Digital Thoughts - “Looking for an Angry Fix,” A Cautionary Tale of Ethics and Bewilderment
by Sam Harrelson
Despite my Southern-bred admonitions
to keep politics, religion and ethics out of friendly
discussion, ethics are something we need to confront as
“leaders” in a big part of the online marketing world.
I love online and affiliate marketing
especially. I detest how we as an industry have neglected
the true potential that affiliate marketing holds, but I
still believe a great deal in its promise and future.
My distaste for many of the slimy
practices done in this sector (whether “spyware,” internet
pollution, selling products based on media constructed and
induced dreams, etc) comes from my faith and the ethics that
are a subset of consequences of holding my particular set of
beliefs about humanity, God, creation and so on.
My master of divinity thesis at Yale
Divinity School was on the use of usurpation in
propagandistic art in certain communities in the ancient
near east. What those communities were practicing was direct
marketing on a certain viral level, and it served their
communities well.
The sort of direct online marketing
we practice today uses the propaganda of a constructed
commercial reality based on wants and needs of individuals
that come from exterior forces rather than from the inside
instead of the propaganda of community and identity
constructed from the bottom-up. We drive consumers to
purchase or make leads on the foundation of want, want,
want.
In general, I feel as if the ethical
water mark (and reply) from our industry goes along these
lines…“So, what’s the problem? People have ‘choices’ and can
‘choose’ not to get our ads if they’d like. When they search
Google, consumers are looking for things to buy, not just
for information. Ads are a part of life, so get over it and
stop hugging trees.” At the end of April, Gary Ruskin of
Commercial Alert wrote a decent piece in Advertising Age on
the subject of advertising/marketing intrusion (http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=40348)
that I think hits the nail on the head in most points.
This past weekend, I went to see my
parents on the farm in rural South Carolina near Myrtle
Beach. I finally convinced my dad to get a computer and set
him up with email and dial-up access about a year ago. He
was a quick learner and used the internet a few hours a week
to look up weather info, prices on supplies or crops and
whatever farmers do with web access. Soon enough, he was on
eBay buying equipment.
We began emailing each other on a
daily basis, and I could tell that he was enjoying what the
web could provide. I’d send pictures of my dog and he’d send
pictures of the fish he caught or baby animals. My dad might
have said 10 words to me a week growing up. He was a hard
worker, rarely around and we didn’t have a great deal in
common as I was always looking to get off the farm. Even
though we were separated by a few hours, the web was really
bringing my father and me closer together through a shared
experience. We traded links, new stories, etc.
Suddenly, the emails stopped. I
wondered what happened but didn’t ask. Surely, spring was a
busy time for him, so maybe he was tied up with work. While
visiting yesterday, I asked about the emails and why mom and
dad had seemingly stopped using the shiny but dusty new
computer in the corner. “We can’t use it anymore because
every time we log on, the computer has a mind of its own. I
can’t go anywhere on the internet and it takes too long.”
I booted up, logged on and before my
eyes came every form of internet pollution I could think of
and many that I couldn’t dream up. Spam, pops, BHO’s, and
redirecting malware were all yelling at me all at once, as
if I had opened up Pandora’s Box and the passions of
humanity had escaped. Porn, gambling and even “want to smoke
bud?” all appeared inside pop boxes, in floating formats and
from nowhere I could find. My dad said “See?!” with a
blushed face from over my shoulder.
Over the next six hours, I one by one
dissected all the programs present and tried to figure out
where things were coming from, who was serving them and how
they got onto my poor father’s hard drive. Many were
unexplainable. Almost all of them contained affiliate links
to the big networks or affiliate programs that we are all
familiar with and some that are even represented in this
forum. I wrote down everything and was shocked at some of
the brands, links and deliveries present. Of course the
favorites were there but there were a good deal of
surprises.
This went beyond spyware, adware and
malware into the realm of pops from publishers we all know
that came from nowhere to other forms of less-than-ethical
delivery. I won’t name names, but I was shocked at how many
people whom I daily interact with were somehow associated.
Blood is on all of our hands.
Eventually, I restored some sanity to
my parent’s computer. Installed cleaners, firewall, tried to
gut some of their spam, etc. They emailed me last night.
That made me happy. However, the saddening reality of what
our industry has limited itself to by proclaiming results
(be damned how they were gotten or ill-gotten!) as king was
a wake up call for me. Not only was it frustrating to see
names I knew attempting to profit off of my non-web-savvy
parents, but it was disappointing to realize that this
industry I love so much and have so much long term hope for
could affect a relationship with my father. I’m sure there
are millions of sob-stories like this, and we as responsible
online advertisers/marketers should pay head, do a gut check
and realize where our brand names, images and traffic are
present online.
So who is the winner? Ethical
Objectivism as put forth by Artistotle, Kant and John Stuart
Mill that holds there is a morally correct standard of
behavior defined by rationalism, or Ethical Relativism which
holds there is no universal standard for behavior and no way
to determine (or judge) another’s correctness in behavior.
It would seem our industry falls very much into the Ethical
Relativism camp. If money is made and leads are produced
then we can turn a blind eye. “Who am I to judge that
publisher because they are my top producer?!” “Who says
sending mass commercial email is bad? It produces incredible
amounts of leads, traffic and people can always opt-out!”
There is no easy and quick bumper
sticker answer to this question. There is no wrong or right,
but I know there’s good and bad. The identity that we are
forging in the eye of the public is not a healthy one. Are
we forging a good identity of ourselves when we look in the
mirror?
Online and affiliate marketing has an
incredible amount of potential that is just out there
waiting to be picked from the tree and tasted, revealing a
brave new world. Imagine a world where the marketing we
provide is ethical, beneficial and aids in the construction
of small and large community rather than the fulfillment of
constructed consumer needs. It’s not pie-in-the-sky…it is
possible to do marketing on this level.
The ancients did it with far less
technological prowess than a global information network
moving at instant speed. Profit is good, but it should not
be the ultimate “end” or “goal” for our ethical framework in
the industry (in Aristotelian terms). Our ethics and the
values we hold should be expressed in meaningful and
substantive conversations with those we do business with
(advertisers, publishers and consumers to use the terms),
not in feeble attempts to make a short term gain to feed our
Moloch greed (Ginsberg).
Sam Harrelson
is the Co-Editor of the Digital Moses Confidential. Send comments and questions
to sam@digitalmoses.com
