On Ethical Weblogging (Part One)
Update: Wednesday March 5 - The text of this post has been slightly edited and adjusted in an attempt to tighten up and clarify my argument. I believe that my position is essentially the same, but you are advised that some of the comments that follow this post were responses to an earlier version.
With Blogger's acquisition by Google, the weblog space has changed more fundamentally than I think any of us had previously realised. The main impact of that acquisition is not faster servers or a better weblog infrastructure, it's that marketing and public relations firms - always more brand-conscious than perhaps they should be - have noticed Google turn our way, and (carefully following the integrity-based brand's line-of-sight) have finally noticed us... "What is this new grassroots phenomena?" they seem to be asking - as if the press hadn't written about almost nothing else on the web for the last three years, "... and how can we get it promoting Dr Pepper?"
First things first - why should they care? They should care because there are hundreds of thousands of weblogs out there - and they're all connected to each another, spreading information and ideas around the web at tremendous speeds. The bums-on-seats factor is huge - get something on Metafilter and you can guarantee thousands of views. Get it on b3ta, tens of thousands. Get it on Slashdot, hundreds of thousands. And that's not including the impact of the thousands of personal sites. Nor does it include the people who read those sites, pick up links and e-mail them to their friends, to their bosses, girlfriends and mums. Weblogs are becoming the natural meme ecology - almost as good at spreading ideas as e-mail but with one particular advantage for marketeers - their sole raison d'etre is to point people at other web pages. They are almost inherently a tool for rating and promotion. They are public opinion made manifest. In fact the only mystery is that marketers haven't been trying to exploit them before...
Doc Searls has argued that this incursion by marketeers will be routed around - like so much censorship or damage - by the distributed nature of weblogging. I'm less convinced, and the reason I'm not convinced is that to a lesser - and mostly unacknowledged - extent, weblogs have already had their integrity 'corrupted' - we're already advertising things for companies in return for money. The most common and widespread form of integrity-reducing advertising we are undertaking are Amazon referrals. I'm not taking a high-ground here - I often place them on my site when I've bought something that I thought was particularly good, or wanted to reward an artist I like. We don't tend to think of them as interfering with our credibility or compromising our integrity - but we make more money if we write in a way that puts more Amazon links into our sites, and we make money if those links are recommendations....
The 'Project Blogger' approach is a simple and effective one - you make webloggers (members of the public) feel important and special as 'in the know' opinion formers. You ask for nothing in return because that could be perceived as pressure. Inevitably this will be something that people sign up to believing that there's no price to pay. Except they've been given expensive and cool things by a marketing organisation - so there's always the pressure of a threatened withdrawal. There's no such thing as a free lunch, and you pay with the soul of your site - the place you've carved out as a place of personal expression becomes yet another platform to sell rich teenagers Nike shoes...
There's a really good article about weblogs as marketing devices over at chronotope at the moment which I think drags a lot of the issues into the light of day. There does seem to be a perceptual difference between the analysis of weblogs from outside and attempts to manipulate them or direct them through advertising or promotional approaches. The people behind this campaigning strategy honestly cannot seem to see how their work might deform or debase the integrity of individual sites, and I suppose we couldn't expect them too. But this does seem to me to be the crux of the issue - that as soon as advertising enters the space of personal publishing, integrity becomes questionable - the particular authenticity of weblogs and diarist content becomes under threat.
So now that the marketeers and public relations people have turned towards us - what are we to do about it? The idea that weblogging would need any kind of united sense of ethics hasn't previously been very palatable to people, but I think that's changing - Nick Denton has made some very sensible comments on Blogger Freebies that try to clarify what an individual's responsibilities might be considered to be and he in turn links to Mitch Ratcliffe's Ethics and Blogging and Rebecca Blood's piece on Weblog ethics. In turn Rebecca mentions Dave Winer's position from quite a while ago. There's a resurgence of interest in the rights and responsibilities of the 'good' weblogger, which I think should now probably be opened up for debate and discussed at greater length.
So what do you think? What are the particular ethics of writing a weblog? Is it possible to preserve your integrity while taking advertising?
Addendum added August 2006: For more on this issue you should read my later post On Ethical Weblogging (Part Two).
Comments
Please stay on-topic, informative and polite. I reserve the right to remove comments for whatever vague capricious reasons seem reasonable at the time.
Does an Amazon referral really reduce the integrity of a weblog?
I would say yes if someone wrote in a fashion that allowed them to include one or two referrals in every post. It does make me rethink the practicality of having separate pages set up for some of my favorite items that I've purchased through them.
