I’ve written about trust before, but I wanted to briefly talk about trust in this new age we live in on the omnipresent (and perhaps least trustworthy) medium of our day and age: the internet.
There’s a certain amount of stock you can put into the learned body language and life experience of social interactions. When I meet someone for the first time, look into their eyes, listen to their voice, shake their hand – there’s a certain amount of trust that can be gained by these action alone. There’s a bit of social bonding that occurs that instills a trustworthiness in a person.
This, of course, is impossible in the wilds of the Internet, a land where you’re lucky to get more than a concocted screenname and a picture of an animated cat.
For me, the best measure of trust on the Internet turns out to be the old-fashioned one: knowing the person in “real life.” This is a luxury in some cases; I can’t personally get to know every online vendor I buy from.
So the Internet has built its primary trust foundation instead on brand recognition. I trust Amazon with my credit card information because so many other people do (and, once I’ve ordered a few times, based on past experience). I trust an email from a corporate email account because I know that people can’t just buy email accounts with the @ea.com tacked onto the end of it. I trust Wikipedia to be a somewhat reliable fact-checking source because so many other people use it when they seek knowledge.
Rarely in real life would we be comfortable place our trust in something primarily because it has the popular vote. We try to find recommendations from friends, references from previous buyers/employers, our gut when we meet the person. On the Internet, we simply plug into the hive mind and trust the crowd.
Is that any less reliable or any more dangerous? Or is it just a different way to judge who and what to trust, no better, no worse?
