Truthiness and Consequences

My morning coffee-philanthropy-blog-graze yielded this post on the Donor Power Blog about the furor dusted up when the Holden Karnofsky, the head of GiveWell (an online charity evaluator) committed the cardinal sin of posting an “anonymous” question on Metafilter’s boards about how to evaluate charitable orgs, then answering it with a plug of GiveWell’s services. He was ripped a new one for it, even though I’m sure it’s something that goes on more than anyone is aware.

If you maintain a blog or a discussion board, I suppose you can’t police every bogus post (nor would you want to waste your time on it) so the lesson for those who read them is do your own research, even on the organizations that profess to provide research. I don’t discount the hideousness or sad irony of a watchdog organization that preaches transparency while violating its own tenets. And I’m glad to see that the folks at Metafilter are savvy enough to check IP addresses against one another and examine other characteristics like user profiles and posting history, to detect bogus plugs.

My overall feelings about this are mixed: over the years I’ve developed a healthy cynicism about the veracity of anything on the web, and even a more fluid definition of what “truth” itself can mean. It’s still disappointing, though, to realize that the web – a tool with so much potential to empower donors and drive charitable giving – is still a venue for snowjobs and empty self-promotion.

I am curious to hear what others - within the philanthropy community and beyond - think of all this.