Despite its successes (Million Strong for Barack has 325,000 members and raised a whopping $16,000 in a fundraising drive leading up to the first quarter fundraising deadline --- not a ton but quite a bit for a college networking site), I think there are a number of structural reasons why these networking sites aren't living up to their potential as organizing tools. One reason is that most of these gargantuan Obama groups have no way of contacting their members. Facebook has a policy of cutting off the ability of admins to message the entire group after it reachs a thousand members. A lot of pundits have referred excitedly to Million Strong for Barack as a list of thousands of potential contacts, but in reality it's no such thing. No one has the email addresses of those group members. Though the message board is active, the number of active members hardly approaches the number of members overall. There is no way of contacting those supporters and encouraging them to take the next step. But this can change: Facebook, YouTube, and MySpace have received extraordinary amounts of free advertising as the media follow the political turmoil on their sites, it's time that they start working on their sites to make them easier for young people to use to get organized. A Facebook group started (unrelated to Obama) has a dialogue going with the Facebook folks about changing the policy of limiting message contacts. Join the group here! Show your support! It's only through making these changes that we can make Facebook an effective place for organizing and getting young people involved in politics!
Ben Smith of politico.com had a recent story about how private companies like YouTube and Facebook are making decisions on free speech and fair use without much input and based on fuzzy policies that have yet to be fleshed out. He made the point with some hyperbole, but in the end, he has a point. This is about shaping the future of our democracy.
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