Ross Mayfield's Weblog

Advertising is not Democratic

I was disturbed to read a pandering post by a Google employee that decries Michael Moore's documentary Siko and offers advertising as a means for the U.S. health care industry.  Others were, and Google's official position that was no position.  Dan Farber has been following the story, and added this update:

Update 2: Now we have an explanation from Ms. Turner regarding how to read her post. She just meant to state Google’s position that “advertising is a very democratic and effective way to participate in a public dialogue.” I won’t argue with the idea of advertising as democratic. Anyone with the money or winning bid can get their message out into the ether.  But ads tend to be one-sided sales pitches without footnotes, not a public dialog. If we want a public dialog, having the two opposing sides in a public debate would be a far better way to educate the public.

I will argue with the idea of advertising as democratic.  It is the opposite.  Spending isn't speech.  Sure, U.S. health care can buy ads to be placed in context alongside public discourse.  But not everyone can.  It concerns me that the bright people at Google could be talking themselves into believing that either advertising is democracy, let alone that it helps democracy.

If the U.S. health care industry really wants to respond to Sicko, they will engage in, if not host, online communities for civic dialog.  However, most online communities these days are powered by advertising. Community hosts and ad networks have to balance against the very strong incentives to smudge context and placement until where the line between paid and unpaid content are blurred.  A balance is struck, not unlike between editorial and publishing in traditional media, but with a very big difference in that the audience has the choice to go elsewhere with a single click.  Or create their own without the influence of advertising. 

Speaking Up

Yesterday I was doing an interview and was asked about the prospect of social software for government.  I pointed out use cases for activism, government as an organization and how Socialtext had three prominent Democratic campaigns as customers.  Unfortunately and admittedly Dean, Kerry and Raseij lost.

I was asked if it was okay to have a political bias in business.  I explained that we had a decision point on if to serve a Republican campaign as a customer when the business was just four founders.  We did, and using the metaphor of a phone company, instilled a principle of non-discrimination for customers.

But just because you are in business does not mean that you should not strongly express your views as an individual and citizen.  For that, I thank Adam Bosworth for speaking up.

Off-Cycle Elections

Today is an off-cycle election in our fair City of Palo Alto.  Turnout is issue number one, issue number two is Measure A.  This post starts a little local, but stay with me, it's global.

Off-cycle elections are the weak link in the chain gang we call civic participation.  The electorate has been brought up in a broadcast world where we are told when to spend our attention.  Never mind that Measure A has a branding problem, or the state of our public schools risks termination of Proposition 13 proportions.  Or that when I went to school in Palo Alto that odd number meant cuts, closures and a sense that something in the world of our parents was broken (real estate costs today over the economy tomorrow, go figure -- Prop 13 is always relevant when discussing the California education system, as the shift from local property tax funding to state general funding is still felt today).  It's almost cliche to say that a vote for education is an investment in the future, but the context of consumerist growth, surely we have to save something.

The most contrary analysis I can find, a 1999 Berkeley report, shifted the blame from Prop 13 and the Serrano court decision that required equality of spending across the diverse wealth of the state.  Total State education spending has kept pace, but per-pupil spending has not relative to the nation.  Instead of the tax revolt being the cause of per-pupil under investment, it figures sheer population growth is to blame.  Regardless, the condition today is State funding has all but disappeared.  With Measure A, there is an opportunity under a $200 per year Parcel tax to leverage local allowable revenues.

I'm fairly certain that a strong turnout would help pass the measure, an exercise in more local democracy when less local has failed us.  Yes, this is a single issue, and more sweeping reform is needed, but when a wheel is in motion you need to ride it.

Sadly, I'm also certain the measure will fail by the most important measure.

Which brings me to the global point.  The reason I am going to vote today is not because I am so seeped in the issue.  A volunteer mom called today to circumvent mainstream attention to grab mine and tell me to get to the polls.  A social network was activated with a reminder about what matters at the right time.

Over in a land where they call neighborhoods boroughs, Andrew is running for Advocate.  The NYC Public Advocate is like the VP of New York, but with a charter not only for succession, but advocacy.  In an amazing net enabled campaign, Andrew Rasiej is going to use the tools of our more emergent and personal democracy to enable citizens to be advocates.  See a pothole, snap a picture with your camera phone to make transparent the plight of your city, and Andrew will make sure the guy inside sees it.  Andrew is going for public funding if he can get there with only $100 per donor any American will do.  As a funny aside to a serious issue, when I told my wife about it, she joked, "usually they are happy with $20!"  If we back Andrew with our iTunes budget, he is halfway to all be advocates.  See the video blog and you will know he is just the guy.

