Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Slip into something more comfortable and delve into personal finance with Josh Sheluk and Colin White, experienced portfolio managers at Verecan Capital Management. Each episode demystifies complex financial topics, stripping them to their bare essentials. From investment strategies and financial planning to economic headlines and philanthropic giving, delivered with a blend of insight, transparency, and a touch of humour. Perfect for anyone looking to understand and navigate their financial future with confidence. Subscribe now to stay informed, empowered, and entertained.
Verecan Capital Management Inc. is registered as a Portfolio Manager in all provinces in Canada except Manitoba.
Social media age has definitely allows misinformation to spread more quickly, but these biases that make us susceptible to misinformation have always been around. And there's always been examples of misinformation since the early human days when we had storytelling or the printing press. Like, there's always people sharing false things.
Kathryn Toope:Welcome to Barenaked Money, the podcast where we strip down the complex world of finance to its bare essentials with your hosts, Josh Sheluk and Colin White, portfolio managers with VeriCAN Capital Management Inc.
Josh Sheluk:Welcome to the next episode of Barenaked Money. We're excited to have another exciting, interesting, fascinating guest today. And as you know, with Barenaked Money, Colin and I are always pushing back on the information that's out there, pushing back on the narrative, pulling back the shower curtain to show you what's what's really the the truth behind everything. And we have the perfect guest to talk about this today. We have Matthew Facciani joining us today.
Josh Sheluk:He's a social scientist, author, and a self described myth buster, which is particularly exciting. And he's currently a a postdoc researcher at the University of Notre Dame. And his work dives deep into why we believe, what we believe, and how misinformation spreads, often spreading faster than the truth, and what we can actually do about it. And it's a great time for him to be on because his latest book, Misguided, tackles everything from conspiracy communities to AI generated fake news. And I think it makes a pretty compelling case that we need to sharpen our critical thinking.
Josh Sheluk:So Matthew, thanks for
Matthew Facciani:joining us today. Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here.
Josh Sheluk:So we're excited to have you. I think I'd like you to start just by telling us why you wrote this book. I think that will set the stage for so many other things that we're going
Colin White:to talk about.
Matthew Facciani:Yeah. So I wrote this book. I started writing it in basically the 2020. So it's almost been five years now. I just finished graduate school.
Matthew Facciani:I had the pleasure of graduating right in the middle of COVID-nineteen. So that was a challenge. And I really thought about how much my work studying political polarization and how people process misinformation and information, how connected to health. So originally, was thinking about writing like a blog post or a op ed or something that connected my work and public health. And I did write some piece in the conversation about how our identities can influence our attitudes on masks and mask wearing.
Matthew Facciani:But then I was thinking, maybe I could write something else. And I was talking to a few of my friends about it, and some of them actually suggested that it might be worth trying to write a book. And this is something I never really thought I would do, especially this early in my career, maybe ever, is actually write a book. But I had time to write out a proposal. I so I was working at Vanderbilt University as a researcher, studying health and and information, how people process health information, in addition to a few other things.
Matthew Facciani:And I basically just sent out a few cold proposals to presses and publishers. And I didn't think I'd hear back. But I'm like, I'll give it a shot. I'll see what happens. If not, I'll just write another op ed or something and kind of move on with my research.
Matthew Facciani:But there were publishers that responded very positively and I got a contract with one of them. So it's basically, I kind of stumbled into it, to be honest. I didn't expect it to happen. And I landed this contract early twenty twenty one and kind of slowly wrote the book. It took longer than I thought for several reasons, but it ended up being good that it took so long because it allowed me to update it and keep it very relevant and timely because this stuff changes so quickly.
Matthew Facciani:But I was able to add in basically a lot of my most recent research with the latest revision that I sent in. That's kind of the backstory of how I got in there. And I hope that I am able to bring the science of misinformation research to a broader audience. And that was the goal of the book.
Josh Sheluk:Yeah. It's it's really interesting. Congrats on writing the book. First of all, I think it's that that sounds like it's one of those oh shit moments where you kinda put it out there and and we're thinking that nothing was gonna come back and and they say, oh, this is a great idea. And you're like, okay.
Colin White:Now I've got
Matthew Facciani:right now.
Josh Sheluk:Yeah. Now I got five years of work ahead of me. But I want to dive in more to one of the things that you mentioned there. Like our susceptibility to misinformation is driven to some extent by by sort of the social circles and and social identities that we have.
Colin White:Mhmm.
Josh Sheluk:And it got me thinking, is our susceptibility to misinformation is it more related to what you talk about, social network, social identities? Or is there something ingrained in us personality wise that that makes us more susceptible to this?
Matthew Facciani:Yeah. Yeah. It's a great question. So it's definitely a variety of factors. It's hard to tease out what percentage contributes to each misinformation susceptibility.
Matthew Facciani:There's different types of misinformation we're more susceptible to. That's another bit of my research that I dove into. Short answer is it's all of it. For different aspects, there might lean one way or the other. It's gonna be more relevant towards your social identities versus cognitive styles.
