Community Is Not Clubs: How We’re Segregating the Internet & What We Can Do

Community is not clubs

Lately there seems to be examples everywhere of how we are segregating the internet into exclusive cliques and clubs instead of communities where we share real human moments. Statistics from the 2014 Employee Diversity Reports for our major networks show that online giants like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Pinterest, Ebay and Etsy all fail to hire employees or leadership that reflect the diversity of their users. With thousands of makers, artists, and creative types fleeing Facebook for the faceless Ello at the rate of 31,000 sign ups per hour alongside news of “The World’s Most Exclusive Online Community” Netropolitan with it’s $9000 buy-in and $3000 annual membership fresh in my mind, this post burned a hole through my head, into my heart, and out of my hands.

The problem with all our social networks, no matter how awesome they seem to be, is that we don’t own them or make their policies – we just use them and are used in return. The people who do own them don’t speak for us or care about community, they represent private interests who commodify our lives for profit and have turned the promise of an open internet into a private gold mine. Every social network from Facebook to the new Ello is essentially owned and directed by the same tiny demographic. They are allowed to buy and sell our private lives because we’ve collectively forgotten one important truth: we are not users or consumers, we are makers and all of this is ours. 

Fellowship, union, shared responsibility and common ownership are community, anything else is just clubs. 

Community is inclusive

You can see exclusion at work in any inner city playground where kids group up just like adults do. Sporty ones there, creative ones there, outcasts waaaay over there, while a tiny crew with the best toys, clothes, food and tools rules the whole yard. Unless it is a very good school, one that values inclusion and community, kids can easily forget they are all sharing the same playground and have equal rights. Our online and offline communities are no different-unless we constantly work to remember everything is a common resource we forget this playground is ours and that it is everyone’s responsibility to make sure we share it fairly and create a legacy for future generations. Otherwise we break up into tribes, bullies & hustlers take over leadership, and it’s all Lord of the Flies in no time. Our communities can be as exclusive and elitist or inclusive and diverse as we choose to make them, we’ve always had that power.

Community is and must be inclusive. The great enemy of community is exclusivity. Groups that exclude others because they are poor or doubters or divorced or sinners or of some different race or nationality are not communities; they are cliques – actually defensive bastions against community. M. Scott Peck, The True Meaning of Community 

Clubs have a place on and offline-we need to meet up with people who share our interests and specific goals like running creative businesses, sharing pictures, getting crafty, changing the world or a million other things. The problem is when these clubs get confused for community or we allow cliques to buy and sell connection and loose our common spaces.

Citizenship is for everyone

It’s time to take back the internet as a common resource as a community. As citizens of this shared global resource we have the right and responsibility to advocate for and create spaces that represent and respect our true diversity. In a world that is increasingly divided showing we can manage shared resources ethically has never been more important- or harder to do.

If we can’t create multigenerational, multicultural, & multigendered communities together online how can we ever hope to do so in our cities and streets? 

We have the right to vote with our heads, hearts and hands for the kind of world we want to be part of on or offline-that is the beautiful difficult wonder that is citizenship. We can contribute to closed cliques and clubs that threaten to become violent mobs or constantly do the work of asking how we can be good citizens if we exclude our neighbours.  When we use our time to vote for another network like Facebook or Ello we help segregate the internet a little more by choosing a tiny minority to profit from all of us.

For years OMHG has been reaching out to make a stronger community for everyone together. On May 1st we held an Annual General Party to start the process of building collaboratively. In July we partnered with Communifire to give members a complete social networking platform limited only by our imaginations and effort. We offer ALL the features and then some that the exclusive Netropolitan charges it’s members $9000 to access or that Facebook and Ello appear to offer for free-if you don’t mind giving up your freedom (or your face). Unlike other networks the OMHG community meets up weekly on Twitter, stays in touch on Instagram, builds friendships on Facebook, visits on Skype or Google+, makes real tangible projects together, connects offline and has proven that people make communities, the platforms just host us. We are building a common space, made and owned by us, for everyone who wants to be a citizen of a community for the head, heart and hands.

As citizens we can write the terms of use, choose our platform and build our interfaces, we can decide to invest our profits into each other and our local communities, we can use our collective skills to create a common resource, we are responsible for being inclusive, hate-free, ad-free and awesome. 

We need thinkers, dreamers and makers of all abilities and ages to create new community models that are diverse and cooperative from the beginning. Elders, parents, adults, young people are invited to become citizens and founders. Bring your ideas and skills to OMHG, help build our spaces, write our terms, lay a foundation, develop our democratic process and show that community is indeed possible. OMHG needs more variety in gender, ethnicity, age, talent, culture, and perspectives all willing to share a common space and some simple principles that we work on together.

So before You Sign Up for Ello…

Or the next big thing online, ask yourself if you want another online empire where the founders profit from you as a user or if you want to be a maker creating  warm, supportive communities where you are citizens with rights and responsibilities. Whether you become a citizen of OMHG, support or start a different network I hope this post will be part of a larger conversation about the difference between cliques, clubs and communities. At the very least maybe it will get us to take a closer look at who runs our networks and stands to profit from them.

*The OMHG community is no longer operational but the idea of collectively owned, cooperative and democratic social media platforms has never been more relevant and critical. What could the internet look like if it was cared for like a shared common resource?