The office has only been held by two people in the history of the greatest city.  The most recent one knows how to work the party, not just for fundraising, but the mechanisms of turnout when it is but a token.

On September 13th, 2005, a most off-election cycle, especially in the wake of history -- something is going to happen.  Either mainstream attention will be elsewhere...well, actually, it's not an either/or...that's going to happen.  Most people will be watching the reality of their TV.  But someone is going to have donated what they can to help get the word out.  Someone is going to blog the idea to death.  Someone is going to grab their buddies and head to the polls.  Someone is going to hack the great reminder that gets to half of the people who care and are connected.  Smarter Mobs could revolt.

Let's face it, it's a sad fact that attention, be it scandal or otherwise, that drives us to the polls.  But perhaps we should use that and our attention getting machines to this simple purpose when we are otherwise told to be off.

UPDATE: Measure A Passed

Weak Signals to Strong Movements

Dina Mehta shares the tsunamihelp story for the Global Knowledge Review.

Today, I believe that no crisis on this scale or magnitude will ever be handled again without sms, blogs, and wikis. That social tools will become a natural extension of rapid adaptation to chaotic conditions. I'm still trying to figure out how it all happened. What was it that put my colleagues and me on the global stage answering news requests? It was all viral and we were on a completely "out of control" ride and yet somehow it all worked.

These are my reflections...

Do read on. The story is more than weak signals channeled through social tools in ways mainstream media cannot. People, driven by the heart, had already established practice to apply from other experiences. This latent network activated to become a strong movement in a startlingly short amount of time.

While all the participants deserve praise, I'd like to commend the volunteer effort Constantin Basturea put into wiki for tsunamihelp.

A Democracy of Tags

Peeter Marvet made a 10 minute screencast in English that provides a tour of Estonian e-government sites, explains where tagging to provide feedback to elected officials could fit in and asks you to provide feedback on the concept.

Watch this and you will wish your country had today's level of interaction with government officials. One of the great things about a small country is the ability to make swift change and test new approaches to government. How would you improve the system? For example, one e-government site requires you affiliate yourself with a group in order to provide feedback -- how could group forming be supported?

In related news, President Rüütel issued a statement yesterday against the internet voting act passed by the Parliament, which wire services are interpreting as a veto, even though he has no such power. His principle concern is Identity (60% of the population has electronic ID cards already). The devil is certainly in the details of this system, but again, here is an opportunity for Identity experts to weigh in from afar.

Group Rethink

Great article in Technology Review by Michael Fitzgerald on how social software helps groups make better decisions:

Creating a communications infrastructure that fosters a healthy democracy has been a concern of the United States since its founding. Newspaperman and intellectual Walter Lippmann once noted that the real trouble with both the press and representative democracy is "the failure of self-governing people to transcend their casual experience and their prejudice by inventing, creating, and organizing a machinery of knowledge." That machinery may finally have arrived.

[via eastwikkers]

Vote by Tag

The Estonian Parliment approved internet voting, which led Peeter Marvet to prototype this example of using tags to collect a richer form of public opinion for decision makers.  This may remind you of Vote Links, but it is really a simpler way to coordinate feedback with practices.

Government 2.0 Slammed

When I came back from talking about Emergent Democracy at Howard's Cooperation Studies class at Stanford, I saw a post about Government 2.0 (my first "nofollow") -- and shot this off in haste to the Extreme Democracy editors:

Seriously, there needs to be a concerted effort to slam this consumption-based model of emergent democracy.

I implore you to read the whole thing by Jon Lebkowsky at WorldChanging about William Eggers on "Government 2.0", or politics as "constituent relationship management" vs a politics of democratic deliberation.

So while nonprofits and campaign organizations are still focusing on top-down organization to raise money and build less informed support, other groups are working to build environments for a deeper kind of democracy that's based on collaboration, talking, listening, and learning, much of it mediated by social technology. I can't imagine that democratic social networks will quickly replace the consumption-based model, but we may be seeing sustainable evolution.

Mitch Ratcliffe opens his Notebook, to summarize William Eggers' Government 2.0 argument:

Citizens become customers, but customers don't get to set the rules of the market. Instead, they make the best deal they can given the offers available, and that has nothing to do with government and democracy. It's a social Darwinist environment in which the most influential participants (them that gots the money) set the rules of the game.

All I want is a government that deliberates and cooperates with me, my groups and our voices in a way that apathy is irrational.