February 10th, 2006
Blogger Defensiveness
Bloggers are great at channeling outrage, but when it comes to their own affairs — or pet topics — they are uniquely defensive (I include myself in this critique). I’ve been trying to sort through the FON “scandal,” and the efforts to defend the bloggers involved has lead to some rather tortured explanations. Take David Weinberger’s defense of Wendy Seltzer:
Wendy says in her second sentence that she is on the board of advisors and it is true that she doesn’t then say the words Rebecca longs to hear: “Boards of advisors are typically compensated.” The suggestion that Wendy was trying to mislead her readers is absurd; if that were her aim, she would not have mentioned that she is an advisor. Yet the failure of some advisors explicitly to say “And we may be compensated” is the basis of Rebecca’s article.
Okay, let’s get real. “Disclosure” should have one overriding goal: full, complete, and UNAMBIGUOUS transparency. We can all find fault with Rebecca Buckman’s WSJ article that precipitated this dust-up, but as lobbyists in Washington are learning post-Abramoff, even the APPEARANCE of impropriety is to be avoided at all costs.
It understandable that David Weinberger would want to defend Wendy Seltzer, but it doing so he suggests that it’s okay to be ambiguous about whether “advisors” are compensated. I think Rebecca Buckman — and the entire online community — are fully justified in longing to hear: “Boards of advisors are typically compensated.”
That Wendy was not TRYING to mislead is missing the point. If the circumstances were sufficiently ambiguous for the WSJ article to be written and published in the first place, then the fault lies with FON and its blogger advisors. Instead of parsing who said or disclosed what, all of the bloggers involved should have stood up and said, “We’re going to aspire to a higher standard. We’re going to bend over backwards to make it clear that we’re completely above board. Our perceived failure to address the compensation issue is indeed a failure, and we’re going to correct that mistake going forward.”
It’s frustrating to feel that you have been unfairly accused, but in matters of propriety, the “grown-up” response is to take responsibility for the confusion, rather than churn out posts that read like federal court cases. To do otherwise leaves an aura of doubt.
I also found it fascinating that the word “gatkeepers” emerged again in the debate over FON. Tristan Louis echoed my post on gatekeepers, which generated no end of defensive flack, and the same is true with Tristan’s post. Here’s some classic defensiveness from Doc Searls in response to Tristan:
We’ve heard a lot about this before. I’ll grant that there’s a power-law curve, as Clay Shirky was perhaps the first to point out. But the notion of “membership” is a stretch at best. Clubbiness? As David Weinberger said yesterday, There’s lots to discuss there. I find the question of the “clubby atmosphere” to be especially compelling. But the Internet blew away the porches of membership. You don’t need to bark at a door you can just as easily walk around.
and
Among topics I pay the most attention to here (the Net, snowballing, podcasting, and disruption in general, to name a very few current ones), the topics are the first filter. Sources are second. And there the writing matters more than the writer. If you don’t know me, you stand a better chance of getting pointed to in my blog if you write something interesting (and syndicated) about a subject I’m caring about, than by belonging to any particular “club,” including the blogroll on the right, which I check less and less often.
You also stand a good chance if you simply send me an email (as Tristan did) or mention my name in a post (because I subscribe to feeds of searches for that, in addition to a variety of keyword searches).
Even if Doc strives for inclusiveness in his gatekeeping, he IS a gatekeeper and membership in his “club” is limited by definition (unless he reads a million blogs a day). And that’s OKAY. Gatekeeping is necessary to filter the endless sea of information — but defensiveness about the existence of Gatekeepers is serves no useful purpose.
Of course, my current pet topic — wondering about the Orwellian nature of Google — has brought forth an avalanche of defensiveness. Not a day passes that the headlines don’t support my thesis (and it’s just a thesis mind you, not an assertion of incontrovertible fact). Take today’s headline from EFF: Google Copies Your Hard Drive - Government Smiles in Anticipation. The reaction from Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Watch is classic:
The EFF is worried and warns not to use the feature. Should you be worried? If you are, you do not have to use that feature. But what about the unsuspecting user who doesn’t fully understand that data is being stored of a period of time at Google? I can see a reason for concern there. Can we trust Google with our data?
The bottom-line is that we currently have a say, and we do not have to use Google Desktop or that feature in Google Desktop. Also be aware that this feature is NOT turned on by default. If enabled, data is kept only for 30 days if not accessed, Google says. Google provides more info here.
Just because we can opt out, doesn’t mean we should NOT be worried. Danny raises the critical question “Can we trust Google with our data?” but then punts by saying the feature is not turned on by default. And data is only kept for 30 days. And THAT’S okay?
Danny is far more knowledgeable than I am about Google, but as I said to him the other day, it’s about tone and appearance. He may not be an apologist for Google, but he sure sounds like one sometimes.
And maybe he’s fine with that, just like the bloggers involved in FON are fine with their appearing overly defensive. But isn’t defensiveness a hallmark of “old” establishment institutions like Old Media? Shouldn’t New Media, as a true alternative, aspire to a higher standard?
