Friday Forward - Credible Experts (#456)

Don't assume a person is credible on social media

I bet you’ve never asked your doctor for financial advice or expected your lawyer to diagnose a medical issue. The reason is obvious: each person excels in their specific field, and being highly intelligent, trained and educated in one area hardly assures expertise in another.

In fact, doctors and lawyers are often targets and victims of predatory investor scams, precisely for the reason that they believe their excellence in one domain naturally extends to another and will pursue an investment without proper due diligence. This misplaced confidence often loses these professionals a lot of money.

In life, we generally know to only seek guidance from people with direct, verified expertise in a certain field. However, since the advent of social media, the rules and signals for expertise have become much more muddied online.

For example, while most journalists are still held to certain editorial standards that signal credibility, things like follower counts or verification are often widely accepted symbols of expertise on social media. This is a dangerous trend, especially when a person gains a massive following for a certain type of content—videos with pranks or viral dances, for example—then starts opining on complex issues like the economy, or conflict in the Middle East. Even though these influencers have little-to-no economics or foreign affairs experience, their opinions are readily accepted and shared, simply because their follower count creates a halo effect that suggests credibility.

In many cases, influencers aren’t even aware they are overstepping. Rather, they simply feel compelled to share personal opinions online, either because they need to generate relevant content, or because their following has inflated their ego to the point where they feel obligated to “speak out” on issues they don’t fundamentally understand.

In other cases, however, it’s more nefarious: for example, many influencers use their reach to intentionally shape narratives. It's hard to distinguish a comment that’s made authentically from one that’s influenced by a political agenda or advancing a position they’re paid to amplify.

In an ideal world, social media platforms would tag users based on their actual areas of expertise or the type of content that built their audience. Platforms could use algorithms to understand which topics demonstrate the most authority or actual engagement or use a system similar to LinkedIn skill endorsements to verify credibility.

For example, a healthcare professional’s profile would highlight expertise in medicine, while their opinions on foreign policy would be less prominently featured or less frequently fed into people’s newsfeeds. To a large extent, LinkedIn already does this today, amplifying posts on a given topic from accounts that have engaged deeply with that subject in the past. However, we’re unlikely to see such accountability measures from other platforms any time soon. The incentive structures of social media platforms don’t favor accuracy or expertise, but rather engagement and impressions—often driven by wrongheaded outrage.

Of course, this credibility crisis on social media isn’t just influencers spouting uninformed opinions. Recent studies have shown that a significant portion of social media content consumed by young people in Western democracies originates from accounts influenced or controlled by foreign adversaries such as Iran, Russia, and China. These entities use social media to stoke division and spread misinformation among their rivals, often while posing as genuine, informed sources.

Let this fact be a stark reminder that much of what you see online today, however credible it appears, may be curated to manipulate public sentiment. And remember that young people spend more time online than anyone and can quickly have their entire worldview shaped by these bad actors.

In this landscape, we need to be more discerning of whom we choose to trust and in what context. Before you internalize or share someone's online content, pause and evaluate their credibility. Look at their bio, examine their previous content, and ask yourself whether their expertise aligns with the subject matter at hand.

We aren’t going to change the nature of social media anytime soon; however, we can change how we react, respond and share with others. It’s up to each of us to maintain our critical thinking and understand who’s really worth listening to on what topics. Remember that expertise is still best defined by depth of knowledge and experience, not the size of one’s follower count.

Quote of The Week

"The problem with information is not that it is hidden, but that it is mixed with irrelevance.” - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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