What do the founders of online communities owe to their users?
aa r X i v : . [ c s . C Y ] J u l What do the founders of online communities owe to their users?
Cathy Chua , Manny Rayner Independent researcher Geneva [email protected], [email protected]
Abstract
We discuss the organisation of internet communities, focusing on what we call the principle of “bait and switch”: founders of internetcommunities often find it advantageous to recruit members by promising inducements which are later not honoured. We look at some ofthe dilemmas and ways of attempting to resolve them through two paradigmatic examples, Wikispaces and Wordpress. Our analysis isto a large extent motivated by the demands of CALLector, a university-centred social network we are in the process of establishing. Weconsider the question of what ethical standards are imposed on universities engaged in this type of activity.
Keywords: online communities, social networks, education
1. Introduction and background
Our point of departure in this paper is CALLector. Theoverall goal of this new project is to create a social net-work which will link together producers and consumers ofonline CALL content; most obviously, this includes teach-ers, students, content developers who may or may not beteachers, and technical developers. The potential impactof a successful project creates an obligation to organiseit in an ethically responsible way. Ethical issues havingto do with privacy on the internet have received a greatdeal of attention over the past few years; for example,they are the topic that receives most attention in the Stan-ford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on “Social Net-working and Ethics” (Vallor, 2015). The nature of “work”on the internet has also been the subject of some well-cited studies (Terranova, 2004; Baym and Burnett, 2009;Banks and Humphreys, 2008). Certain important aspectsof internet work have, however, been comparatively ig-nored, and it is with some of these that this paper is con-cerned.The specific issue on which we will focus is what we willcall “the principle of bait and switch”, which in our expe-rience is regrettably common in the world of online com-munities. A successful online community has substan-tial value; a conservative estimate is that each member is‘worth’ $10, so a community with millions of members isworth tens of millions of dollars . This value largely comesfrom user input including content and technical develop-ment, advice, publicity, or simply time spent on the sitewhich creates atmosphere necessary to a sense of commu-nity. At an early stage it is in the interests of the foundersto encourage use of the site and development of content byinducements, ranging from perceived prestige to extrava-gant assurances. A typical motive for this is to then sellthe community, often to a large multinational. The users,who might more accurately be called collaborators, haveno rights and will not make any money from their unpaidlabour and goodwill. If anything, they will find that things An internet search reveals no clear agreement on ways to es-timate the value of social networks, with widely differing figures.$10 per user is near the low end of the spectrum. start going bad for them.In the rest of the paper, we start in sections 2. and 3. bycontrasting two paradigmatic examples, the Wikispaces andWordpress communities. We include detailed quotes fromthe creators of these sites, as they have deeply consideredsome of the issues involved. In section 4., we consider theethical obligations inherent in university-centred projectslike CALLector. The final section concludes.
2. Wikispaces
The Wikispace community was established in 2005. It al-lowed teachers to create wikis according to their own re-quirements, online spaces in which students would thenparticipate. By 2012 it was reported that it had a base oftens of millions of individual users, and many thousands ofinstitutions.Of particular significance was the communal collaborativeprocess Wikispaces permitted, with no geographical limita-tions, as one teacher describes: For Vicki Davis, a teacher at the WestwoodSchools in Camilla, Ga., the free wikis projecthas been a boon to developing her students’ senseof how to be a responsible online citizen, as wellas for completing collaborative projects.Davis’ institution has been part of the Wikispacesproject since the beginning, and has engaged inseveral different online initiatives that have in-volved more than 1,000 students from public andprivate schools in many different countries.She said her students are using the wikis to re-search the ideas of digital citizenship raised inThomas Friedman’s famous book, The World isFlat: copyright, digital law, digital ethics, anddigital etiquette, and are using the wikis to writecollaborative reports.“When they’re done (writing), they have a collab-orative report and 10 to 15 students from at leastsix countries have edited it,” said Davis. “Theylearn what it’s like to live in a connected world.” ultiply this by millions to see the impact that Wikispacescreated with their product, linking students and teachers theworld over.In 2012, the directors of Wikispaces made a long statementdiscussing the ethics of their operation: We define success in edtech as building a sus-tainable company that improves student out-comes, empowers teachers, and increases thereach and efficiency of educational institu-tions.