There are other ways to reduce your integrity that I think makes a reader feel more pressure to either submit to the will of the writer, or just stop reading the weblog. For example, there was one weblog that I read on a regular basis, until the writer started ending every post with a Paypal link. He was pretty clear in is "request" for donations. He pretty much stated, "donate or I'll stop posting."
I think with anything it is in how it is approached. I actually pulled a link from my weblog due to the writer decided he wanted to join every referral program available on the net. Were as myself, and the other blogs that I link to, use referral links sparingly with no real expectation of making money from them.
→ Posted by: David at March 5, 2003 1:54 AM
Now - I'm a regular Amazon affiliate, so I don't want to push this position too hard - but there is a clear qualitative difference here. If you are an affiliate, the implication is that you chose to link to Amazon rather than 1) an alternate e-commerce site and 2) rather than a non-commercial site. So straight-away you are essentially selling your links for the possibility of financial reward. And inevitably you leave yourself open to the possibility that people will believe you to be prostituting your opinions in order to get money. Now the fact that we don't generally consider these people to have no integrity is probably because everyone does it and no one really makes any money out of it. How much integrity can be bought for thirty quid a year (if you're lucky). I kind of disagree with you on the donations thing, though. I mean - it's a clear corporatisation of weblogging, and you're right, it does say, "I'll stop if you don't pay me", but at the same time it leaves the person concerned beholden only to the readers not to people who want to sell shoes to the readers. Of all the approaches to financing a weblog, it's probably the least morally troubling to me - although it's clearly a bit tacky...
→ Posted by: Tom Coates at March 5, 2003 8:47 AM
Every time I come across an Amazon referral link in a weblog, it does make me shudder slightly. It's an endorsement of the product that goes beyond just saying "hey, this is really good" - it says "hey, this is really good, and I get paid money if you buy it". Suddenly the weblog has a QVC element to it. I agree, it doesn't necessarily mean much if the money earned is unsubstantial - but it's still commercialisation by stealth - a banner ad without the banner. What I'd really like to see is some honest figures detailing how much the most-read webloggers make out of Amazon referrals; I think that would aid the debate one way or another.
→ Posted by: Marcus at March 5, 2003 9:06 AM
I think if you want to make money on your weblog you should go for it. The only problem I can see is if you don't make it perfectly clear that you're sponsored by whatever companies have thrown money your way. Because it will most certainly alter (or taint) the way you start writing and your readers should know that you're no longer able to be objective on certain products. The plugs you give to products, articles, and websites are now influenced by a paycheck and not necessarily by what interests you, so if you don't inform your readers that you're being paid you are misleading them.
Personally, I don't think this will be a problem to most webloggers. Most weblogs have small audiences and won't be approached with endorsement deals. But that doesn't mean some of the more popular ones won't be offered money to mention stuff. And if that happens it would be nice if people made it clear now that if you aren't honest about these things your readers will object.
→ Posted by: John Fogde at March 5, 2003 1:49 PM
A writer writes. A blogger blogs.
I'm a writer posing as a blogger. Having been a writer posing as a poet once, I've had my share of contempt for writers who write to be paid. But I don't see the problem because I have seen the most incredibly depressing thing, which is sad, tired, people browsing the discount section of decrepit bookstores parsing useless words.
There are few things that are more pathetic than the feeling of desparation a writer feels when he has nothing to say, knowing everything he wants to say has been said before better, and nobody cares about that anyway. This is the feeling elicited holding the weight of a five hundred page novel on sale for fifty cents.
If the blogosphere disappeared tomorrow, would it be missed? Only if some of those words belonged to you. If nobody ever tracked back, would you still write? If there were no comments section, would your soul float into the ether just the same? The fate of the blogosphere is the same as the fate of bad literature.
We are going to have to get used to the idea that digital creations are cheap. People napster up our verbiage because they have disposable attention, but they don't pay much do they?
Feel the pain of obscurity. It's good for you.
→ Posted by: Cobb at March 6, 2003 8:13 AM
Well frankly I think you're talking rubbish. If the blogosphere disappeared tomorrow, I'd miss it terribly - and not because my words disappeared, but because all the people whose work I read would no longer be there. Nor would the friends that I had made while weblogging. This is not a debate about readerships or fighting obscurity, and nor is it anything to do with the particular tools one puts on one's site. I put trackback on this site about a month ago, but managed the previous three and a half years cheerfully without it. I put comments on my site at the same time. Let me say this again: this debate has nothing whatsoever to do with how many people read weblogs and whether they're obscure or not - it's to do with how we decide whether to trust the weblogs that we choose to read.
