Recently, one of my twitter accounts was suspended and I have received the following violation message “You may not use Twitter’s services in a manner intended to artificially amplify or suppress information or engage in behavior that manipulates or disrupts people’s experience on Twitter”.
The thing is I have been using this account for over a few months now mainly for engaging with my crypto projects and friends. In fact, the account is connected to many web3 platforms that will negatively affect my activities and portfolio if the suspension took a longer period of time.
One of the main reasons why decentralization is becoming increasingly popular in the realm of innovation is because there are always limitations on what we can say or do. While we have some freedom to access and share information, we often lack full control and rights over that information, especially when we use different platforms or go through different institutions.
Another significant issue is the ownership of data, where a small number of companies collect people’s data and either use it or sell it for profit, often without people realizing their data has been taken from them. To be clear, I am not against having laws and regulations or monitoring what is posted because some stuff is inappropriate for children while others may be harmful or offensive.
However, I am completely opposed to not being truthful with my own audience and to having double standards. The preceding paragraph does not clarify anything specific, and to be honest, I still don’t know what I violated! Is it against Twitter’s usage rules to support or engage with web3 projects, or is it simply a matter of rephrasing terms and phrases to place people in specific categories and suspend them because they do not follow our wishes?
Fortunately, in the Twitter scenario, I have other accounts that will help me to mitigate the risk. However, it will undoubtedly have an influence on some of the projects I am engaged with, given the Web3 space relies heavily on Twitter and Discord for the majority of its operations.
A similar case was mentioned clearly in my recent book, The Brand Dependence Model: Identify & Mitigate Your Danger Blocks, where an influencer on a platform such as Instagram spent tremendous amount of time and effort to build a decent loyal community to find out that Instagram have changed their algorithm which will affect all of his hard work in the past few years. This highlight a common tendency to overlook important variables that can impact our personal brands or goals.
While we can simply blame Twitter or Instagram for their unethical strategies, we shouldn’t stop blaming ourselves for not having contingency plans for our important activities and actions.
We often become dependent on a single platform or strategy without fully realizing the potential risks and consequences it poses in the long run. I’m very interested to tackle the behavioral side of this case. In these situations, several cognitive biases come into play, influencing our decision-making processes and habits. Let us go through few of the most obvious biases that affects us, especially in the context of the scenarios above.
Availability Heuristic Bias
The availability heuristic bias leads us to rely on readily available information when making judgments or decisions. In the twitter context, one could heavily depend on the success and visibility they had achieved on Twitter, overlooking the potential risks associated with depending solely on that platform. Similarly, the Instagram influencer overlooked the possibility that the algorithm could change, affecting their hard-earned community. Understanding this bias allows people to be more cautious about drawing conclusions based entirely on readily available experiences or information in their memory. They can actively seek out additional information, evaluate alternative perspectives, and make more balanced and educated decisions.
Omission Bias
Another relevant bias is the omission bias, where inaction or maintaining the status quo is perceived as less risky or preferable. We may underestimate the risks of not diversifying our online presence or exploring alternative channels for our business or efforts. This bias can prevent us from taking proactive measures to mitigate potential dangers. Understanding this bias allows individuals to more objectively examine the potential consequences of both action and inaction. It encourages people to consider the potential effects of failing to act in specific situations, minimizing the risk of biased decision-making that favors inaction.
Loss Aversion
Loss aversion bias also plays a role. It leads us to strongly prefer avoiding losses rather than acquiring gains. We become averse to the idea of diversifying our online presence or exploring other platforms due to the fear of losing the audience, reputation, or progress we have achieved on a particular platform. Recognizing this bias encourages people to critically evaluate their own risk tolerance as well as potential biases that may develop from an excessive fear of losses. It helps people to make more reasonable decisions by taking into account prospective profits as well as losses and assessing options based on their whole projected worth rather than just avoiding losses.
To address these biases and reduce the impact on our brands or goals, the Brand Dependence Model Book provides a simple but effective model to pinpoint our overlooked dependence variables and identify & mitigate the most severe variable that impacts our brands/goals utilizing a straightforward risk assessment framework.
It is essential to develop proactive habits. We need to consider potential risks, evaluate the long-term sustainability of relying on a single platform, and actively explore alternative strategies to safeguard our activities. Building contingency plans, diversifying our online presence, and continuously monitoring industry trends can help us adapt and minimize the negative consequences of relying too heavily on a single option.
While external factors may contribute to the challenges we face, it is important to hold ourselves accountable and develop habits that promote resilience and adaptability. By being aware of these biases and actively seeking ways to overcome them, we can navigate the ever-evolving digital landscape more effectively and protect our personal brands and goals.
Ahmed Al-Ansari
Founder of Alansari Studios, Co-Founder of Impressco. Author, Researcher, Media, Marketing, & IT Consultant from the Kingdom of Bahrain.