They go on to discuss the moral imperative of sustainabil-ity: When an established edtech company fails, it’sa big deal. The impact on students, teach-ers, and administrators is far higher than forsimilar services outside education. Money fora replacement is tied up in an annual budget-ing process. IT and technology support roles–already understaffed–need to juggle this emer-gency alongside their existing responsibilities.Teachers and administrators simply do not haveextra hours during the school year for technologytraining. Students need to start over with new ma-terials and a new product to learn.These factors mean that when an edtech companycloses its doors, their customers are left bearing aheavy burden.We believe edtech startups have a higher duty–a moral duty–to their students, teachers, and ad-ministrators ... Build products that will sur-vive the test of time. Build companies that willbe around to support students and educators be-yond the next fad, the next wave of technologychange, the next economic downturn. And tem-per your expectations with a healthy dose of pa-tience. Companies that are built to sustain them-selves will be around long enough to find success.Although students are at the heart of any such operation— ‘Reaching large numbers of students is hard, helpingthem in a measurable way is harder, and proving that youdid is harder still.’ — Wikispaces, unlike many educationalstartups (in CALL, Memrise and Duolingo come to mind)considers teachers to be of vital importance because: • They are the great enablers of student adoption.Teachers decide which products and platforms theirclassrooms use. • They know better than anyone how to help their stu-dents succeed. Teachers will show you how to build abetter product, but only if you respect their time andthe fact that all students, teachers, and schools are dif-ferent. A great product that requires a 25th hour in the day is not going to get used. A great product that man-dates a narrow pedagogy will not achieve broad adop-tion. When you empower teachers to use technologyeffectively, it magnifies the impact they can have ontheir students. • Teachers exert a large and growing influence on thetechnology decisions of their institutions. The impactof this final point on ed-tech startups cannot be over-stated.’CALLector is also teacher-focussed; its expectation is thatit is a network for teachers to build a community. Teachersare, with good reason, wary of such sites. It is important tounderstand and react appropriately to them.The Wikispaces manifesto next describes some things thatsuccess in the field of education isn’t. For Fame and Riches,seek more promising arenas. And in particular for us:Technology innovation in ignorance of customerbenefit. Building novel features based on newtechnology is very satisfying — particularly toengineers — in the short-term. In the long-term,we believe that most innovative products will bal-ance novelty with simplicity, and will always bebased on a deep understanding of the customer.It urges the model of charging in a fair and transparent wayfrom day one.“Free” is without question a wonderful marketingtool to get your product in the hands of as manystudents and teachers as possible. For a companyto survive, however, someone must foot the bills.Of the many creative options available, we be-lieve the best source of revenue for an educationcompany is to charge your customers directly forthe services they use.It is not only companies that must foot bills. However min-imal the costs of an open source network are, they are notnothing. The internet bait and switch ploy of free until itisn’t, is unethical at the best of times, but may be catas-trophic in the field of education. Nor is advertising revenuean acceptable ethical way to resolve this – if ever, but cer-tainly in regard to education.In 2014, Wikispaces was sold to TSL for an undisclosedsum. Founders Frey and Byers stated: Some of you may be skeptical, thinking that thisacquisition may affect our ability to continue toserve teachers as we always have, or that it mightchange our focus so that we can no longer bethe partners to the education community we haveprided ourselves on being. To those concerns allwe can say is ’watch what happens’.Watch what happens? In July 2018, Wikispaces announcedits closure. http://helpcenter.wikispaces.com/customer/portal/articles/-2920537-classroom-and-free-wikis gives an estimate ofthe human cost of developing Wordpress, an enormousproject which now powers over 30% of the internet:Codebase Size: 560,703 linesEstimated Effort: 151 person-yearsEstimated Cost: $8,282,611At the time of the takeover of by TSL, it is suggested thatWikispaces’ annual revenue was $20M. And yet Wik-ispaces said it could not afford to update its software. Thisdespite the fact that Wikispaces’ claimed that its specificstrategy was to invest in technology rather than extraneouscosts such as sales staff. They also said back in 2012: ‘And if you serve a portion of your customers for free, theyneed to know that they aren’t part of a bait-and-switch butthat their free usage ultimately contributes to your success.’We suppose that the founders of Wikispaces made a lot ofmoney when they sold out to TSL. But for the rest of thoseinvolved in the development of Wikispaces, and that meansevery member of the community whose support made thatprofit-making takeover possible, it was a disaster. How isCALLector to avoid this?