Matthew Facciani:But both predict a susceptibility to misinformation. So, there's this whole body of literature diving into analytic styles. People who have these cognitive styles that are more analytical tend to be less susceptible to misinformation than those who are more intuitive. So that's one personality cognitive component of it. But that's a very malleable personality trait.
Matthew Facciani:It's not something that's necessarily as fixed and you can teach people to be more thoughtful in how they consume content, which is a good thing. It's nice that we can see this change with some education. But with social identities, it's definitely very impactful when it comes to processing information that directly conflicts with an identity that's very important to the individual. And especially this is the case when we have certain, a small set of identities that all overlap with each other and reinforce each other, and we derive a bunch of self esteem from this narrow set of identities. And that's something that I try to make the point throughout my book is how we can be especially vulnerable to misinformation when we have several social identities that are all important to us and all overlap with each other and kind of have this amplification And that's when we become most vulnerable to believing falsehoods.
Colin White:I love having an expert on because these are topics that we've talked about as pure amateurs for for a long time. And I just wanna run like a a way that I've kind of conceived of of having this conversation with people by way of describing that the human condition is kind of tribal. Everybody's looking to belong to something and depending on where you are and who's around you at that moment. And for a guy where the pretty girl is, you know, that's where you want to be part of that pride, whether that is, you know, based on location or whether it's based on sports team or whether it's based on a unique belief. Right.
Colin White:And, you know, so there's a sense of wanting to belong to something that I think is pretty fundamental to human development. And there's a there's a bit of happenstance as to what we can. We all belong to more than one tribe. Like, I'm a Maple Leafs fan and I'm a basketball fan, and there's different things I identify with. And you're right, depending how deep that identity is as to how strong I would perceive ideas I feel are very similar.
Colin White:Is is describing this as the humans need to belong to something. Does that does that resonate with the kind of research that you've done? Is that another way of looking at it?
Matthew Facciani:Yeah, definitely. So it's definitely we have this need to belong and find community. And more directly, it provides us with a self source of self esteem. So, these identities, whether you're a sports fan or you belong you identify with a certain political group or religious group, not only do you get the social components, the community components, but they provide you with a structure to navigating the social world and then meaning and roles to adhere to that reduce uncertainty. And when we behave in certain ways that align with these identities, it can give us a self esteem boost.
Matthew Facciani:So it can even be like if you have a student identity, let's say you're a student at university, and you get a good grade on an exam, that makes you feel good if you care about being a good student. So it can have this very, like, positive reinforcement effect. And a lot of times, it can be very positive for our well-being and and how we navigate our worlds. But it can also cause problems whenever we have a very strong association with a particular identity, such as a political identity, and we really want to support our political group, and then we see some criticism of that group, and then we may not want to respond objectively to that criticism. And maybe that means we believe something that's completely false because we are so committed to protecting that source of self esteem.
Matthew Facciani:It it actually feels like a personal attack sometimes whenever we see information that challenges how we see ourselves.
Josh Sheluk:So you've written that misinformation has really existed for centuries. It's nothing new. But I think if you ask people, the knee jerk reaction would be that, let's call it fake news or misinformation, whatever term you want to use to describe it more prevalent today than it's ever been. Is that true? Or is it maybe some type of availability bias that just because things are more accessible to us or more interface that it seems to be more prevalent than ever.
Josh Sheluk:Because I could certainly push back and say, have more access to fact check things than I ever have before. And so my thought is that maybe maybe there shouldn't be as much fake news or misinformation as as there ever have. Maybe maybe this is like a golden age for actually factually correct information.
Matthew Facciani:Yeah. It is a bit counterintuitive that while we have more information at our fingertips than ever before, we also have people believing a lot of falsehoods. And I think part of that is that it's much more easy to see false information online. So if we're on social media, we see the most sensationalized posts rise to our algorithmic news feeds. And just the information that people can get has a lot less gatekeepers than before.
Matthew Facciani:So, it used to be where if you wanted to share something fake, you know, in the last few decades, you have to go on television and go through producers and all that stuff to say whatever nonsense you wanted to say. Now, you can just post something with the internet connection and a phone. Like it's very, very easy to share false information. And if you say something that you know a group of people are really gonna identify with, again, thinking about their social identity biases, that they're gonna like it and share it and amplify it. So, the social media age has definitely allows misinformation to spread more quickly, but these biases that make us susceptible to misinformation have always been around.
Matthew Facciani:And there's always been examples of misinformation since the early human days when we had storytelling or the printing press. Like there's always people sharing false things. It's just now we have access to them a lot more. So, you have that double edged sword of information where we have a lot more access to good information and true information, but we have a lot more access to false information as well.