UPDATE
Doc Searls responded to my “blogger defensiveness” accusation:
I’ve worked in, and with, countless institutions and organizations that are full of gates and gatekeepers. Exclusive territories. By comparison, blogs are the wide open spaces. Nothing about the blogosphere appeals to me more than the absence, or the ridiculousness, of “gates”.
At that last link, Scott closes with, So will it be meet the new boss, same as the old boss”  are we going to get fooled yet again?
Speaking only for myself, I have no interest in meeting, or being, a new boss. And I don’t think it’s defensive to say that Scott’s and Tristan’s characterization of my role has no resonance with my experience or aspirations, as a blogger.
I respect Doc’s right to manage his image and his desire to be seen as neither a “boss” nor a “gatekeeper” — maybe Doc can explain to me why the blogging world speaks about gates so pejoratively. Doc’s filter and the filters of other “A-list” bloggers serve a hugely useful function — they help us make good use of our limited time to surf and read.
I responded to the original uproar over gatekeepers in Blogging to a Higher Standard:
Technorati tracks 20 MILLION blogs  not all of them get attention from the blogosphere. Why? Because there are both human and technology-based gatekeepers that determine what gets attention. A completely open system makes no sense, because we’re not living in state of information entropy (although media proliferation often makes it feel that way)  when I go online, some things get my attention and others don’t. Why? Because someone is “barring the gate.†I think the term “gatekeepers†just offends bloggers’ liberatarian sensibilities, but regardless, the existence of gatekeepers in a structured information system is axiomatic.
We can romanticize the blogosphere as “wide open spaces,” but that won’t change the reality.
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Scott, you don’t even respond to friendly emails from other bloggers (at least not me). I guess a guy who has been blogging for a mere 20 days less than you has no value in your world? My Technorati ranking isn’t high enough for a three second response?
You stink of hype and hypocrisy when you don’t practice what you preach.
Brian, I did get your email and checked out your site — I thought the “heck” in your What the Heck Is RSS was a little abrasive — and I see now from your comment that it fits with a pattern. I was going to respond to your email, but I guess now I don’t have to. Really, what do you gain from nastiness? The world is nasty enough.
My comment is not nasty at all, unless you find the truth nasty. How is “heck” abrasive? The truth is Scott, if I didn’t post this here in public, you would have never have responded to me. You simply saw no value *to you* in the interaction.
It doesn’t matter what you say now. You are responding to me because the medium forced you to. Seth Godin responds to emails faster than 48 hours — you’re busier?
Look at your posting style. You only talk about what the A-list is talking about, so they’ll lin back to you. If that doesn’t work, you say ridiculous things about Google that only demonstrate at lack of a fuller understanding.
It’s called link baiting. We get it.
Brian, I will post here the email I just sent you:
That last part was an olive branch, in case you didn’ recognize it. I guess you’re more interested in venting frustration than in making friends — were you just setting me up with your email?
If I was so craven as you paint me, I would have just deleted your comment — although I don’t see how anyone can gain anything from reading this exchange, other than lessons in what not to do.
Scott just emailed me with some information that may make me reconsider my position, although I would still ask him to consider his own words carefully (with my parenthetical annotation):
Even the APPEARANCE of impropriety (or exclusivity) is to be avoided at all costs.
Scott, we missed each other… my comment prior to this one came in after I read (and responded to) you email. Thanks.
Okay, Brian, let’s call a truce. I should have responded to your email sooner (even after falling down a flight of stairs — we all trip on occasion). As I’ve said before, I blog about my aspirations, not what I’m always able to achieve. But we have to keep striving.
I’ll quote from one of your posts:
Had we met first in person, I’m sure we both would have been much nicer to each other. So when we meet again, let’s be nice and have an interesting conversation.
[...] Sure you don’t “work” for Google if you run AdSense on your site, but being defensive is not the way to appear above board. Instead of ripping Scoble to shreds (and sure, that’s fun), bloggers should be engaging in a serious conversation about conflicts of interest. [...]
