How to Measure Trustworthiness

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Read time: 6 minutes

“Your mind will take shape of what you frequently hold in your thoughts, for the human spirit is colored by such impressions.”

Marcus Aurelius

“…bad information is worse than no information at all.”

Nassim Taleb

Two years ago, I was reading a book by one of my favorite authors when I came across this Venn Diagram:

It’s one of those “I’ve felt this to be true for a long time but never knew how to say it” ideas.

Trustworthiness breaks down to three components:

Advice from someone who wants you to succeed, knows your potential, and is qualified to judge the situation will almost assuredly steer you in the right direction.

Advice from someone who is indifferent about your future, doesn’t know you, or has inadequate knowledge will have a much higher chance of leading you astray.

A question to consider: If someone came into your life who only cared about themselves, acted like they had expertise in every subject, and seemed incapable of real friendship, would you listen to their advice? How much time would you spend with them?

The answer is obvious. You would not listen to their advice. You would avoid them at all costs. If a friend had someone like this in their life, you would persuade them to cut off the relationship.

Yet, 9 out of 10 Americans spend multiple hours every single day with a person like this.

Well, that’s a little misleading. It’s not a “person.”

It’s social media.

Let’s test the theory.

Care - Does this platform want what’s best for you?

Unless you believe that “what’s best for you” is precisely the same as what helps them “maximize shareholder value,” then the answer is no.

This is not to say that a company cannot both focus on helping people and maximizing profits. But if that company’s product is free and runs on algorithms, the chances are low.

Social media is trying to keep your attention, not help you succeed.

Credibility - Does this platform have relevant expertise?

If we consider these platforms to be curators rather than creators, then I suppose the answer is both yes and no.

There are people on social media with significant domain expertise. Sometimes it’s obvious, sometimes it’s not. But almost everyone claims to be an expert, which should make you skeptical.

More importantly, these companies have discovered the power of using algorithms to the umpteenth degree.

Your feed is not curated for accuracy or quality. It’s curated for engagement.

Even when you use the search function, you are not seeing the most semantically or thematically relevant results. You are seeing an algorithmically-augmented selection of content that is perfectly designed to guarantee that you click something.

But a broken clock is right twice a day. You probably have found some information via social media that ended up being materially helpful. Sure, it might be less than 1% of the total information in your feed, but hey, that secret ingredient for your banana bread recipe really delivered!

This is how we get trapped into perpetual usage beyond what we know to be healthy. We convince ourselves that the other 99% of our mostly useless engagement is worth the 1% where we find some good baking advice.

Let’s start asking Grandma instead.

Familiarity - Does this platform know you well?

I’ll be unequivocally clear on this one: absolutely not.

There is a difference between a) knowing facts about someone and making inferences on their desires, and b) having a relationship with them.

Regardless of how perfectly timed and relevant that one Instagram ad happened to be (which just randomly popped up a few hours after you told someone you needed that product), don’t be tricked into thinking your algorithm “knows you.”

It has a good sense for your demographic and psychographic data. It knows nothing of your worth as a human being.

In sum: uncaring, unfamiliar, questionable credibility. Not performing well on our trustworthiness scale.

Guard your mental inputs. They shape your character in the long run.

An astute reader—of whom I take you to be—would likely feel the urge to turn these questions around to the writer.

Do I (Peyton) care? Am I a subject matter expert? Do I know you? Why should you take advice from me?

Yes, I do care. I write to help you flourish. That’s the objective.

It would depend on the subject for me to qualify my own expertise. If it helps, I’ve reduced my screen time by 75% in 12 months, read 10+ books on the topic of humanity’s relationship with digital technology (more in the works), and have used TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, Snapchat, and LinkedIn prolifically at some point in my life. Maybe you call that personal experience, but the experts tend to agree with me.

I may or may not have a personal connection with you. If I don’t, that might give you pause. Good! Test and see. The goal is not that we outright reject advice from people we don’t know (my worldview has been shaped by a great deal of authors I’ve never met), but that we scrutinize the advice in light of our real experiences and prioritize guidance from personal relationships.

People use social media for a wide range of activities: keeping up with family and friends, following influencers, watching sports highlights, crowd-sourcing funny videos, learning new sales tactics, finding niche groups to join, and plenty of others.

However you prefer to use it, the danger of consuming bad advice is always one swipe away.

Don’t let your perspectives be shaped by short-form “content” that lacks nuance and promotes superficiality.

Leave that to the people in your life who know you, love you, and can genuinely make the world’s best banana bread.

(Love you, Grandma.)

Thanks for reading.

Know someone who would appreciate this? Forward it them and start a meaningful conversation.

See you next week.

PW