success based on a simple performance metric creates a feedback
loop: people start chasing the metric rather than the underlying
quality it is trying to assess.
It’s a problem that can occur in any field. In the run up to the 2008
financial crisis, banks paid bonuses to traders and salesmen based
on their recent profits. This encouraged trading strategies that would
reap benefits in the short-term, with little regard for the future. Metrics
have even shaped literature. When Alexandre Dumas first wrote The
Three Musketeers in serialised form, his publisher paid him by the
line. Dumas therefore added the servant character Grimaud, who
spoke in short sentences, to stretch out the text (then killed him off
when the publisher said that short lines didn’t count).[75]
Relying on measurements like clicks or likes can give a misleading
impression of how people are truly behaving. During 2007–8, over 1.1
million people joined the ‘Save Darfur’ cause on Facebook, which
aimed to raise money and attention in response to the conflict in
Sudan. A few of the new members donated and recruited others, but
most did nothing. Of the people who joined, only 28 per cent recruited
someone else, and a mere 0.2 per cent donated.[76]
Despite these measurement issues, there has been a growing
focus on making stories clickable and shareable. Such packaging can
be highly effective. When researchers at Columbia University and the
French National Institute looked at mainstream news articles
mentioned by Twitter users, they found that almost 60 per cent of the
links were never clicked on.[77] But this didn’t stop some of the
stories spreading: users shared thousands of posts featuring one of
these never-clicked-on links. Evidently, many of us are happier to
share something than to read it.
Perhaps it’s not that surprising, given that certain types of
behaviour require more effort than others. Dean Eckles, a former data
scientist at Facebook, points out that it doesn’t take much to get
people to interact with social media in simple ways. ‘That’s a
behaviour that’s relatively easy to produce,’ he said.[78] ‘The
behaviour we’re talking about is whether your friends like or comment
on the post.’ Because people don’t have to put much effort into