Sam Wineburg, an education professor at Stanford, and Nadav Ziv, his student, delved into the .org domain and explain here why it is deceptive.
Readers assume that .org implies a trustworthy site. It does not.
They write:
Dot-org symbolizes neither quality nor trustworthiness. It’s a marketing tool that relies on a widespread but false association with credibility….The dot-org domain is controlled by the Public Interest Registry, which was sold last month to Ethos Capital, a private equity firm. The three letters are marketed as “a powerful signal that your site serves a greater good — rather than just a bottom line.” It’s a claim that leads people to make errors about whom and what to trust.
Unlike dot-gov or dot-edu, which are closed to the general public, dot-org is an “open” domain. Anyone can register a dot-org without passing a character test. Even commercial sites can be dot-orgs. Craigslist — among the world’s largest ad sites — is craigslist.org. There are over 10 million dot-orgs, each of which pays roughly $10 per year to register. All you have to do to get one is fill out an online form and provide payment.
Registration fees generated $92 million in revenue for the Public Interest Registry in 2018 alone. In theory these revenues could grow much larger soon — in June, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the supervisory body that regulates the internet’s domain name system, agreed to lift price caps on dot-orgs. Still, Andy Shea, a spokesperson for the Public Interest Registry, says it plans to keep the pricing for dot-orgs low, with increases of no more than 10 percent on average a year.
In the Public Interest Registry’s latest marketing blitz, they unveiled a logo painted in “deep royal blue,” a shade they say evokes “feelings of trust, security and reliability.” They tell new customers to expect an increase in “donations, and trust for donors” when they become part of the “domain of trust.”
Noteworthy nonprofits, civic organizations and religious groups have embraced the domain — and so have a host of bad actors. All reaped the benefits of dot-org’s association with credibility.
Educational institutions unwittingly shape misperceptions around dot-orgs. Many colleges and universities, including Harvard and Northwestern, steer students in the wrong direction. They equate dot-orgs with nonprofit groups and issue no warning of the dangers lurking beneath the domain’s positive aura.
Dot-org is the favored designation of “astroturf” sites, groups that masquerade as grass roots efforts but are backed by corporate and political interests. One of these is the Employment Policies Institute, which claims to sponsor “nonpartisan research.” It was actually founded and run by the head of a public relations firm that represents the restaurant industry. Another dot-org, Americans for Prosperity Foundation, says it addresses major social problems through “broad-based grass roots outreach.” In reality, it was founded by the billionaire Koch brothers and many of its “grass roots” activists are paid.
There’s an even bigger risk to equating dot-org sites with do-gooders. Dozens of neo-Nazi, anti-L.G.B.T., anti-Muslim, and anti-immigrant groups bear the dot-org seal. A random sample of a hundred organizations designated as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center found that 49 percent carry the dot-org domain.
Reader, beware!
I trust democracynow.org
I also think their TV news programing is outstanding. It comes on a local TV station in my area.
Democracy Now!
democracynow.org
Democracy Now! is an hour-long American TV, radio and internet news program hosted by journalists Amy Goodman, who also acts as the show’s executive producer, and Juan González. The show, which airs live each weekday at 08:00 ET, is broadcast on the internet and by over 1,400 radio and television stations worldwide.Wikipedia
Not the .org for which I work! 😬 But seriously, this is an issue of which I’ve been aware for years in health care advocacy sites. There are many that have agendas and they tarnish the good work and legitimacy of the many legitimate .orgs.
Yes, I love Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman and Juan González (hunkered down in New Brunswick, NJ). I catch episodes and segments on You Tube. Great reporting.
If you rely on .org, the first thing to do is check on the 990 IRS form that is filed. Read the mission statement, the salaries of the highest paid officers, and expenses. This is a burden but it is worth the effort, especially if you are relying on “.org” as if trust is warranted. Also get a copy of Mercedes Schneider’s book on how to do Internet Research. I had an eye-opener looking at the National Prayer Breakfast, a one-family enterprise with self-dealing plain and clear.
Excellent advice. I often check 990s when an organization seems questionable to me. It dispels or confirms suspicions.
