The generous paradox

In the aftermath of the August 2011 riots, twitter was transformed into a living, breathing vehicle for generosity.

In fewer than 10 hours, more than 50,000 people followed the @riotcleanup, an account responsible for co-ordinating grassroots restorative activity in affected areas. Meanwhile, the hashtag #dosomethingniceforashraf mobilized a generous army who donated more than £22,000 in the name of Ashraf Haziq, after a video documenting his brutal mugging caused a viral sensation on YouTube.

The riots were a watershed moment for social media in many respects; but for me, one of the most powerful was the way it cast twitter as the mass medium for generosity. Forget charity singles, forget telethons. Twitter got people up off their sofas and got them to act.

Of course, social media has always thrived on generosity. Liking people’s statuses, sharing photos with friends, retweeting a particularly pithy 140-character comment are all manifestations of the fundamentally generous code that we, social media users, subscribe to every time we log in.

But interestingly, our willingness to give as users sits uneasily against the growing intransigence displayed by those who run our favourite social platforms. As Facebook and Google explore newer and ever-more pervasive ways to commoditise our online identities, the word ‘generosity’ seems to be falling out of their vocabularies. The recent blanket ban on Google+ pseudonyms leaves users faced with rather a draconian choice: play by our rules or don’t play at all.

“But they give us so much stuff from free!” Or so the argument goes. But that doesn’t mean we’re not paying in other ways. Demanding more and more personal information from us is just the same as another brand putting its prices up. Google and Facebook would do well to remember that giving people something for nothing (or at least no money) doesn’t necessarily mean they’re generous.

Matt Kissane