[...] Wish listed Jeneane Sessum: The major analyst firms either need to offer a price/platform for indies and new media folks, OR new media folks need to start indie analyst gropus of their own, offering their findings at a price that’s at least sort of affordable, which is not $3K for a report. Or even better, a wikipedia version of research and analysis compilations. Is something out there we (Jeneane, moi, her commenters so far) don’t know? Lose endings Eric Raymond: Un-ending the Internet. Follow down through the comments. Interesting thread. Offense post In New Gatekeepers Are Still *GATEKEEPERS*, Seth Finkelstein calls my post yesterday on the matter of gatekeeping wrong and worse: …to be told that a page sitting out on the end of the Long Tail is somehow equal to that sort of megaphone, because everybody could *in theory* read it. They won’t, and to say otherwise starts to become downright cruel. Maybe he’s right. I don’t know. I feel I’m in some kind of bind here. I have this idea that the blogosphere is the one place in the world — or perhaps an entirely new world, or a part of a new world, created on the Net — where there is no need for class, for caste, for gates or keepers of anything. To me this is a world where the only success that fully counts is in helping move good ideas along, in helping make this new world a bigger, better and more open place. And in helping others enjoy the privilege of participating in it. I see this world as a place built on credits given, taken and passed along. I see this world as a place where it is at least possible to overcome disagreements, and to come to new agreements that would not be possible without the protocol, both technical and civil, we call the hyperlink. I’ve always thought the most important thesis in Cluetrain was not the first, but the seventh: Hyperlinks subvert hierarchies. What I’ve tried to say, in my posts responding to Tristan’s, Scott’s and others making the same point, is nothing more than what David Weinberger said in those three words. I thought I was giving subversion advice in the post that so offended Seth. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe being widely perceived as a high brick in the blogosphere’s pyramid gives my words an unavoidable hauteur — even if I’m busy insisting that all the ’sphere’s pyramids are just dunes moving across wide open spaces. I don’t know. I do know what it is like to be on the outside, to face gates far more closed than those anybody faces in the blogosphere. In the caste systems of my childhood and youth — athletics, academics, success with girls — I was on the Z list. In sports I was nearly always the last one chosen when teams were picked. To girls I was a bad dancer with buck teeth (one of them broken until I was seventeen). In school my grades and test scores were worse than embarrassing. I was well into my thirties before I kept a job or began to enjoy success in business. Nearly all of what I’m known for I’ve done since I was fifty. And without the Net, there would hardly be any of it. For me this fact is chock full of lessons and a sense of duty about passing them along, even if I’m still learning most of them. So I write a lot about the Net, the Web, blogging, podcasting and the rest of it. And maybe I’m wrong about a lot of it too. Hell, what does anybody know? The whole thing is still new. Everything we say about it is unavoidably provisional. What bothers me most, I guess, is the matter of manners. I have no problem annoying gasbag CEOs, but it pains me to think I’m being cruel without knowing it to a blogger who’s trying just as hard as I am — or maybe harder — to make sense of things. So, if that’s what I did with that post, my apologies to Tristan, Scott, Seth and anybody else who took offense. I’ll just add that, if ya’ll want to subvert some hierarchies, including the one you see me in now, I’d like to help. Bonus links: Dave Winer, Mitch Ratcliffe, Kent Newsome. Shoot Here’s a photoset of shots I took Monday on a flight from Santa Barbara to Denver. I was looking forward to getting some nice shots on the way from Boston to Los Angeles this morning. But when United upgraded me to business class (a perk of travelling too much), they gave me a window seat on the sunny side of the plane, where it’s hard to get good shots. I tried to decline the upgrade, so I could keep my window seat on the shady side in coach, but they’d already given it away. Ah well. Maybe I can swap with somebody. [Later...] Soon as I got on the plane, a flight attendant said “Are you Mr. Searls? Your seat has been changed. You now have an aisle seat.” Nobody was interested in swapping, but I did have a nice conversation with the guy next to me in the window seat. He’s from Russia and has lived in Boston for many years. Involved in a lot of businesses. Not much to show for it, but not a bad trade. Rhymes with Low I’m at Logan Airport, where all the wi-fi is for-fee, and MassPort is the provider. I couldn’t get on through Boingo, MassPort’s “partner”, even though I can get on through Boingo at LAX. So I paid the $7.95. For that I get the partial inability to do everything, for no apparent reason other than the system’s throwing up a “launching the Nomadix console” page, randomly, and stopping other services (making blog posts, using email) for (I assume) the same reason. Very annoying. Anyway, headed home shortly. Getting out of Boston right before the snowstorm hits. Twelve inches are expected. Might help sales oso: If I were dictator of my own small island, it¹s not capitalism that I would get rid of, it¹s marketing. Not funny Brian Benz: it bugs me to refer to my fellow earthlings as “them”. Brian is in agreement with Dave on the matter. Me too. Also Andrew Sullivan. [...]
[...] In response to Seth’s post, mine, and a few others — Doc Searls writes a moving personal essay about his experience with gatekeepers. I understand Doc’s guilt about being a gatekeeper after having been held back by gatekeepers his whole life — but he shouldn’t feel guilty. As I said to him the other day: Doc’s filter and the filters of other “A-list†bloggers serve a hugely useful function  they help us make good use of our limited time to surf and read. [...]
[...] As much as Doc is wrong in his belief that today’s blogosphere is a great big egalitarian delight, so too are the keepers of the Gatekeeper conspiracy. I’ve made numerous posts about the closed nature of the blogosphere so I’ve paddled down that stream before but before you cast your boat off in that direction again have a real look at the impact that aggregators are starting to have on the b’sphere. [...]
Damn, Brian — take a Lexapro. Scott, you’re a man of great restraint.
I was wondering about. How do we face those problems and how do we solve them? Scott Karp went even further calling Doc’s response defensive and, in another post, adding: I think the term “gatekeepers” just offends bloggers’ liberatarian sensibilities, but regardless, the existence of