As media co-chair I have the assignment to look at our online and print presence. I report to the members and allies of the National Association of Black and White Men Together on what is new in our newsletters and emails and Facebook. I have been amazed at the dedication of our in-house Facebook “monitors” who act as a gateway to this portal with rules to enforce our statement of purpose.
If one looks at the news and trends one cannot but think that business online is making mistakes and overreaching privacy. This occurs more often in private industry and in government It seems that if you are online, and not paying for a product, you are the product.
At the NA we have carefully crafted, some say with blood and tears, our reputation for trust in fighting issues of homophobia and racism. We have, as of this writing, 13,043 members on our Facebook group which comes with the responsibility of providing oversite. And since your future could be molded, we have a deep concern and a requirement for redefining our social action efforts.
When we are online, we are providing our private experience as the raw material and brokering predictions of what you are going to do. These concepts have caught the attention and provoked legal action such as the European privacy law – GDPR. There is a feeling that our privacy and freedom are commodities. It’s not just that we readily give up our emails, but we can unwittingly be steered to products and ideas in the future. And, we may have an inaccurate profile online.
So, we have surrendered our privacy to convenience. Yes, I have to confess I use Alexa and wonder if it is “safe”. It is difficult to know. And we struggle with real world needs, like health care and a better judicial system, and as a result, we feel hopeless sometimes.
We need to change and get to a place where we are willing to say no. Consumer marketing corporations no longer have relationships with their customers, and instead are dependent on data-intensive digital operations to represent consumers. Therefore, we must protect and preserve our relationship with our members and allies.
This can be hard, but we can start, here are some ideas we can follow:
- We can survey our online contributors as to the above concept.
- We can highlight individuals or groups facing particular risks to their personal safety.
- Document human rights and privacy concerns online
- Determine how our readers may become motivated to seek out and adopt activist campaigns.
The demographics and history of our group give hope we can be trusted to succeed.
Note: Further reading on this monitoring concept can be found as “Surveillance Capitalism” that was popularized in a 2014 essay by Shoshana Zuboff