Ethics in Blogging: A Normative Constraint on Excessive Economizing and Power-Aggrandizement

Blogs are interesting creatures. Like humans, they seek not merely self-preservation, but also the expansion of their domain on the internet. The empire-building does not have power-aggrandizement as its goal; rather, bloggers use what power they have to maximize the reach of their words. To be heard by as many people as possible—as if quantity were more important than quality—is a still more intermediate means, with the end being to bring one's words to the world-at-large. At the extreme, a blogger wants to see a world that has become a projection of his or her own words. Less extreme, a blogger wants to be a significant player in societal discussions even beyond the internet. Toward such ends, bloggers economize in the sense of seeking to minimize what they incorporate of other blogs beyond what they view as being useful to themselves, while attempting to maximize that of themselves that is incorporated on other blogs by power or moral suasion. For example, a blogger might say to another blogger, “I’ll blogroll you if you blogroll me.” This is a variant of “I’ll follow you if you follow me” on Twitter. As Susan Gunelius, an expert on blog marketing, observes in Blogging for Dummies, such reciprocity is no longer a normative practice in blogging. Indeed, the “I’ll follow you if you follow me” mentality is questionable at best. It implies that one person follows another not because of any value perceived on the followed’s account, but, rather, solely so he or she can be followed by yet another person. In other words, the apparent reciprocity is actually egoist.
Fortunately, “semi-permeable” normative constraints can be applied to the two forces that seek to maximize self-interest. One might call such constraints ecologizing, for like an ecosystem they can be breached by a maximizing species or variable within. Susan Gunelius points to a few of the ethical “rules” that can act as constraints via pressure from other bloggers.

Spam can be interpreted as economizing or power-aggrandizing forces that fail to respect the normative "rules" of the internet society. Comment spam, for example, utilizes a useless or irrelevant comment-posting simply to self-promote (i.e., to economize) through links. Post-spam reduces a blogger’s own post to an otherwise content-empty medium advertising the blog itself or someone else’s product in exchange for samples or money. Both of these kinds of spam are unethical because they operate under a subterfuge (i.e., promising to be something other than what they are). The underlying selfishness fuses with theft (i.e., stealing other bloggers’ time and effort in reading), and thus manifests passive aggression. In other words, it is a “taking” beyond that which the spammer is entitled to take.

As another example of the mentality that has a difficult time with limitation, some bloggers steal the bandwidth of other bloggers. According to Gunelius (2010, p. 69), bloggers and website owners can be charged more if the amount of time that their content is accessed increases dramatically, “such as when other bloggers use images without saving them to their own hosting accounts first.” Gunelius claims that a blogger should copy and save the picture (assuming fair use) before inserting the image in the post. Otherwise, the excess power-aggrandizing steals more than time and effort.

In describing excessive economizing and power-aggrandizing in blogging beyond ethical, or “ecologizing,” constraints, I have sought to bring out the element of passive aggression. The anger that bloggers feel toward the “cheaters” is not only due to the unfairness in the manipulation; the response is also to the passive aggression. If the responses go beyond what is proportionate, however, excessive power-aggrandizement is involved in the victims as well. Such anger “over the top” is also evinced in comments that are hateful or otherwise attacking. It is the sheer excess in the anger that strikes me as being in need of further explanation.  

Generally speaking, the bloggers who subscribe to normative constraints in the blogosphere recognize the existence of excessive power-aggrandizement and economizing forces in blogging. The theft and anger elements in the excess are particularly onerous. While the law cannot effectively sanction such elements, “societal” pressure can. However, lest the latter become self-righteous, it is important not to label as spam anything that is inconvenient.

For example, commenting (or tweeting) to someone on topic and including a link to one’s own post can be a legitimate part of an effort to start a conversation on a mutual topic—as long as there is content on that topic in addition to the link. You might tweet on Obama and Libya. I might send the following reply: “yeah, but Obama waited too long. So his motive is suspect. See link.” My reply was on the other’s topic and added content as well as a link to my posting on that content. To treat my tweet as cold-calling would be to overreact simply out of the mistaken belief sending out a tweet should not occasion tweets. In such overreaction is an element of presumptuousness in addition to the excessive power-aggrandizement. In other words, excess can manifest where it is least expected.  

