Thought leader or misinformer? How companies are ruining the internet
It's ridiculously difficult to find useful information and truth in the places you expect to find it. Opinion: the commercialization of content is to blame. Read more.
I will preface this by saying that this is an opinion. I base my perspective on years of writing web content for commercial businesses, being a seasoned consumer of social media content, and someone who turns to Google to answer even the dumbest of questions.
End of disclaimer.
Politicians and social media influencers are allegedly the main culprits behind the age of misinformation on the internet. I’ve personally seen seasoned professionals in fields like psychology wage TikTok wars on Zoomer posts on how being schizophrenic is just a trauma response and having restless leg syndrome is a clear sign of autism.
While yes, people who don’t know what they’re talking about probably shouldn’t share regurgitated and misinterpreted science journals. But is that really the biggest problem?
I consider myself relatively educated (feel free to debate this). So I am not at risk of joining a cult or radical group based on a few Facebook posts — for now. But where I have felt the most deceived or confused by content was not on “fun” platforms like Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok. I don’t expect serious information to be shared there.
It’s on Google, LinkedIn, and, consequently, at work.
If everyone’s a thought leader, nobody is
There are a lot of grand proclamations of expertise on LinkedIn. And as an active player in the tech rat race, I can’t escape it. People in their late twenties and early thirties claim to have 10+ years of experience in leadership, branding, design, writing — you name it. Why?
I honestly don’t know.
Maybe they think that people will find it impressive? Who doesn’t want to hire a young, hungry professional with a decade of knowledge under their belt — if it were true. By that logic, I have 25+ years of experience since Kindergarten circa 1996. The reality is that nothing before 2016 was worth shit. My overall work experience started in 2011 in a bar where I made flyers, served customers, and serving drinks. But I’m not claiming to have 12 years of experience in marketing and customer success. Did these experiences help me? Sure. But I would be misrepresenting myself if I packaged it this way.
So how do I compete with prodigies who have been writing professional, compelling copy since the start of high school? I can’t.
Angry rant about LinkedIn
This desperate need for so many people to be a thought leader so quickly leads to: if I have a decade or decades of experience in this, why don’t I tell everyone how to do things?
The grandiosity expands beyond the resume and profile. The sheer number of repetitive, obvious, and impractical “how to” posts is beyond triggering. And why it bothers me so much is because they’re not helpful, often not true, and they oversimplify what is often a complex field. My own, for example, is often reduced to three things you need to know that most people learn in third grade. And then there’s all the virtue signaling from others who are doing the exact same thing, but that’s a whole other topic and I digress.
Many people, besides paid writers, still write at work and read books about writing. So they’ve grasped a couple of things here and there.
That’s great, but there are dozens of other skills, rules, and best practices beyond advice like: always use the second person. I have seen people selling courses on something after they’ve read a handful of books on it. Boom! Expert. And they’re posting once or twice a day because another “expert” on LinkedIn growth posted that this is how you build a following.
I think I’ve made my point.
What TikTok teens and LinkedIn bros have in common
So-called social media psychology experts seem to produce their highly controversial content through the same thought process.
I say controversial because there were several lectures I had to endure on this exact subject while doing my masters in psychology. Here’s how their thought process looks from where I stand as consumer and observer: if I am diagnosed with a mental disorder that I’ve lived with my whole life, who better to give diagnostic and coping advice than me? .
Whether it’s the fake it till you make it attitude or a genuine desire to help that does more damage than good, the outcome that people should be more wary of is that it’s ridiculously difficult to find useful information and truth in the places you expect to find it. The internet should make knowledge more accessible.
But when anyone can manipulate channels to showcase themselves, it’s a breeding ground for more misinformation.
Misinformation vs disinformation: there’s a difference
Whether you agree or disagree, people expect to find the truth online — on the web or in their social media feeds. Another debatable opinion is that most people lack the critical thinking skills — due to education or lack of interest — to fact-check or validate the information they find, especially when it aligns with what they already think. Good old confirmation bias.
I have been guilty of phrasing a question to get the answer I want in Google to make myself feel better. I am also human and deeply flawed. While it may seem a bit harsh to label people trying to hustle or share online as an anti-truth virus spread by algorithms, hear me out.
Misinformation definition
Misinformation is inaccurate information and is often not intended as harmful. On the other hand, disinformation like propaganda or sponsored content is deliberately untrue or created with a disguised ulterior motive. What I’m talking about is the former, not the latter.
Like everything, content in either category falls on a spectrum of harmful to innocent, but that would depend on what it is and your code of ethics. Is being honest more important than earning likes or cash? What do you think a company cares about more?
Commercialization of content and the decline in truth
Here’s a controversial thought: selling a product in a competitive space always involves embellishment, omission of faults, and, when poorly done, overt superlatives — the best, most innovative, top-rated, yada yada yada.
Then there’s the other type of commercial content, a term I have mixed feelings about — thought leadership marketing. This, not always but often, is the publishing and distribution of content that cements a brand as an expert in a field. It is written by a team of people who are by no means experts in that field. It is approved by people who are not experts in that field. They all work in a company founded and run by people who are also not experts in that field. And this is all done with no budget or access to people to interview in that field. * deep breath *
Getting back to misinformation.
There are many forms of misinformation — I always find things easier to grasp when they’re well-defined and have contextual examples. Here are the different types of misinformation , according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and examples I’ve encountered in real life:
Fabricated Content: Content that has absolutely zero truth to it. I have been tasked with preparing content presenting a product as fully AI-automated when it was not.
Manipulated Content: Distorted but genuine content. As someone responsible for ads, it is often difficult to control the landing page the ads direct to as it changes from the onset of the brief. The ad presents a way to improve a process that used to link to a landing page, then the target page is swapped to a signup page with a discount because it might perform better.
