ST 2007: "Putting our money where our mouth is" indeed

[sigma7]

Not directly ST related, but certainly some asshaberdashery afoot here. (Edit: see the comments for some really intriguing discussion. It's taken my mind in some pretty interesting directions. Or maybe that's just the Unisom talking. Still, I like it when I get to process more information like this; much more interesting than just parroting.) Remember the donations 6A was offering during the beginning of the permanent account sale?

EFF is the world’s leading advocate of freedom of speech on the web; RAINN is the United States' largest anti-sexual assault organization; Creative Commons is the global organization pioneering alternate licenses to traditional copyright in order to allow sharing, remixing and reusing content; and Witness works to use video and online technologies to open the eyes of the world to human rights violations.

If you decide to buy a permanent account during the first 36 hours of the sale, $25 of your purchase will shared with these organizations. Or, if you prefer, you'll have the option to earmark the donation from your purchase for only one of these groups. So you're in control of how much we donate and which organizations will benefit.

oulangi followed the money: All but one of these organizations has deep ties to Joi Ito, the President & CEO of Neoteny venture Capital group. You know, the people who put up the money to buy 6A. YOU people in other words. If you want to use us, your LJ customer base to raise money for your pet causes, fine. But at the VERY LEAST you should have acknowledges these links, instead of painting this as altruism on your parts. It's shady.

EFF - An organization that MAY well "advocate free speech on the web" (something 6A doesn't, but another argument, another time) BUT EFF has also been involved in court cases that have benefited Joi Ito's business/person. [1] [2]
RAINN - Real charity, needed work. Also awesome window dressing to lend this "charity drive" credibility?
Creative Commons - Which Joi Ito helped found, and sits on the board. [1]
WITNESS - which Joi Ito is on the board. [1]

I'm sorry, I didn't wake up today wanting to kick 6A in the teeth relentlessly. But damned if they didn't ask for it on this one. Thanks to indigoskynet for the pointer.

And for frivolty's sake....

How will you be suspended from LJ? by Anonymous LJ User
Username
Years on LJ
Snape	HotNot
Hours left until your suspension	46
Your crime	Posting all that damn porn!
Who reported you	dvandom
Your fate	On usenet, kicking it old school.

Comments

[lacunarity.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, but what's the problem here? Of course they have connections to the charities. That's how corporate charity contributions work, and how a business can tell if a charity will actually use its contributions well. It's a level of accountability. Business people who are highly successful also have the skills and connections to make a charity successful, so they're often on the boards. It's a normal practice.

6A have done some questionable things recently, but this isn't one of them. They don't benefit from the donations, the charities are legitimate. No disclosure was needed or even expected.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

No, it's no James Bond villain plot or anything (though I don't think I'd be surprised anymore if Barak posted about his fully-operational space station or his weather-controlling machine and listed his ransom demands), but I'd think you'd want to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Though as you and querldox note, the EFF and RAINN go well beyond this.

And it could just be a case of the left hand (tentacle?) not knowing what the right appendage was doing. Or just another symptom of the 6A mindset: do the right thing in the worst possible way.

[lacunarity.livejournal.com]

Who am I to disagree with a 12th level intellect? :D

6A really does seem to be awful at the whole "dealing with the people who use their service" thing. You'd think a company big enough to buy lj would be big enough to hire competent people to outline and enforce lj's rules.

I think most the problems we've been having are due to the different expectations of the corporate and fandom world. 6A doesn't think their connections to the charities are important because it's normal in their world, but the users feel betrayed when they learn about the connection. The fandom generally understands that fanworks of underage characters are distinct from child porn, but 6A (and, well, the legal system) don't see that distinction.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

Who am I to disagree with a 12th level intellect? :D

I think, by definition, that makes you a Legionnaire.

That's an excellent distinction, though -- corporate mindset and fandom mindset might as well be two different species. And not especially compatible, I think we've determined. Maybe this is why we find so little slash-fic being distributed in corporate boardrooms. (Er, I mean, I'm guessing.)

[querldox.livejournal.com]

I'm missing what the big deal is. SA was under no obligation to make any charitable donation (and in fact one could avoid doing so by just waiting 36 hours). And, as they did note in the post, These organizations reflect our values, and we hope they reflect yours. So is it shocking that folk at or associated with SA might also be associated with the charities?

Trying to link EFF with benefiting someone's business without much more substantial proof (and I'll note that's the only one where any of these "deep ties" are, y'know, actually specified in any way) strikes me as ludicrous, but then I know EFF's head and their general attitudes as an organization since it was founded. I've generally heard good things about RAINN, and while I have issues with some of the more extreme Creative Commons folk, there's a lot of causes I'd consider worse to donate to.

Certainly one should try to investigate to some degree any charity you want to give money to. But that investigation should cover how they spend money, how much of money raised actually goes to the cause rather than administrative and fundraising overhead, etc. Not whether part of the org volunteering to give money to them is somehow, with an implied but not stated or evidence provided for, nefariously, "involved" with the charity.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

Very good points; is there a term for tending to assign nefarious qualities to a relatively benign (or at least less malicious) entity when available data is at best ambiguous? (I'm also keeping v_voltaire's awesome Question icon in mind.) Because I think I just keep expecting 6A to be some SPECTRE-like conspiracy of mayhem when they're probably just ill-coordinated (to the point of catastrophic syncronicity) and ill-prepared for the situations they've found themselves in....

[aardy.livejournal.com]

is there a term for tending to assign nefarious qualities to a relatively benign (or at least less malicious) entity when available data is at best ambiguous?

Well, there's Hanlon's Razor (also variously attributed to Napoleon, Heinlein, and a few others): "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." (Though the way I first heard it, and generally prefer, is "Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence.")

[kateshort.livejournal.com]

You know, I didn't find too much strange about this either. In putting together charity deals, or going about getting donations, one often goes with what one knows. For all we know, LJ/6A could have had other charities that they'd wanted to work with, but for some reason those charities didn't want to work with them. Alternately, LJ/6A just thought up a few charities that they knew best, ones that happened to mostly have one person in common.

I mean, okay, let's say 3 out of the 4 have ties to this one businessperson. They're still charities. Remember also, people had the option not to donate to any of them by waiting out the three days if they didn't like those options. Heck, LJ/6A could have just decided to donate the same few thousand dollars to those charities regardless of the permanent account sale. If that had been the case, would people have blinked?

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

Well, what's the political axiom -- it's not the crime, it's the coverup? And the sad thing is, there may not be a crime nor even a coverup -- like you said, this may just be run-of-the-mill charity work in the valley. Beats the hell out of me.

But in this atmosphere of fandom vitriol that we find ourselves in, the perception of wrongdoing -- or perception of a coverup -- is enough. If you're approaching this from the I-wants-my-Weasleycest mindset, it fits and enlarges that perception of 6A. Maybe this effect could've been diffused by clarification, but as noted above, maybe nobody saw this in the grumpy fandom perspective (I'm halfway there) and even connected those dots.

It is oddly Rorschachian; I think what people see in this little confluence depends to a degree on their preexisting perception of 6A. (And a bit on their familiarity with dealings in the valley.)

[paradisacorbasi.livejournal.com]

I guess it's just the timing makes it look worse than it is.

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

I deny everything.

[alasdair.livejournal.com]

All that says to me is that Joi Ito has his fingers in a lot of good pies. Every last one of those organisations is well worth the funding.