Source: Susan Gunelius, Blogging for Dummies (Indianapolis: Wiley, 2010).

On ecologizing, economizing and power-aggrandizing forces applied to business and society, see: William C. Frederick, Values, Nature and Culture in the American Corporation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).

Ivy-League Exclusivity: Political Ethics in The Yale Political Union

When I was a student at Yale, I was a member of the Party of the Right (POR) in the Yale Political Union (YPU). I was pretty much a libertarian back then, and the POR consisted of libertarians and Burkean traditionalists. The Burkeans dominated the positions, and they had their little club within the club to protect their prerogative. John Kerry, who would go on to be a U.S. senator and a presidential candidate, had been president of the YPU in 1968.  At least as of my student years at Yale, the YPU has consisted of several “parties,” which are really little debating/drinking societies spanning the ideological spectrum.  This is merely the surface, however. Beneath, Yale's culture of exclusivity reigned and undoubtedly still does. Getting into Yale is just the first of several levels of greater and greater exclusivity. 

At least until the year I graduated, the POR had a secret society, which through the nineteenth century at least had been a Southern literacy society. Continuing the society's tradition, POR's secret society was only open to men while I was at Yale.  So much for the women in the POR!  They have been (and, I believe still are) ineligible for membership in the party’s secret organization. I didn’t like that exclusion even though I am not a woman.  However

To be sure, the unfairness wasn’t limited to women.  The only guys who were invited into the secret society were those who were in leadership positions of the POR--in effect, Burkeans. This didn't stop the party's chairman from inviting women (even those who had risen to the party's leadership ranks) and the rank and file generally to watch the special few get tapped for the secret society. I was out, I presume, because I was a student at the Divinity School. Although the M.Div. degree is undergraduate in a divinity school, it was easy for undergraduates in Yale College to view us as graduate students (the same goes for JD and MD students, as they seek the first degree in their respective schools (i.e., undergraduate). To make matters worse for me, I was in my 30's when I attended Yale, after having earned two masters and a Ph.D. degree elsewhere.  

So I was surprised, when in the year that I joined the party, the party's chairman invited me to a Friday night party, which was being held in a room half way up Yale’s bell tower. He told me that the new members of the POR who are men would be inducted into the secret society, so I should come.  So I canceled my other plans and attended. Actually, he wanted all the party members to be at the party to serve as an audience for the two or three guys in the party’s leadership who were to be tapped for the secret society. 

Here lies Yale's rank underbelly: It is no fun for the extant insiders to select others to go to the next level of exclusivity if none of the excluded were around to watch it. As much as I detested this squalid mentality, I was most upset that the chairman had lied to me. When I confronted the chairman, he (and his friends in the leadership) denied that he had told me that the men who were new members of the party would be inducted into the secret society, formerly a men's Southern literary society. Only now does it occur to me that the guys controlling the access were themselves Southerners. At least one of men occupying the chairman's position of the party was from Kentucky--close enough. With the exception of some of my Quaker ancesters, who fled North Carolina in the 1830s as those Quakers were stanch abolitionists, I don't have a Southern bone in me. Plus, I was older than the students studying for their first undergraduate degree. 

The usual means of protesting the leadership of the party was, in my time at least, to address the party before one of the weekly debates (held in the residential colleges, with a full bar) and formally hand the chair a letter of resignation. I think those protestants overestimated the impact of their “act” of defiance.  I did not resign; no, I simply ignored the party’s leaders on campus and did not attend any more POR functions.  I think that annoyed the leaders more than had I resigned in voiced protest, for the leaders were used to that. So even today, I suppose I am a member of the POR, in spite of the fact that my ideology has become much more independent. In hindsight, I wish I had joined the Independent Party. The lesson I learned back then from the POR was how easily people in power can lie. That is a tradition that even the staid traditionalist Burkeans can give up.