Colin White:Matt, just to take a little bit of a slightly different lens to this again, because I'm always fascinated by what's the business model. You know, because if you follow the incentives, then you tend to begin to understand how certain things dominate other things. And it seems to be that there's a lot more money in spreading this information than there is in providing accurate information. Is that is that an observation that that fits with the the research and the way you've looked at things? Is this as as simple as there's money in it, therefore, is what's proliferating at the pace that's proliferating right now?
Matthew Facciani:Yeah. I mean, think that's a big part of it. Not only is there really great money to be had in sharing falsehoods that make people feel good, but there's not a lot of money in sharing good information.
Colin White:So like We're familiar with that for sure,
Matthew Facciani:right, Crush?
Josh Sheluk:Yeah. No doubt. No doubt.
Matthew Facciani:Yeah. So, mean, so I'm kind of curious about the financial angle of it because, you know, like, I'm sure you're aware of how, you know, meme coins and penny stocks, like this has been around for years and years, this idea of like get rich quick schemes. It's the same thing with sensationalist misinformation on all kinds of topics where, again, you're really selling emotions to people. You're making them feel good. You're giving them hope in some way.
Matthew Facciani:You know, so again, the political example is so easy, especially in The US. We have these two political teams and you can just lean into one team or the other team and get a big audience by saying this team is good, you're doing good, and the other team is bad. And the information that is more nuanced and thoughtful doesn't provide that emotional support in a lot of ways. So it's really tough because just practically, if you want to make a career and make money, it's so much easier to just lean into sensationalism and misinformation, especially political misinformation these days, and just lean into that and not care about the veracity or accuracy of your claims. But there really isn't a lot of infrastructure for sharing good information.
Matthew Facciani:Like, it's really hard to make a career being a science communicator, for example. This is something that my science communicator friends and I often talk about is just the lack of funding. A lot of us just do this for free. So if you see a scientist sharing summaries of their work or their field, they're usually doing that for free in their own personal time. So, you have people who dedicate their lives to studying this topic, and then they want to share it with the broader public, and they get paid nothing to do that.
Matthew Facciani:And then on the other side, you see people who get a heavy incentive to share false things that make people feel good. So there's this complete asymmetry.
Colin White:Yeah. I've always described it that the market for get rich quick ideas far exceeds the supply. Markets don't like a vacuum. So a lot of stuff gets manufactured and, you know, that's that's where we find ourselves because if there's a customer, somebody's gonna manufacture it and, you know, that cycle just keeps keeps repeating over and over again. So Yeah.
Colin White:Absolutely.
Josh Sheluk:Yeah. I'm glad you brought up meme coins and penny stocks because that's, like, the epitome of everything that we're talking about here. Like, there there's just there's a a totally fabricated story in in a lot of these situations. And I and I think to the the meme coin part of things, especially, there is somewhat of a social identity behind some of the meme coins. So it's like, you know, there's there's Trump coin now and there's Mhmm.
Josh Sheluk:Dogecoin and there are certain types of individuals or or or groups would follow those different coins. So there's definitely something to that. This probably wouldn't have hit your radar, but just this morning, a paper up here in Canada was reporting that a prominent researcher in Canada market strategist, his name was caught up in a sort of get get rich quick pump and dump penny stock scheme. And the information that was out there, there's advertisements on social media and all that promoting him as a backer. And he came out and said, I wasn't backing this at all.
Josh Sheluk:But a lot of people got caught up in it and it turned into people asking for, like, the their phone number, and they were communicating on WhatsApp saying go buy the stock. It's it's stuff that you look at it from outside and say, is insane. How can you fall for something so silly? Like no prominent researchers ever going to text you on WhatsApp what stock you should buy without any financial benefit to them. But all kinds of people, it sounds like have got caught up in the scheme.
Matthew Facciani:Yeah, it's wild. I did a little bit of research on financial scams in my book and just in my own curiosities. I mean, it's a billion dollar industry, just scams. It's probably underreported because a lot of people have shame, like, reporting this. Right?
Matthew Facciani:I mean, you guys probably know that the numbers better than I do on that.
Colin White:So I I I think we set the stage here. This is bad. This is evil. Now you you you teased something. I think you teased it in your book.
Colin White:You've teased it here today that there's a way to protect yourself 100% from misinformation. So are you going to give us the the silver key to the city and and tell us how to protect ourselves in every aspect of our life? I'll just shut up and you can talk for the rest of the podcast if you have that to give us.
Matthew Facciani:Unfortunately, I don't have a 100 silver key to protect yourselves from misinformation. I think there are evidence based strategies that can reduce their susceptibility to it. I alluded to the identity component, which I think is is a huge part. And, when we think about identities, one way to protect ourselves from misinformation is not being so reliant on a single identity or a single set of identities that share a bunch of characteristics. And you can do that by simply trying to diversify yourself as a human and get a variety of interests, a variety of hobbies, meet a variety of people.
Matthew Facciani:So that way, whenever your favorite politician says something that people criticize, you don't feel like personally attacked by it and you have to defend them. And you can think about other identities that you have to rely on the self esteem and meaning that's derived from them. So it sounds pretty straightforward, but unfortunately, again, especially in America, we have these huge political identities that really just take over how people view themselves. And I wish there were more opportunities for people to meet different people from different backgrounds. So they're not demonizing those who they think differently because someone on social media told them that they should.
