 
         | Our entire web of trust is torn apart.
         | 
         | > Who is doing this successful propaganda?
         | 
         | Our enemies. But they are being smart and lucky. As the
         | Ukrainian meme goes: "we are lucky they are so #%$&@ stupid".
         | 
         | Only here we are the stupid ones and russian and Chinese are
         | the smart ones.
         | 
         | They play both sides of BLM. They play both GOP and DEMs.
         | 
         | They play anti-vaxxers - and get enourmous help from big tech
         | ham fistedly like no others trying to help authorities in a way
         | that even I as a vaccinated and boosted person find crazy.
         | 
         | (What could they have done instead of trying to shut down
         | discussion? It would probably have done wonders if tech execs
         | and politicians had instead shown up in the regular queues for
         | vaccinations. Adult Norwegians still know the reference about
         | the King on the tram during the oil crisis half a century
         | later.)
         | 
         | Media in its chase for clicks also help them, tearing apart
         | again and again trying to make sensations out of everything.
        
           | mistermann wrote:
           | It's certainly been a popular story in the press for many
           | years now, but I remain skeptical.
           | 
           | What percentage of the comprehensive causal chain do you
           | attribute to foreign propaganda versus it simply being
           | various domestic phenomena, and upon what do you base your
           | calculations?
        
         | efitz wrote:
         | There are several different things going on in that poll, but
         | nothing specifically points at propaganda as a cause of loss of
         | trust.
         | 
         | For public companies, the loss is likely just observable
         | behavior - higher prices, worse service, etc. - and likely the
         | root cause is poor incentive structure - incentivizing
         | executives for short term profits over everything else.
         | 
         | For government, the largest factors are likely (1) the way
         | COVID was handled and (2) the behavior of the US federal
         | government since the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Note
         | that this is purely separate from trust in Trump himself, which
         | is its own story but not in the poll. And Congress has always
         | had extraordinarily low trust ratings, so no surprise there.
         | 
         | The press is interesting. Likely there is some propaganda
         | aspect there (I have no data but half the country detests the
         | "mainstream media", sometimes with good cause). But I think
         | that the main issue is likely that many press outlets have come
         | out as naked partisans in the last decade.
         | 
         | The main takeaway I got from this was that arguments from
         | authority are going to be especially ineffective moving
         | forward, no one is going to grant you credibility because of
         | your position as government/press/scientist/doctor/whatever,
         | because people have been abused too many times. And it will
         | take decades to rebuild trust in existing institutions, and
         | won't happen at all without significant transparency and
         | reform.
        
       | roenxi wrote:
       | The article and the data in the graph are a little out of kilter.
       | The data is suggesting that as people are becoming less trusting
       | (I'd hazard because of better access to information through the
       | internet).
       | 
       | I don't think there is any strong evidence that the tech giants
       | are trading in trust. It looks more like there is something
       | bimodal happening where media companies have low trust (Google
       | should probably converge to Twitter/Facebook levels of trust over
       | time) and typical companies score a 2.6 (Amazon should probably
       | converge to being about as trustworthy as a bank).
       | 
       | It was never a sane position to believe these companies are
       | unusually trustworthy. They are companies. Nothing special.
       | Everything is smiles and sunshine while an industry is growing,
       | the knives come out once there is a steady state and they
       | corporate dynamics become a bit more fixed-pie. People had
       | unrealistic expectations; that trust was never sustainable.
        
         | bell-cot wrote:
         | While you make some good points...there are good reasons why
         | "enshittification" received a Word of the Year award within one
         | year of being invented.
        
         | macNchz wrote:
         | > I'd hazard because of better access to information through
         | the internet
         | 
         | I'm not sure much changed with regard to access to information
         | on the internet in the US between 2018 and 2021.
         | 
         | > I don't think there is any strong evidence that the tech
         | giants are trading in trust.
         | 
         | There have been a number of lively discussions here on HN over
         | the past few years about the volume of garbage and/or
         | counterfeit products on Amazon, and their unwillingness to
         | address essentially fraudulent activity re reviews and product
         | listings among their marketplace sellers.
         | 
         | Seeing this transition happen myself (as someone who got an
         | Amazon rewards credit card in 2007, Prime in 2010) I absolutely
         | viewed it as Amazon trading trust for short-term profits. Once
         | upon a time I had trust that I could order from them without a
         | huge amount of research and get quality, authentic products
         | quickly. That has changed significantly, and I think broader
         | sentiment is slowly catching up.
        
