We focus on how to enhance transparency and trust and mitigate disinformation in cases where information is easy to originate and amplify quickly and retractions serve little value from a socioeconomic standpoint.

Social media has democratized communication, increased our ability to access a global audience and reduced the cost of access to information. Unfortunately, it has also increased our vulnerability to impulse buying, to advertisements that make non-transparent claims, to the spread of disinformation or accurate information but contextualized in a manner intended to excite irrational responses or amplify pre-existing subliminal biases.

The increased vulnerability comes at a grave cost in terms of loss of trust in public institutions, net neutrality and amplification of rumours leading to loss of life or property. A study by Deloitte shows that a 10% increase in share of trusting people within a country will raise annual per capita real GDP growth by about 0.5%. This is a substantial gain over the global average of 2.2% during 2015-2019.