Matthew Facciani:And that would require some sort of funding model where we can actually meet people in third spaces. So, you know, not just going to home and work, but some kind of community third space or program where you actually have an opportunity to meet different people and have that kind of buffer against political misinformation is a big one. But then there's also a variety of tools, media literacy tools, digital literacy tools that can teach people these steps and these tips and techniques to critically analyze information as well. So my book does dive into some of those strategies. And so my own research tried to develop these short pre bunking games, what we call them.
Matthew Facciani:So not debunking after the fact, but trying to pre bunk before that.
Colin White:Pre bunking. There's a word that's gonna make it into my vocabulary.
Josh Sheluk:Pre bunking.
Matthew Facciani:It's a cool word. Yeah. I I really like it. Yeah. Because the idea is to present people with examples of misinformation they might see in the future and warn them about it and teach them how to recognize that ahead of time.
Matthew Facciani:So then when they see it, they can recognize it and be like, oh, this is something I learned about. These people are trying to manipulate me. You know, emotional manipulation is a big one. So again, like trying to play to your political identity or present a sense of urgency. You need to buy this right now or else you're going to lose money.
Matthew Facciani:So, you know, trying to look out for those things ahead of time can really help people reduce their susceptibility to believing false information. So there are strategies. It's just a matter of getting these resources to more people and then also aligning that with the diversifying of social identities so they're not as biased by the social identities that they have.
Colin White:Matthew, you have so stumbled exactly into our kitchen because our, you know, when it comes to financial matters, we talk diversity all the time. Diversification can protect from a lot of things. It's beyond fascinating that that was your response to that question. I don't know, Josh. I got chills.
Matthew Facciani:I don't
Colin White:know about you.
Josh Sheluk:Well well, this whole podcast, the whole premise of this podcast is basically prebunking. Right? Because because what we're trying to do is identify some of the issues that arise for people on the financial front and and that that challenge or compromise their decision making. And we're just hoping to to share a little bit of information that that will avoid some of those pitfalls that people might be faced with.
Matthew Facciani:Yeah. I mean, that's great. I mean, financial stuff is is also hobby of mine. Like, I read a few financial books, and I've, you know, was interested in cryptocurrency for a while. And I just find it out the whole thing very fascinating.
Matthew Facciani:I guess most of the stuff that I've read is with Jack Boggle. I guess I would identify as a boggle head. I would actually do cite that in my book because there's a study that kind of mentions index funds. So I thought it was kind of cool to throw that in there. But yeah, I mean, it's interesting to see, like the crypto space and meme stocks and the meme coins and just like how it all intersects from a financial perspective as well.
Matthew Facciani:It's been interesting to see.
Josh Sheluk:Yeah. Certainly, lot of these these misinformation ideas kind of manifest themselves within the financial realm because as we talked about, it is it is somewhat of a a money making endeavor in a lot of different ways. But coming back to the crypto thing, seems like at least one of the rationalizations for crypto existing is sort of a mistrust in institutions. And to me, this seems to be somewhat of a demographic thing. Like, seems to be changing.
Josh Sheluk:The the trust in institutions seems to be correlated in some way with your age, so to speak. So has something changed? And I would expect the answer is no. Has something changed in our brains that is making the younger generation or cohort less trustworthy of institutions? Or is is there something else that's going on with the way that information is presented that's making this happen?
Matthew Facciani:Yeah. I mean, think trust is a huge huge thing and another central component to misinformation more broadly. And I do think there are a few things that has happened for the younger generation. I mean, millennials, like we saw the financial crisis. Like we just got out of college, then we get to financial crisis.
Matthew Facciani:And then kind of growing up, we see, you know, nineeleven attacks. And then right when we're like getting our, you know, adulthood careers going, COVID hits. So I think a lot of people my age and younger really saw these huge pivotal moments of institutions failing in different ways and failing them in different ways. I mean, like if you were told all you gotta do is get a job or get a college degree, you'll get a good job and everything will be fine. And then you go to college, you get a bunch of debt, and you can't get a job.
Matthew Facciani:And then all the markets keep crashing. I think that that financial insecurity leads to a lot of distrust at institutions and that lack of financial security makes people really angry and looking for something to outside of those existing institutions and to connect it to isolation issue we have really across the world, but especially United States. There's some interesting research that when people are not interacting with others as much, they tend to lose trust in other people more and in institutions more. So again, I think if we could get people together and not just individuals talking to other individuals, but individuals talking to their local institutions and having this like meaningful two way dialogue. I think that would help rebuild trust because it wouldn't be this top down talking down to people.
