Friday, February 3, 2012

Blog

With Komen and SOPA, the web has finally grown up

By Rodney H. Brown

The year 2012 may be the end of the Earth, but if not, it may very well be remembered as the year that the social media grew up.

The promise (and dystopian warnings) of a truly connected populace date back to William Gibson’s invention of the term cyberspace, and likely even before then, but it wasn’t until a pair of recent events that one could truly say the Internet in general and social media in particular was more than a way for people to share funny cat pictures or post horrified exclamations about what is happening on Glee.

Late last month, the Internet was vital in getting the Stop Online Piracy Act killed in the form that it existed then – a horrifying, anti-constitutional breach of basic rights. The hue and cry on the Web over this misguided attempt by the entertainment industry to ram a bill through that wouldn’t have lasted past a single appeals court brought the politicians who were misguided in their support of the bill (I have no direct evidence that they were paid off) around to the right way of thinking. That has to be a first for the Internet – politicians being forced to listen to their constituents instead of their corporate campaign donors.

Now it is a private organization that has been brought around to the right way of thinking by the Netizens. The charity Susan G. Komen for the Cure has been forced to drop its plans to pull funding for Planned Parenthood in the face of withering criticism from the Web. If you have missed this latest peccadillo, basically Komen stated that it was not going to fund Planned Parenthood this year to the tune of $650,000 because it was under investigation by Congress. Unfortunately for them, most people on the Web these days know how to use Google, and it was easy to connect the fact that Komen had last year hired a new top executive that was virulently anti-abortion in failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Karen Handel, with Komen’s recent defunding of Planned Parenthood, an organization that does do abortions.

In the 24 hours after the news of the defunding broke, while Komen attempted to justify its decision and deny any connection between Handel’s views and the decision, Planned Parenthood raised $400,000 of that missing money from the Web. One day. From 6,000 donors. The next day, insanely wealthy Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York pledged to make up the $250,000 difference. Three days in, and Komen changes its mind and decides to fund Planned Parenthood after all.

I encouraged Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in an earlier blog to use the vast power of its aggregated data to help our politicians become truly aware of the sentiment in this country on political issues. If the power and maturity of social media continues to grow as it has in just the first month of this year, that may not be needed.

Welcome to our nearly direct democratic future, folks. But remember what Uncle Ben told Peter Parker: With great power comes great responsibility.