→ Posted by: Tom Coates at March 6, 2003 9:45 AM
In my opinion, taking money from the Man in doesn't necessarily compromise your blog; it's more a question of how often you do it, and to what extent you're honest in what you write.
→ Posted by: Stuart at March 6, 2003 10:23 AM
The media industry has to solve this problem on a daily basis: On the one hand ads help newspapers survive on the other hand if the papers are too much tied up with the public relationship bussiness they loose their readership's trust. On the long run this is most damaging to the revenue. Blogosphere faces the same challenge and their are two ways out of the catch-22 situation: No money-making with your blog or full declaration. Who is paying? Why and how much? That's it!
→ Posted by: fugu at March 6, 2003 2:49 PM
If you start using your hard-won trust and credibility as a blogger as a means of earning money (however small the amounts), then it will to some extent tarnish your credibility in the eyes of a given percentage of your readership. Simple as that. The numbers involved are arguable, but I think that's the bottom line. Anyway, who needs to make money out of blogs? I thought these were supposed to be for fun. Why not just make no money at all and retain full credibility, instead of lessening that trust by taking payola from Amazon et al? If it really does boil down to £30 a year in commission, I think I'd rather not have that £30 and feel righteous (if not downright smug) in my utterly uncommercialised integrity. (I could go on, but I don't want to fill up somebody else's space with my meanderings, so I'll continue this on my own blog).
→ Posted by: Marcus at March 7, 2003 9:18 AM
Please pardon the necessary linkfest...
I think there's a a sustainable future in weblog marketing if it's addressed correctly. I also foresaw the coming of the clueless. I know it doesn't necessarily make me psychic, but it's why I published the following articles last year and made damn sure they would get found:
http://www.google.com/search?q=weblog+marketing
It's also why I'm doing this:
http://www.bloggerheads.com/raging_cow/
→ Posted by: Tim Ireland at March 7, 2003 10:01 AM
I had similar thoughts to this, over the past few weeks, I've only recently started a weblog , and have been observing my behaviour, I started writing quietly on my own for a month or so. Once I had a public blog, I thought that I'd want to recommend books to friends and family, so I setup a Amazon associate account. I noticed that I'd be tempted to write about a book I read sometimes just to link to it in the hope that someone might buy it and i'd offset my hosting costs. I've resisted and only linked to books etc where I genuinely have enjoyed or think the author is great. Hence no banner ads or blatant electronics promos, my website is my thoughts, not a catalog.
One of the things I noticed was the benefit I was providing to amazon in terms of better deep links into their site. It struck me that I was probably doing more work than I was getting in return from sales in a purely monetary analysis. So why do I continue? partly because I want to tell people about books etc I've read, but if I tell them then they might want to read it, so amazon provide a service by selling the book I'm talking about. To paraphrase the cluetrain, if our weblogs are a conversation and conversations are about the exchange of information. Sometimes I can't share the information because it is a book or a film, so I link to a source for the product and I happen to make a small percentage on the linking.
I guess it is a fine balance, you can see if someone has a book for sale every link, or has lots of banner ads, so you can read the commercial activity of the author. We are quite attuned to product placement having seen countless examples of it since the soaps started. Yet it is reasonable for a website host to make some money, if it has no direct cost to the person who buys a product. I'm less clear about the paypal or amazon honour schemes, but can see they have their place for some people. I suppose implicit advertising is harder to track, if the fact that I talk about Apple is reasonable, what happens if I have an Apple Store affiliate, does this make me a bad blogger ?
On a different note this micro economy does provide a mechanism for amazon and google to aggregate us and thus look at higher level population stats, they can analyse the incoming clicks and do trend analysis for ads or offers. So if we as a body didn't use amazon or google then they'd lose a good source of market intelligence.
→ Posted by: Gavin Bell at March 7, 2003 4:30 PM
Didn't see any way to trackback, so I've posted a follow-up to Tom's comment on my own blog.
→ Posted by: Matt at March 9, 2003 5:34 PM
I've noticed that Amazon is quoted by everyone. In the interest of ethical blogging (and this is a bit of mental gymnastics), why not support your local economy by linking to an independent bookshop that delivers internationally. This would support diversity in a field of commerce increasingly strangled by the corporate giants and perhaps ensure that the bookshop around the corner that's great to browse around doesn't go under.
→ Posted by: John at March 9, 2003 5:51 PM
Yet another response at http://www.myirony.com/archives/000258.html.
→ Posted by: chutney at March 12, 2003 9:13 PM