Matthew Facciani:It would be trying to learn what's going on in their communities and then working with them. So, I guess that's a long way to answer to saying yes. I do think there's a lot of factors that contribute to his mistrust. And then social media, you get in your bubbles more and it kind of amplifies that. So, I think there are a lot of issues and, you know, some legitimate criticism of these institutions as well that leads to mistrust and then presents a lot of issues with that.
Colin White:Yeah. I think a lot of the mistrust is well founded. I mean, referenced 02/2008, and that was a failure of the system. Mhmm. It's been painted as lots of different things, and we've kinda glossed over it.
Colin White:And I think the challenge is when you gloss over things like that, the population loses faith, and they should, you know, because there were there was no ramifications of what came out of 2008 that should have happened. And there's a systemic failure of a lot of different things. Yeah. So I think that that the system I mean, us old people tend to blame the younger kids. I don't blame them at all.
Colin White:You know, the the the younger generation went through some stuff that was really stupid, and it was at a formative time. And, you know, I think we were reaping what we sowed a little bit right now. But, again, you teach something else that was really interesting with regards to tools. I'm I'm curious about that if we could you know, do do you have an example of these any of these tools? Are these, like, websites or, you know, where where would we direct our listeners to go to find these kind of things other than the show notes that will show up underneath this podcast?
Matthew Facciani:Yeah. So definitely give you guys a bunch of links for the show notes. So the news literacy project is a really good free resource website that provides a lot of media literacy, digital literacy tips, and it's constantly updating for giving people strategies on how to better navigate their information environments. One of the best like short strategies that you can learn for boosting your media literacy is what's called lateral reading. Have you guys heard that term before?
Matthew Facciani:No. So basically, you can think of vertical reading as you click on an article and you read through the article like down. So, you're just looking within the contents of that article but then, lateral reading is you're looking across different types of sources of information to fact check that original article. So you see your article pop up and you're like, okay, this is written by XYZ. And then you Google XYZ and see who that person is, what conflicts of interest they might have, what other people are saying about them.
Matthew Facciani:And then you also Google the website that published the article, see what other people are writing about it, how reputable it is. And you're always looking across and then cross checking the information within that article that you're seeing. And this is what professional fact checkers do. It's a technique that's been taught at different classes, different universities, and it has been shown to really reduce people's susceptibility to misinformation. So again, it's kind of a tough thing that ask people do because it requires a little bit more effort.
Matthew Facciani:A lot
Colin White:of work. That's a lot of work.
Matthew Facciani:So that's the challenge with a lot of these techniques is like, you can teach these skills, but sometimes it is resource intensive. What I mentioned earlier, it was we developed these prebunking games. So it's like a five minute game that teaches people these skills. And we found that after people play these short games, they do get better at recognizing misinformation. The long term effects are tricky, though.
Matthew Facciani:So, they usually require constantly reminding people to make sure they are durable over time. And again, if they're finding information that directly conflicts with their ideology, they might not be as motivated to do the fact checking or lateral reading in that particular instance. So, it's tough because again, it all comes back to those social biases. Like, can learn how to fact check, how to critically examine media, but then you find something that conflicts with your political identity or your favorite meme coin, and you don't wanna maybe necessarily do the critical thinking for that. And that's always gonna be a challenge.
Colin White:And one of the strategies that I developed because, again, I started life without computers and, you know, so I've had to adjust as as things have gone along. But the the algorithm thing and what I get fed is something that's very noticeable. So I will make a a a point of clicking on things I completely disagree with or Googling things that I've got really no interest in just to kind of break the algorithm so that it doesn't I don't get into this feedback loop of only reading stuff that align with with the way I'm thinking I wanna hear. Like, I'll I'll go to news sources that I know to be completely a different perspective and just click on them just to say I did to try to interrupt that feed that would normally come to me so that I don't I don't get stuck in a tunnel. Because when you walk around in the world, you wanna be able to converse with various people in the world.
Colin White:And if you're completely oblivious to what their point of view may be, it makes it tougher. So I don't know how effective I've been. I do get weird stuff on my newsfeed from time to time, but it's it's kind of a one of little tactics I've picked up that I think is making a bit of a difference in in what I get fed in the run of a day.
Kathryn Toope:Yeah. I think it would. I think
Matthew Facciani:it would definitely bounce out your algorithm. And I think just that practice of thinking about different perspectives is like training a muscle to be protective against reactionarily accepting some information that might align with your ideology. So, it's tough because this does require some practice. You know, it's a habit that you need to do. And again, it kind of speaks to the original topic we were discussing of like this asymmetry between the easy way that just makes you feel good in the short term and then there's like long term habitual process and training.
Matthew Facciani:So I'm constantly thinking of ways to make this more accessible and easy for folks. So I'm not just like saying, oh, you need to like take this like class or something to learn how to navigate the internet. So I think there are strategies to make it easier. But again, it's kind of like those social biases are always in the background. And in those feelings of uncertainty and financial insecurity and inequality, like as long as we have those components, that's always gonna create this underlying risk to believing misinformation.
Josh Sheluk:Let's say you're the czar of social media. I'm giving you this title.
