Stop the Infodemic of Misinformation
Perhaps the 2020 election will have changed the White House, perhaps not. Either way, the U.S. is still a united country divided by too much. However, from watching the news and speaking to friends and colleagues around the world, it’s clear that conflict is universal right now.
But it’s not politics or pandemics that are at the root of a lot of this, it’s misinformation and bad data.
The WHO uses the term “infodemic” to describe how fake news and rumor has made trustworthy information harder to disseminate. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, “We’re not just battling the virus, we’re also battling the trolls and conspiracy theorists that push misinformation and undermine the outbreak response.”
It’s exactly the same in politics. People have lost a sense of who or what to trust so they often believe the statement which is closest to what they already assume. Facts have become no more than opinions. Misinformation, supported by online complexity and intentional misdirection, has become a key crisis of our age.
In 1991, there was 1 website — in 2020, there’s more than 1 billion. Simply, there’s too much data and too much of it is bad.
In the midst of an election characterized by mistruths and falsehoods, I have three key principles:
- Reset — Put aside political, business, or any other kind of divisions and accept that we have a monumental task in front of us to restore trust and promote growth. We already know that outcomes are better when we work together. At Corsearch, we’re trying to put together industry groups where our clients can talk to each other and share best practices. This is especially true for brand protection where collaboration can reduce costs and increase impact.
- Respect — Return to civility. It shouldn’t need saying, but it does.
- Reshape — We change the data paradigm by providing more transparency through the system with tools that empower users. Give people facts based on solid, broad coverage and then give them systems to let them act and manage their decisions.
The last one is crucial for me because it’s not just politics or healthcare, it’s business too. I speak to a lot of our clients and they feel overwhelmed by the complexity of the online space, but they don’t yet have the tools to hold it all together.
I know brand protection professionals who are conducting hundreds of investigations in multiple global jurisdictions. They need accurate data drawn from a broad range of sources to support them. But they also need systems which make it easy to use that data to benefit their brands. Stop infringement & impersonation, manage risk, enhance performance.
This is why we’ve been investing heavily in making Corsearch the biggest provider of brand risk and performance data services and tools. We cover trademark jurisdictions for search and watch, monitor platforms for brand abuse, and guard the world’s search engine gateways for pirated content. We’re putting that all together.
We’re staking our future on making the data better so that the rule of law can be put back into the digital wild west.
But we’re also about to go further…
I have been listening to a lot of our customers lately and there is a huge missing piece that will help them cut through bad data, fake listings, and IP infringement. We’ve created a system to help brands manage that from end to end in a way that puts them in control of the data again.
We’re currently finishing up our development on this but expect big things. The only company that can do trademarks, brand protection, and piracy protection will also be the only company to give you a functional tool that will give you a place to log, pursue, and resolve the protection of your brand!
By Tobias Hartmann, CEO of Corsearch
