Every Monday on Global Comment, we share the slow, thoughtful, considerate words that our brains – and souls – need but that it’s easy to miss in our busy world. We distil the best of the web and recommend just three links every week that you absolutely must see.
No fluff, no fuss, just three exceptional reads.
Here are this week’s recommendations:
The Battle for the Soul of Buy Nothing: How an idealistic community for exchanging free stuff tried to break away from Facebook, and ended up breaking apart (Vauhini Vara / WIRED)
The two of them had harbored vague desires since the beginning of Buy Nothing to divest themselves of Facebook, but they had never figured out how to do it. One option was to turn Buy Nothing into an independent nonprofit. But Rockefeller, who has spent much of her adult life volunteering and working in nonprofits, dreaded the cycle of fundraising and subsequent obligation to meet funders’ demands. It also seemed weird to start a business based on giving stuff away for free. Now, they came up with a plan. They’d collect donations from Buy Nothing members to build a platform independent of Big Tech. On Black Friday of 2019—celebrated in their community as Buy Nothing Day—Rockefeller and Clark posted an announcement on Buy Nothing’s main Facebook page: They were building an app called SOOP, for Share On Our Platform. “Because we want to answer only to the public good and not to platform owners who will profit from the use of personal data,” they wrote, “we are raising the funds to do this on our own.”
The response was mixed at best. Some community members found it wildly hypocritical that the founders were asking for money. It was a fair point: Rockefeller and Clark’s own rules for local groups banned “requests or offers for monetary assistance, including requests for loans, cash, or donations.” Optics-wise, it didn’t help that Rockefeller and Clark had started plugging their forthcoming book, The Buy Nothing, Get Everything Plan, on Buy Nothing’s Facebook page. A few members did donate, but the total—just $20,000—wasn’t enough for even the most basic proof of concept. Humbled, Rockefeller and Clark returned the money and tabled the idea.
Leaked files reveal reputation-management firm’s deceptive tactics (Shawn Boburg / WaPo)
They look at first glance like ordinary news outlets serving up headlines from around the world. The hundreds of websites, seemingly unconnected to one another, come in six languages and purport to cover far-flung cities such as Paris, London and Chicago.
But beneath the surface, the sites have something in common: They host frothy stories about clients of a little-known reputation-management company that promises to remake the online images of its customers.
The network of fake news sites is one part of a complex apparatus the Spain-based firm Eliminalia uses to manipulate online information on behalf of a global roster of clients, an investigation by The Washington Post and other media partners found. The firm employs elaborate, deceptive tactics to remove or drown out unflattering news stories and other content, the investigation revealed. Eliminalia had close to 1,500 clients over six years, including businesses, minor celebrities, and suspected or convicted criminals.
My first ever epiphany (Amanda Knox)
After I was convicted of murder and sentenced to 26 years in prison, when the earth dropped out from beneath me, and global shame rained down on top of me, I had my first ever epiphany.
/thread
— Amanda Knox (@amandaknox) February 24, 2023
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Image: Henry Chen