Matthew Facciani:Okay.
Josh Sheluk:And you you you can impose anything that you want. You can impose you can wipe out social media. You can destroy the algorithms. You can impose fact checking on all this stuff. What what what would you do?
Josh Sheluk:What what would you do to to make these places a little bit more friendly and a little bit less less misinformation driven?
Matthew Facciani:Yeah. Well, that's that's a lot of responsibility. I do think there are Use it wisely. Yeah. There's a couple things.
Matthew Facciani:I do I do write about this. So there's a couple things that I I I feel like would help. One, I would like to increase transparency of these companies. I think that's like a nice starting point. Like, you know, let's dive into that black box of the algorithm and see exactly how it works, share it with the public, let independent researchers study the platform so we know what's going on.
Matthew Facciani:There's been a big reduction of that lately, which is a really big bummer.
Josh Sheluk:A reduction in transparency, you mean?
Matthew Facciani:And yet access to data. Access to it. Yeah. So it used to be, like, Twitter, old Twitter. You could get pretty you could sign up to get their API pretty easily.
Matthew Facciani:And now it's, like, super expensive and really hard to get.
Josh Sheluk:Well, Elon has to make his money back. Yeah. Can't blame him, right? He spends $40,000,000,000 on it. He's got to make his money back somehow.
Matthew Facciani:Yeah. I mean, I wonder how many people have bought it because I think it's like 10,000 a month or something. It's outrageous how much money it is to get access to the data. If I could wave a magic wand, would say if you're gonna have a big social media company, you have to be able to share your data with independent researchers and be as transparent as possible. Obviously, that's not always in the interest of shareholders to do those kinds of things.
Matthew Facciani:So, you know, it's a challenge. But I think that would be a good starting point. Then, but we know certain things could help, like we can add more friction to social media. So we're not constantly like doom scrolling. The infinite scroll that's kind of developed in these social media platforms, I don't think is a good thing.
Matthew Facciani:So social media is tricky. There's this whole conversation of like, if it's a net positive or net negative. It's really hard to quantify and make it in a one, is it good or bad? Because it's both good and bad. Like it provides a sense of community for a lot of different people, provides information, but also does tons of terrible things.
Matthew Facciani:It can reduce mental health and, you know, spread misinformation and a lot of really mean comments. So I think adding some friction would help where maybe it's you have, you know, you can whenever you post something, sometimes there is that box on old Twitter that, like, would ask you, like, did you verify this before sharing? Like, those kinds of things actually did reduce the amount of falsehoods being shared. Even ideas of like, if you're scrolling for a really long time, eventually your scrolling gets slower and slower. So then you're not as likely to stay on it for like hours and hours, like things like that.
Matthew Facciani:Yeah, just trying to get people like outside more. So again, like having them take breaks as they're not in this infinite scroll. Because that's what I really worry about in this attention economy that these social media platforms, they just wanna dominate like every second of your attention and just constantly pump ads. And this this 100% growth mindset of that where they're just constantly trying to take every free second we have. I don't think that's good for our society.
Matthew Facciani:So think there's a way to have healthier social media. I think certain platforms are trying to give more user control, which is good. So like Blue Sky is a new platform where it's a lot of customizability. You can really change your algorithm and the feeds that you follow really easily. I think that's really cool.
Matthew Facciani:So I know you said like magic wand, but I'm still thinking within the constraints of what we have in our world.
Josh Sheluk:Of real life. Okay. Yeah.
Matthew Facciani:So I'd like to see more platforms like Blue Sky emerge that are more decentralized, where users have more control. And the concept of the Federverse is interesting to me. I don't know if you guys are familiar with that. The idea of, like, different social media websites talking to each other. So if I post something on threads, maybe it'll be able to be seen on Blue Sky and vice versa.
Matthew Facciani:So that kind of gets people out of their echo chambers a bit and allows you not to be so focused on one platform. It also prevents just one platform if it crumbles and it's destroyed. So there are a few ways that we could help the various problems from these social media websites. The community notes that's been popping up on Facebook, Meta, I guess I should say. There's some benefits to these community notes.
Matthew Facciani:People tend to, there's some research showing that people actually trust the community note more than a fact checker label. It's interesting because the community notes are usually community noted from a professional fact checker. So it's kind of an interesting dynamic there how that works. Ideally, these professional fact checking organizations would work in tandem with the community notes and the companies. And there's like a partnership and dialogue there because they're really good at, you know, diving into the information.
Matthew Facciani:So there's a few things I think would help, but it's tough. It's tough when you have these like mega corporations that have so much power and there's so much, you know, they have such a responsibility to keep their lines going up. I mean, I guess if I could wave a magic wand, I would make it so they'd be okay not growing as quickly. I guess that's kind of
Kathryn Toope:Well, I didn't give you that much power, man.
Matthew Facciani:Oh, yeah.
Colin White:Look, you wanna change all people everywhere. Okay. Yeah. Fair enough.