       | philip1209 wrote:
       | I've been thinking about how excess capitalism erodes trust. I
       | believe capitalism is important and powerful, but it does cause
       | people to be constantly fighting and trying to destroy each
       | other. Plus, trust doesn't show up on a balance sheet - so might
       | as well erode that to get some cash. Capitalism leads to Apple
       | maintaining a 30% App Store take rate (thus eroding trust and
       | perhaps sinking the launch of Vision Pro), profitable tech
       | companies doing layoffs (thus eroding trust but increasing
       | profits further), and military contractors building better
       | killing tools (thus eroding trust but making more money).
       | Perhaps, in an age where we have the technology to feed everybody
       | in the world, we need to increase the societal guardrails to make
       | people's lives more stable - and thus increase trust.
       | 
       | Apparently Maslo updated his eponymous pyramid of needs before
       | his death to add "Self-transendence" above "self-actualization"
       | [1], which you could interpret as "moving from only caring about
       | yourself to caring about other people." I think there's an angle
       | here where perhaps the USA as a whole is stuck on "self-
       | actualization", i.e. caring only about each person and individual
       | success, and is failing to have a shared identity where people
       | care about each other.
       | 
       | If we don't solve our trust problem, I think people will stop
       | having kids in the USA and we'll eventually end up like Japan -
       | in population decline and having all the associated economic
       | problems with it. I think that can be directly be linked to
       | excess capitalism - if we focus so much on making money, then we
       | don't have time (or stability or resources) to raise the next
       | generation.
       | 
       | [1] https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/maslow-self-transcendence/
        
         | OkayPhysicist wrote:
         | It's not just Capitalism, it's a symptom of all hierarchies.
         | Hierarchies are a social contract, existing only so long as
         | enough people are willing to participate. That will manifests
         | differently at different layers of the hierarchy, with the
         | downtrodden base class for instance mostly participating out of
         | a resigned faith in the hierarchy's inevitability, but for
         | those in the middle, the trust that their ongoing participation
         | will be rewarded with both a share of the spoils of the
         | hierarchy (extracted from the bottom classes) and the
         | opportunity to advance up the hierarchy is CRUCIAL in
         | maintaining the structure.
         | 
         | The fatal flaw in all this is that the hierarchies provide
         | perverse incentives at every level to hoard the benefits of
         | participation to oneself. It's a tragedy of the commons
         | situation, where any given individuals misbehavior in
         | supporting the system is unlikely to break it, but if everyone
         | does it absolutely will be shattered.
        
       | dist-epoch wrote:
       | Google less trusted than banks.
       | 
       | Amazon about as trusted as banks.
       | 
       | This is wild.
        
         | jmrm wrote:
         | It isn't for me. I would say I distrust Amazon as much as their
         | bank (or vice versa).
         | 
         | Maybe I won't believe my bank won't give me access to my money
         | tomorrow, or I won't believe Amazon will keep my money and
         | won't send me the product I bought, but I know my bank try at
         | all cost to introduce me to products that won't benefit me as
         | much but would benefit them a lot, and I know Amazon would post
         | Chinese knock-off products aside legit ones without any way to
         | filter them.
        
       | lukas099 wrote:
       | Is it even possible for an institution to build trust in the
       | current environment? If not, doesn't it make sense for companies
       | not to prioritize it?
        
         | distortionfield wrote:
         | It's absolutely possible, it's just hard, as all trust is.
        
       | another_poster wrote:
       | Trust involves multiple factors, e.g.,
       | 
       | * Character. Is the public trusting? Are they anxious?
       | 
       | * Framing. Is the institution described compassionately, for
       | example, as a national champion or underdog? Or is it described
       | as a villain?
       | 
       | * Sectarianism. Are there motivated partisans who want to
       | disparage the institution?
       | 
       | * Evidence. What particular evidence exists for unethical
       | behavior?
       | 
       | * Ethics. What unethical behaviors have the institution done?
       | 
       | I am skeptical that institutions have become less ethical today
       | compared to the past (e.g., today we would be appalled if a
       | European country waged war against another state to sell
       | narcotics, but Britain literally did that 150 years ago), so I
       | have a hunch that other factors are the primary drivers for
       | declining trust.
        
