Change.org plans to morph from a progressive petition site to a purely profit-driven petition site:*
WASHINGTON – Change.org, the online social movement company founded on progressive values, has decided to change its advertising policy to allow for corporate advertising, Republican Party solicitations, astroturf campaigns, anti-abortion or anti-union ads and other controversial sponsorships, according to internal company documents. [Huffington Post]
Even more disturbingly, the company plans to rewrite its mission without telling the hundreds of thousands of people who signed up for Change.org alerts on the assumption that they were partnering with a progressive organization:
Change.org did not plan to reach out to its base of progressive users about the change. “[W]e have no plans to proactively tell users about the new design or our new mission, vision, or advertising guidelines,” reads one document.
Kudos to Ryan Grim of HuffPo on this scoop. Change.org may have hoped to shift gears on Oct 22 without informing its users, but now they’re going to have to answer for that decision.
Clarification: *Change.org has always been a for-profit company, but it has historically been an explicitly progressive enterprise. The new model is purely profit-driven with no commitment to progressivism.
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