Matthew Facciani:Hey. So he started with the magic wand. So I'm staying within that that framework.
Colin White:Well, I I love Josh's youthful enthusiasm and his audacity to think that we're gonna fix the system. I'm sitting in the in the chair going, like, the system is what it is. I can help some people. Like, I I can equip some people to win this fight because, you know, Netflix was on record as saying that their number one competitor was sleep. Right.
Colin White:So Netflix was trying to convince people to sleep less, and that was gonna be good for them. And, you know, so yeah. I think greed is going to be greed. And I'm not sure that there's a systemic way to correct what's going on. I am confident and I'm a big fan of, you know, books like you've written to try to, for those who are motivated to try to, you know, better equip themselves.
Colin White:I think that's absolutely an attainable goal, and we can try to run up the numbers there. And if we're successful enough in getting enough individuals to behave a little bit differently, the big companies will follow-up because a business model will come out of that. And at the end of the day, like it or like it or lump it, I mean, business models are what rule the world. And so if you're successful in your career in getting enough people to be accolades to a different way of thinking, then there could be a whole ecosystem that builds up around it, and we could begin to to shift the sands a little bit. Josh's magic wand thing.
Colin White:Oh, come on, dude. Really?
Josh Sheluk:Well, well, it's it's interesting that you sound somewhat optimistic, Matthew, that we would be able to kinda alter our behavior in a meaningful enough way to make a difference? Because in some aspects of behavioral finance, some of the authors and researchers in the space have said that even though we're aware of our biases and tendencies and that these exist, it still doesn't help us make better decisions at the end of the day. But you you seem to think that there are a few things that we can do structurally and and and process wise that that can actually make a difference into how we consume news.
Matthew Facciani:Yeah. I think so. Again, it's tricky to see the wide spreading effects of individual changes, like on a social media platform. But we know through experiments that if you teach people these skills and then show misinformation, they're better able to identify the misinformation. So we can identify on the micro level.
Matthew Facciani:It's like, okay, we can teach people stuff. Okay, that's good. And then it's a matter of getting it at scale. And I think that's really the challenge is reaching a variety of people. And again, what I've been thinking about in the future is a lot of this idea of trust and community partnerships.
Matthew Facciani:So, thinking about ways in which people can not only meet different people, expand their networks, diversify, but make it so institutions are having meaningful dialogue with their constituents, their local communities, and they feel the local communities feel heard, the institutions are, you know, talking with them, addressing their needs. And then hopefully, this is the ideal, maybe optimistic way, is that if we can kind of restructure and learn from a lot of these failures of institutions and have this cultural norm of working with each other, then you have these experts and scientists listening to people in their communities and working with them. So, it's not so much of this like outside group telling us what to do. It's like, oh, that's a scientist. I know them.
Matthew Facciani:They're not evil. They just study this weird thing. They're a big nerd and we can help each other solve whatever problem we're interested in. So, it's kind of interesting that as we get more and more technologically advanced, I think the in person human connection is only going to be more critical.
Josh Sheluk:And I know we need to get you out of here shortly. But speaking of technological advancement, we have AI now that's, I'd say it's pervasive in our daily lives. Think we'll all, let's just assume we all agree that it's going to be a real thing going forward. But I'd like you to let us know, what's your biggest fear with AI as it relates to misinformation? And what's your greatest hope or what gives you most optimism about it?
Josh Sheluk:One of
Matthew Facciani:my biggest worries is it's going to accelerate the decline of trust in each other and institutions. It's going to be an amplifier for a lot of the problems we already see. It's going to be an amplifier for inequalities. The people who use it and use it well are going to be more and more successful. People who don't know how to use it well are going to fall further behind.
Matthew Facciani:So it's like a lot of other technologies where the people who use it and keep up with it, you know, can do well. Like AI, I think is a positive tool for many things. I think that, like, it has, you can see a lot of promise with it. And so, of the promise in regards to, you know, fact checking and, you know, evaluating information at scale is interesting, is that it can save people a lot of work for, you know, trying to balance that asymmetry we talked about before. It's like, it's really easy to share a bunch of falsehoods and see them go viral.
Matthew Facciani:It's really hard to do the difficult work of fact checking. So if you can balance that scale a little bit with automation, then I think that's a potential positive. I do think that, you know, the optimistic side of AI could be that it reduces the amount of work that humans have to do. And that might mean we all have more free time. Like, that's kind of the utopian kind of thing.
Matthew Facciani:It's like, hey, like maybe actually this reduces the amount of total labor required of humans and we collectively will have more time to, you know, do art or just be with our friends and family and just enjoy life. So I do think there's a lot of promise of artificial intelligence as far as helping us be more efficient. But again, I I do worry that it's going to be used in very nefarious ways very successfully. So it's gonna be constantly being mindful of the limitations of AI in the future as well. So part of that, like digital is understanding these limitations of artificial intelligence.