Imposter Content: Content that falsely takes credit for another brand or company’s reputation or information. I was once asked to review a report that relied on data that included no source or mention of the original work — an attempt at a thought leadership piece. You can probably guess what my feedback was.
Misleading Content: Information presented as facts that aren’t. An example of this that led me, among other factors, to quitting one company: I was given an exponential graph — the classic bell curve — and asked to come up with something to put on the axes. I’m not kidding.
False Context: Accurate content with not-so-accurate contextual information — think clickbait titles. If you Google anything on the web looking for an answer, you will likely encounter a page that is 80% asinine general knowledge around the topic. And it ranks high enough for you to have seen it. It may not even answer your question at all.
False Connections: When headlines, visuals, or captions do not support the content. It happens when organization structures and cultures don’t value creative outputs as a whole and don’t give people enough time to collaborate. When one person does the visuals then sends it to the other to write or vice versa then the result is often Frankensteined and incoherent. Then if a marketing or SEO manager is allowed to change headings and titles however they please, the results are even worse.
Sponsored Content: Ads or PR disguised as editorial content. I once ghostwrote an article for Forbes way back that was published with multiple links to casino sites — paid for by a company but not marked as sponsored. I see less and less of this now. Nice job internet.
The role of writers and SEO in all this madness
Just to be clear, I am not demonizing businesses — I’ve been fortunate enough to work at some great tech startups on projects and full time. So why are things the way they are? Is this the only way?
Yes and no.
It isn’t easy to grow a tech startup into a successful company. Budgets and resources are low, and expectations year-on-year are high. One of the cheapest ways to get a product more visibility is through organic traffic. And I’ll be blunt — the content that does the job here is often vacuous, boring, and heavily reliant on the research and expertise of your competitors (both in terms of brands and other pages that rank for the topics related to your product).
The sad turth is that you don’t need to write something novel or compelling to get results. And writing something novel and compelling by no means guarantees results. By nature, companies care more about results and return on time invested than quality, especially when in the startup survival mode. The outcome? Their avid efforts to rank makes it near impossible to find useful, beyond-surface-level content. Even a simple recipe is prefaced by a two-thousand-word life story nobody asked for. Just keywords cushioned in fluff text.
Now let’s talk about paid ads.
Presenting the same product and value offering in an infinite number of outputs at a speed that far outpaces feature development is what creative professionals are expected to do. This often comes at the expense of highlighting or exaggerating accolades and benefits that tiptoes around the definition of misinformation. If you’re shaking your head how about you write 150 unique and Google search ads about the same product in one go and let me know how you did it.
I’m not even being sarcastic, I’d love to know. DM me your hacks on LinkedIn. Link in bio.
How I keep a copywriting job without hating myself
Yes, I still work at a commercial business, like it, and plan to continue.
And yet I have a profound moral issue with the approach many companies have to SERP rankings, advertising, and pitching themselves to the world — success paved by misinformation. But not all of them are like that. Though you sometimes need to do what you need to do because being a moral, upstanding person still comes with bills.
But this doesn’t change the fact that people don’t like bullshit. I’m not particularly eager to write bullshit. And I don’t want to be associated with advocates for bullshit. There’s enough bullshit in the world.
Practical ways to write without misinforming
Here are the bullshit-countering principles I strive for when writing content I’m paid to write:
Do not shy away from bold, radical statements rooted in what you stand for, which are always true and often unique. Strive to have the things you write questioned for being too honest and raw — then tone it down later.
Write hooks and catchy titles after you’ve finished an article or landing page and not before. That way, you have the full picture and are less likely to misrepresent the piece and write something clickbaity. You’ll also have had time to mull over it long enough to come up with something creative.
Mentions of awards and accolades must clearly explain how they are awarded. And even if you have hundreds of positive reviews, you are never #1 or the best because that’s bullshit (convince me otherwise). If anything I have ever written has best or number one written there, it’s because someone added it in for reasons I described earlier.
You can be creative and draw your own conclusions with graphs, data, and information so long as access to the full picture is there, you are clear on how and where this information is gathered and interpreted, and any third party sources are cited.
Be vocal against the proliferation of vapid, purely keyword-driven content. Find allies that understand that not everything is quantifiable — and that great short-term results can often hurt long-term results.
In the words of Melania Trump, be best
At the root of most misinformation is the wrong execution of the right intention.
You know some people will benefit from your sub-par product, say so without claiming to be the best for everyone. You’ve been doing what you do for a long time and are good at it. Don’t lie about your titles and years of experience because the truth should be enough — if it’s not, you’ll find out.
Stop relying on Canva-made carousel posts by self-proclaimed experts on LinkedIn for career or professional advice unless you trust them. Trust should be earned by researching who they are, not in the all-knowing algorithm that shoved it in your face.
Don’t judge a person by their resume or what they claim to know. Instead focus on how they speak, their ideas, and the actions you see them take. Some of the most competent people I know and have worked with don’t have a shiny resume or a decade of experience, while many of the most incompetent people had it all. Take it with a grain of salt. Learning to be more skeptical and observant, especially when hiring or taking advice, has massively helped me.
Mental or medical health advice from teens on TikTok or anonymous Redditors is a hard no. But seeking comfort in shared experiences and relating to the stories of others can be invaluable. It’s something that has helped me in times where I was unable to reach out for professional help.
And as a final note:
Continue to share your experiences, knowledge, and skills and keep in mind that you are enough without the BS. Your perspective and opinions are always valid — but you can express them without expecting it to be the truth for everyone.
