Digitally enhanced deception is still just plain old dishonesty

AS the world throws its collective hands up in horror at the new reality of “post-truth” and “alternative facts” — the 2017 translation of “barefaced lies” — many people are merely bemused.

The “truth” is that they have had to deal with digital lies for many years. No, not fake news spread via digital means, but the fake promise of the digital world.

The most common example is a company that puts its customer relations processes online, and declares how much more convenient it will make people’s lives when they have issues, inquiries or complaints. In many cases, the mailbox linked to the anonymous online form is a dead end: a mere dustbin for customer communications.

In short, much like the fake fronts of old Western saloons on Hollywood movie sets, it is a digital façade with nothing behind it.

If you imagine this was a symptom of the early years of online business when companies were still making it up as they were going along, you are as gullible as those who fall for fake news. The digital façade remains with us, and new examples crop up every day.

Just this week, a family member took a car for a bumper repair to a panel beater that prides itself on being a hi-tech leader. Its website invites customers to “Track your progress online; 24 hours a day, just one click away”.

The interface is impressive: a 10-step dashboard that purports to show exactly where the car is in the process.

Except that the position of the needle on the dashboard bore little relationship to the car’s position in the workshop.

At some stages during the weeks it took to repair a mere bumper, the dashboard was a complete fiction. In short, a digital façade. Alternative facts, anybody? Today, thanks to the ubiquity of smartphones, you can carry this digital post-truth world with you. Call it the Uberisation of the digital façade. Talking of which, when one uses a certain well-known global ride-hailing app, the post-truth world can be screengrabbed with monotonous regularity.

Try calling a car from the airport. Any airport. It will tell you the vehicle is X minutes away. When you look again in X minutes’ time, it is still X minutes away. That is a daily occurrence for numerous users.

The panel beater boasts a “revolutionary approach to autobody repairs”. The ridehailing app adds an “additional airport parking charge” when collecting at the airport, even when it is abundantly clear that the driver is nowhere near any airport parking. Post-truth, anybody? There are many examples. From cellular network operators who claim to care about the customer when obfuscation of billing is core to their business models, to insurance companies with shiny, happy faces on the front of their customergrabbing marketing material but grumpy naysayers in the back-end of the insurance cover itself.

In other words, the real business of the business is not what the customer thinks is being bought from the business.

That is an age-old racket, but the digital façade makes it quicker, easier and more economical to lie to more customers more of the time.

There is an alternative to this post-truth digital world, and that is truth in advertising, and honesty in service. But clearly, alternative facts are a lot cheaper.

Goldstuck is founder of World Wide Worx and editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za. Follow him on Twitter @art2gee and on YouTube