Matthew Facciani:But, again, it's gonna be interesting to see just, like, as we go forward, I feel like there's gonna be so much AI slop in the Internet that I think people are gonna, like, turn away from the Internet because I know it's just all this homogenized junk that we almost just wanna go back to, like, meeting in person again. So it might be just, like, pendulums shift.
Colin White:And Matthew, we're we're we are getting close to time here, but I just wanna share an observation with you because you're the the burgeoning generation that kind of came into their own during the pandemic. And you have brought up personal connection as a solution to a lot of these issues repeatedly during this conversation. And I'm just saying sitting from my seat, that's kind of a interesting observation that, you know, coming from the pre pandemic world where that interaction was much more frequent. And I I do think that we're actually seeing the influence of your specific cohort that came through a period of time where that was limited at a very important time of development. And, you know, what the the outcome of that is.
Colin White:So I'm I'm fascinated by the way you talk. Like, that that's very interesting to to to observe and kind of that's interesting kind of way. So and maybe that's gonna be part of, you know, that that rebellion against that lack of contact at that certain point of that that cohort, the rebellion against that leading us back to desire for that connection is gonna be the superpower that that helps shape, you know, whatever this next chapter
Matthew Facciani:is. Yeah.
Kathryn Toope:Thank you. I I hope so.
Matthew Facciani:I hope I hope we can learn from these lessons, and I can have some small role in helping shift the conversation forward in a way that is productive. Yeah, I do think the social, I mean, that's my whole thing is that the social really matters and even though we're we're getting away with it away from it in in some ways, I think it's going to hopefully help us get back on track. Yeah. If we can be thoughtful about it.
Colin White:With your new position as czar of social media.
Josh Sheluk:Matti, thanks again for joining us today. Your book, Misguided, it's available now, is it?
Matthew Facciani:It is. The official date was actually July 8, but it's already in bookstores and in Amazon already. So people are actually getting it and like tagging me like, hey, just saw your book. Like I didn't even know my book was there. So yes, it's available.
Matthew Facciani:Amazon, I think actually has a sale for the ebook right now which is cool. And then directly from the Columbia Press website, if you use the CUP20 discount code, you can get the paper copy for 20% off. There's some preorder bonuses before the official release date, even though it's people are already getting the copies now.
Josh Sheluk:There you go. A little bonus for our listeners. And is there anything else related to your work, current research, anything else that you'd like to highlight that people should check out if they wanna hear more?
Matthew Facciani:So I do have a newsletter and a podcast, also called misguided to fit within my brand. So I interview people who are studying misinformation very broadly on my podcast or media literacy or how people process information. I get a variety of guests on there. So been fun. And then I summarize a lot of current work in the misinformation research landscape on my Substack, my newsletter.
Matthew Facciani:So if people are interested in that, they can follow my Substack and all my information also on my website. And then I'm on various social media platforms too.
Josh Sheluk:Beautiful. Beautiful. People should definitely check that out. And I think as as I reflect on our conversation today, it kind of reinforces some of the things that Colin and I talk about all the time in terms of the information that's out there, the way that we should be thinking about it critically, fact checking it, evaluating it, prebunking it Mhmm. Doing lateral reading, doing all these things to make sure that we're we're staying on top of of the right information at the right times and avoiding the pitfalls of using this misinformation, especially as it comes to our finances.
Josh Sheluk:Here on Bare Naked Money, we'll keep pushing that forward. And thanks again for joining us today, Matthew. It's been really awesome.
Matthew Facciani:Thank you. Thank you so much. It was great being on here with you guys.
Kathryn Toope:If your current financial adviser cannot explain how they and their firm are compensated, that's a problem. They really should be able to answer that question before you accept their advice. And if their answers leave you with more questions than confidence, it might be time to seek advice that aligns with your best interests. Contact us. No strings attached.
Kathryn Toope:You can find us at annoyingthecompetition.com. For more information on the subject of today's podcast or any other financial topic, please visit us online at Verecan.com. That's verecan.com. There's plenty of information there, or you can reach out to someone on the team. Thanks for listening.
Kathryn Toope:Please note, the information provided in this podcast is for general information purposes only. It is not intended as financial investment, legal tax, accounting, or other professional advice. Our discussions are not a solicitation to buy or sell any securities or to make any specific investments. Any decisions based on information contained in this podcast are the sole responsibility of the listener. We strongly advise consulting with a professional financial adviser before making any financial decisions.
Kathryn Toope:Listeners should be aware that investing involves risks and that past performance is not indicative of future results. Barenaked Money is produced by Verecan Capital Management Inc, a licensed portfolio management company in Canada. We operate under the regulatory framework established by the provincial securities commissions in the provinces within which we operate. The views expressed in the podcast are our own and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any regulatory authority. Remember, at Verecan Capital Management Inc, we focus on aligning our goals with yours, prioritizing integrity and transparency.
Kathryn Toope:For more information about us and our services, please visit our website. Thank you for listening, and let's continue to challenge the norms of the financial services industry together.