3. Wordpress
Wordpress (WP) provides an example of a for-profit busi-ness which attempts to balance on the fine line betweenmaking money and being ethical. It is the most popularblogging platform in the world (though it has developed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPress eyond that) and has won many awards for the quality ofits open source software and for privacy. We look now atits relationship with its users, its ongoing relationship withits own founding principles and how, therefore, it does onthe bait and switch measure.Like Wikispaces, it has a prominent stress on ethical be-haviour. Its Foundation Philosophy states: In order to serve the public good, all of the soft-ware and projects we promote should support thefollowing goals:1. The software should be licensed under theGNU Public License.2. The software should be freely available toanyone to use for any purpose, and withoutpermission.3. The software should be open to modifica-tions.4. Any modifications should be freely dis-tributable at no cost and without permissionfrom its creators.5. The software should provide a frameworkfor translation to make it globally accessibleto speakers of all languages.6. The software should provide a frameworkfor extensions so modifications and en-hancements can be made without modifyingcore code.In his own blog, Matt Mullenweg stated in 2010: Automattic has transferred the WP trademark tothe WP Foundation, the non-profit dedicated topromoting and ensuring access to WP and relatedopen source projects in perpetuity. This meansthat the most central piece of WP’s identity, itsname, is now fully independent from any com-pany.This is really a big deal.I want to recognize and applaud the courage andforesight of Automattic’s board, investors, and le-gal counsel who made this possible ... The WPbrand has grown immeasurably in the past 5 yearsand it’s not often you see a for-profit companydonate one of their most valuable core assets andgive up control. However, I know in my heart thatthis is the right thing for the entire WP commu-nity, and they followed me on that. It wasn’t easy,but things worth doing seldom are ...Automattic might not always be under my influ-ence, so from the beginning I envisioned a struc-ture where for-profit, non-profit, and not-just-for-profit could coexist and balance each other out.It’s important for me to know that WP will beprotected and that the brand will continue to be https://wordpressfoundation.org/philosophy/ https://ma.tt/2010/09/wordpress-trademark/ a beacon of open source freedom regardless ofwhether any company is as benevolent as Au-tomattic has been thus far. It’s important to me toknow that we’ve done the right thing. Hopefully,it’s important to you, too, and you’ll continueyour support of WP, the WP Foundation, and Au-tomattic’s products and services. We couldn’t doit without you!The contrast is dramatic. Wikispaces’s founders in the enddid everything they had argued was unethical. Mullenwegearly on safeguarded against the unknown future, takeover,his — or others’ — human weakness. He did all that couldbe done to ensure that the ethical principles which initiatedWordpress would be maintained without interference.In doing so, Mullenweg was not acting only for himself.The ethical desirability of his actions is linked to the coreusers which make an online community successful in thefirst place. He avoids the following commonplace pattern.First start with an approach emphasising quality to attractthe right sort of people to both form a critical mass andto provide invaluable unpaid development advice. Then,once reputation is established, redefine critical mass, re-place quality with quantity because this is where the bigmoney will be. For the core users such fundamental changecan be deeply traumatic. If they leave, they may keep theircontent, but they lose their home, their community. Givingusers ownership of their content is ethically necessary, butit is not sufficient. They need control of the community aswell.Despite the ethical philosophy behind the Foundation, overthe years since its inception, WP has changed dramaticallyat a user level. As one may surmise from the name, it wasmade for words. Now there is pressure to monetise blogs.Pictures have become dominant in the same way as theyhave internet-wide, and the hosting of those has a price topay.Ad warnings appear on posts telling users to pay for ads tobe removed. Chirpy messages tell you to click on some-body else’s blog posts because they liked yours. Creatingactivity for its own sake is a prime motivation of WP now.It’s making money for everybody. Words, as the primaryconcern, are replaced by clicks. Receive an email advisingthat somebody has commented on a post and it will includean exhortation to upgrade to a premium model in order to‘support your growing audience.’At the time WP started up, people chose it, above the com-petition, for a reason. Their goodwill is priceless and with-out it WP is nothing. But WP has some complicated rela-tionships to cater for ethically. Is the user a commodity ora customer? Does it depend on whether they are a free orpremium user? But the best content, which drives people toWP may be from free blogs.Add to this another aspect which has relevance to CAL-Lector: external support to WP users – WP itself employs avery small number of people – is a revenue generator for anunknown, but very large, number of people and they have arelationship with WP too. What are they? A commodity?A customer? Who is more important to WP?Can WP conduct an ethical relationship with both of these?he more complicated and feature-rich it becomes, themore necessary technical support is. Technical supportproviders outside the official WP fold gain from this.So far WP has been fairly good at not falling off thetightrope. We hope that CALLector, which shares manyof these potential conflicts and dilemmas, will be a bettermodel again.
