Tag Archives ⇒ corporations

The open (Quaker) web

April 23, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Chris Hardie’s semi-viral man­i­festo cham­pi­oning the open inter­net isn’t about Quak­erism per se, but Chris is a Friend (and one time web host to every­thing Quak­er with­in a hun­dred miles of Rich­mond, Ind.). Since the rise of cor­po­rate gate-keeping web­sites and then social media, I’ve wor­ried that they rep­re­sent some of the largest and least vis­i­ble threats to the Quak­er movement.

I use it all as a tool, for sure. But there are many ways in which we’re increas­ing­ly defined by cor­po­ra­tions with no Quak­ers and no inter­est in us except for what­ev­er engage­ment num­bers they can gen­er­ate. Look at the non­sense at many of the open Quak­er Face­book groups as an obvi­ous exam­ple. Peo­ple with lim­it­ed expe­ri­ence or knowl­edge and rel­a­tive­ly fringe ideas can eas­i­ly dom­i­nate dis­cus­sion just by post­ing with a fre­quen­cy that involved or care­ful Friends couldn’t match. Face­book doesn’t care if it’s a zoo as long as peo­ple come back to read the lat­est out­ra­geous com­ment thread. Just because the top­ic is Quak­er doesn’t mean the dis­course real­ly holds well to our val­ues, his­tor­i­cal or modern.

Add to this that Google and Face­book could make any of our Quaker-owned web­sites near­ly invis­i­ble with a tweak of algo­rithms (this is not hypo­thet­i­cal: Face­book has dinged most pub­lish­er Pages over the years).

The open web has a lot of plus­es. I’m glad to see a Friend among its promi­nent cham­pi­ons and I’d like to see Quak­er read­ers seek­ing it out more (most eas­i­ly by stray­ing of Face­book and sub­scrib­ing to blogs’ email lists). From Hardie:

Of course, there is an alter­na­tive to Face­book and oth­er walled gar­dens: the open web. The alter­na­tive is the ver­sion of the Inter­net where you own your con­tent and activ­i­ty, have min­i­mal depen­dence on third par­ty busi­ness mod­els, can dis­cov­er new things out­side of what for-profit algo­rithms show you, and where tools and ser­vices inter­act to enhance each oth­er’s offer­ings, instead of to stamp each oth­er out of existence.

https://​chrishardie​.com/​2​0​1​8​/​0​4​/​r​e​b​u​i​l​d​i​n​g​-​o​p​e​n​-​w​e​b​/​a​m​p​/​?​_​_​t​w​i​t​t​e​r​_​i​m​p​r​e​s​s​i​o​n​=​t​rue

This is how free speech gets shut down. #BoeingGate

December 6, 2016
· Martin Kelley

Ear­li­er today Don­ald Trump tweet­ed that Boe­ing was spend­ing $4 bil­lion dol­lars to ren­o­vate Air Force One. He was off the facts by orders of mag­ni­tude but that does­n’t mean he did­n’t know knew exact­ly what he was doing. It’s time we stop try­ing to read his tweets as exer­cis­es in truth find­ing. It does­n’t mat­ter if Trump did­n’t know or did­n’t care about his num­bers: With author­i­tar­i­ans, we must fol­low the effects, not the logic.

Trump’s tweet came less than half an hour after the Chica­go Tri­bune post­ed a few short quotes from the Boe­ing CEO say­ing they were con­cerned about the impli­ca­tions of trade with Chi­na under a Trump Admin­is­tra­tion. It was rel­a­tive­ly tame stuff and of course a multi­na­tion­al with bil­lions of dol­lars in Chi­na is going to be con­cerned. About a quar­ter of their air­crafts are built for the Chi­nese market.

But fol­low not the log­ic but the effect: if you crit­i­cize this pres­i­dent in pub­lic he will destroy your share­hold­er val­ue. Boe­ing lost half a bil­lion dol­lars in val­ue fol­low­ing Trump’s 140 char­ac­ters. Every CEO in Amer­i­ca will now have to think twice before speak­ing to the press. It would be fis­cal­ly irre­spon­si­ble to do oth­er­wise. A few quotes in a paper isn’t worth that amount of share­hold­er value.

Free speech isn’t just court cas­es or a few lines in the Con­sti­tu­tion. Even the CEOs of the largest cor­po­ra­tions in Amer­i­ca need to watch their tongues. Silenc­ing has begun.