       | csours wrote:
       | Every so often people point out that appliances are throw away
       | crap.
       | 
       | I'd love it if a brand just built good stuff - BUT - if they did,
       | some corpo raider would look at that brand value and think about
       | ways to juice it.
       | 
       | It really makes me sick, you know.
       | 
       | ---
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cqU1pFRqYE "Every morning
       | there's a halo hanging from the corner of my girlfriend's four
       | post bed"
       | 
       | Everyone is trying to figure out how to juice everything.
       | 
       | The military is at the top of the chart - think about the
       | different ways politicians use that for their own purposes - not
       | by deploying troops, but the feelings people have about 'the
       | troops'.
        
       | paultopia wrote:
       | " Many companies, particularly tech ones, are deliberately
       | trading trust for short-term profits."
       | 
       | This is a general level dynamic. Leaders of all kinds of
       | organizations, from companies to governments, need to build
       | methods of self-control to force themselves to prefer their long-
       | term interests (trusted brands, etc,) over their short term
       | interests. That's basically what corporate governance is. It's
       | also basically what constitutional law is, see the scholarship of
       | folks like Jon Elster and Mancur Olson. (Source: my being a guy
       | with a polisci phd.)
       | 
       | Shameless self-promotion: I wrote about this dynamic as a major
       | driver of platform governance challenges across social media as
       | well as transactional platforms like Amazon in chapter 4 of _The
       | Networked Leviathan: For Democratic Platforms_ (Cambridge
       | University Press, August 2023). You can read an open access
       | edition under a CC license for free at https://networked-
       | leviathan.com/
       | 
       | Cory Doctorow's "enshittification" framework is also a great way
       | of explaining how these problems get worse as companies acquire
       | market power.
        
       | jonnycat wrote:
       | I think there's another, more frightening takeaway from this -
       | people are losing trust in everything. While you can argue on a
       | case by case basis that it's all for good reason, it pretty much
       | devolves into nihilism. More and more people are unwilling to
       | believe _anything_ that, for example, the  "media" says -
       | regardless of how tame and reasonable the claim might be.
        
         | yowayb wrote:
         | I think we've been spoiled and lulled into trusting too much.
         | While I agree it leads to nihilistic behavior, I think enough
         | people will simply be more careful and companies will have to
         | get better, including the technical part that the top comment
         | mentions. Similarly, I think we've been too willing to believe
         | anything the media or advertisers say. I'm in my 40s now and I
         | look back and feel embarrassed at all the things media and ads
         | told me that I believed.
        
         | EchoChamberMan wrote:
         | While it's true people are losing trust, it's because
         | companies, or more realistically, the people running those
         | companies, are no longer trustworthy. I don't want news
         | "claims," I want investigative reporting that presents multiple
         | facets of an argument, conclusions are ok, so I can understand,
         | integrate, and draw my own conclusions.
        
         | Mountain_Skies wrote:
         | Robert Putnum saw this coming a decade ago and was denounced as
         | a Nazi for his research, which his critics couldn't refute but
         | name calling was enough. Now a decade later, people are even
         | more cowered and unable to even think about speaking the truth
         | or somehow their souls will be destroyed. It's amazing how
         | people can see it happening right in front of their faces and
         | deny what their own senses are telling them.
        
       | ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
       | _> Once you burn some trust, it's almost impossible to earn it
       | back._
       | 
       | The old saying is that it takes years to build trust, and seconds
       | to lose it.
       | 
       | In my own life, I have tried to live a life of personal
       | Integrity. It's pretty disheartening, when some people treat me
       | as if I'm being "snotty," and assume that there's no such thing
       | as Personal Integrity (There is such a thing; I assure you).
       | 
       | But most folks seem to appreciate it. I sleep well.
        
       | drewcoo wrote:
       | Isn't this just the other side of trading privacy away? Most of
       | the groups in the chart also harvest what was once private.
       | 
       | We trade our privacy for "free" goods. We are then constantly
       | surveilled.
       | 
       | The institutions doing the surveillance can better gauge how much
       | trust they can afford to trade for profit.
       | 
       | If this isn't their profit model, what is?
        
       | roosgit wrote:
       | "Trust grows at the speed of a coconut tree and falls at the
       | speed of a coconut."
       | 
       | I remember this from the book Alchemy by Rory Sutherland.
        
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