4. Ethical obligations of university-basedprojects
The examples of Wikispaces and Wordpress, as well as anynumber of others specifically in the CALL domain in whichthe CALLector project is operating, are startups establishedwith a view to making a profit. Some of those, for exam-ple Babbel and RosettaStone are overtly run as busi-nesses with straightforward relationships. They provide aservice for money. Others, like Duolingo and Memrise,have a more complicated relationship with the user. Theyprovide something ‘free’ but of course there is always aprice to pay. Memrise users are discovering that at the mo-ment, as the startup owners make massive changes to theway in which the site is now run. CALLector, in con-trast, is a project based at Geneva University with fundingfrom a noncommercial source, the Swiss National ScienceFoundation, which states on its site: ‘a network of individuals and institutions inspiredby the possibilities that new technologies offerfor shaping how we learn, teach, communicate,create, and organize our local and global com-munities. We are motivated by the conviction https://community.memrise.com/t/important-update-upcoming-changes-to-memrise-community-created-courses/33461/17 that the digital era provides rich opportunitiesfor informal and formal learning and for collab-orative, networked research that extends acrosstraditional disciplines, across the boundaries ofacademe and community, across the "two cul-tures" of humanism and technology, across thedivide of thinking versus making, and across so-cial strata and national borders. Participation isour leadership model and collaboration by differ-ence is our guiding method. HASTAC’s missionis shaped by the active participation and interestsof our members. We are what our members makeus. As a "virtual organization" whose work cen-ters on weaving together people and ideas fromacross disciplines, HASTAC’s web site is both aplatform for convergence and a stage for experi-mentation and practice.’It is evident from the literature that however obvious theidea of ‘social responsibility’ is, defining it is not so clear.Obligations to address challenges, solutions for a betterworld, are problematic in fruition (Weiss, 2016) not leastdue to issues of funding (Shek et al., 2017). Recent min-utes for the EU’s Advisory Group on the Social Dimensionof Higher Education discuss some of the issues involvedin bringing greater equality to higher education within Eu-rope and if this is an issue, one can surmise that the broaderremit of obligations to society at large will not be easilyfulfilled.Against this background and despite the difficulties, how-ever, one can see that universities are well placed to pro-vide an ethical open-source resource of the type requiredby the CALLector project; the principles of USR also sug-gest that it has the obligation to do so. To arm educatorsat school level with appropriate technology for better learn-ing will ultimately advantage not only the schools and theirstudents, but also universities who will reap a reward fromstudents who come better educated in general. That is tosay, however altruistic it may appear to provide these re-sources and develop the social network framework for theirbest use, in the end higher education can expect a payout.It’s an investment, not a gift.Various quotes from (Schneller and Thöni, 2011) rein-force this notion:‘... no country can build an effective higher edu-cation sector without human resources and qual-ity basic and secondary education. Inevitablyhigher education and research should also be in-volved —- as part of its social responsibilities —-in the promotion of other education levels.’‘... it is the responsibility of universities to elim-inate barriers to higher education and integratenon-traditional students, thus to ensure alterna-tive pathways of access.’ In today’s global, fast changing, but also criti-cal world, universities need to be aware that theyserve the society at large more than ever before.Therefore, they need to revisit their role, assumesocial responsibility as an evidence-based con-cept and foster sustainable development.’‘Universities should particularly be supported incommunicating and exchanging good and inno-vative ideas with the general public.’‘... universities in ASEM countries should reflecton the entire education process, from early child-hood education to lifelong learning.’
5. Conclusion
Exploiting the addictive potential of the internet is a busi-ness model. Offer free/generous terms, and then, once de-pendency or addiction has set in, make ’em pay. Monetisa-tion is the name of the game. The business argument is thatethics don’t come into it. They need only obey the letter ofthe law, or exploit its greyness.Universities, however, are not businesses. Their raisond’être is not to make money. They have a relationship with,and obligation to, the community. The question to be asked,therefore, is can CALLector, a university initiated project,avoid these ethical dilemmas?
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