Uprising & Abolition: Angela Davis on Movement Building, “Defund the Police” & Where We Go from Here
STORYJUNE 12, 2020
The uprising against police brutality and anti-Black racism continues to sweep across the United States and countries around the world, forcing a reckoning in the halls of power and on the streets. The mass protests following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25 have dramatically shifted public opinion on policing and systemic racism, as “defund the police” becomes a rallying cry of the movement. We discuss the historic moment with legendary scholar and activist Angela Davis. “One never knows when conditions may give rise to a conjuncture such as the current one that rapidly shifts popular consciousness and suddenly allows us to move in the direction of radical change,” she says. “The intensity of these current demonstrations cannot be sustained over time, but we will have to be ready to shift gears and address these issues in different arenas.”…
https://www.democracynow.org/2020/6/12/angela_davis_historic_moment
I am concerned about the moniker “Defund the Police” in an election year. I wish we had a better title like, Modernize Law Enforcement or even Reform Policing. Atlanta just had another black man die at the hands of police, and this incident is causing civil unrest that included burning a Wendy’s restaurant to the ground. My concern is that if we have continuing civil unrest, not just protests, independent voters may vote for “law and order” Trump over Biden.
I agree. “Defund the Police” is a terrible slogan. No one wants to live in a society that has no law enforcement. If all men and women were angels, we would not need law officers. They are not. Major Reform is definitely necessary.
The police have had ample time – and way too much funding – to reform. Too late.
Defunding the police isn’t about letting chaos rule. It’s about looking at what functions law enforcement is currently performing that it shouldn’t be and where funds could be better allocated. As the most obvious example, the police and the penal system serve as the de facto mental health institutions for this country despite the fact that they have no training (in fact, their training is counter to best practices for mental health). So let’s create an actual mental health system and take the funding for that from the police budgets.
Similarly, when problems like lack of jobs, housing, education and social services create anger and unrest, why not put money into jobs, housing, education and social services rather than policing and corrections to fix those problems so the police don’t have to?
Most major cities spend upwards of 40% of their budgets on policing, flooding the streets with ever more cops who seem to be more and more above the law. That’s obscene for a supposedly “free” country allegedly devoted to the rule of law. More and more police obviously isn’t working, so why are we exemplifying the definition of insanity by putting more and more police on the streets? Defund and demilitarize our country and spend that money taking care of people. It’s pretty simple, actually. No justice, no peace. If you want peace, work for justice.
You are right, Dienne. I won’t post anti-Biden comments.
He won the nomination. It wasn’t rigged by the DNC.
He will be the Democratic nominee.
Attacks on Biden help Trump.
I will not post anything to help a fascist win another term.
Agree, “Defund the Police” is not going to win any votes and might lose some. Agree with all the points Dienne makes too but she is not seeing the bigger picture. When you have to explain what the phrase really means, it’s useless. Let’s come up with something better. “Public money for public good”, “More counselors, less cops”. Other ideas?
“When you have to explain what the phrase really means, it’s useless.”
Exactly.
“Back in the day,” we limited the number of online resources a student (middle school), could use and all resources had to be supported by multiple sources. Of course, it was much easier to curate hard copy resources in a school (or public) library than online. Schools did try to block access to spurious sites, but once a child went home, there was no control. Those were also the days when computer access meant going to the computer lab, not opening your Chromebook or smartphone. I hope teachers are as concerned today that kids learn how to find reputable resources. Us ordinary old folks did not necessarily get the same lessons in internet usage. I forget where I saw the statement that most(?) people get their news on Facebook whose founder refuses to curate patently false content! I have fact checked and debunked numerous online, conspiracy theories sent to me by a relative who has a tendency to look no further before sending the claims along. Then again, I suspect we all have a tendency to pay more attention (much more!) to “news” or opinions with which we already are predisposed to agree.
Back in the day, I couldn’t conceive of concepts like internet, online, or personal computers, for that matter. There were these things called COBOL and FORTRAN that some of my classmates kind of understood. I was still into pens, paper, and card catalogues!
I was only going back to my kids experience. When we were first married I remember getting stacks of punch cards to use for grocery lists. I think ALGOL was the first language my husband really got into. My first experience with a computer was inputting data into a program written by a fellow student for our major research project in college. I have no idea what programming language she used. I was not at all happy when the public library got rid of the card catalogue. Those “fancy schmancy” computer systems went down on a regular basis.
Sorry, should have put a smiley face on my remark. I completely agree with what you wrote. My comment was an attempt at friendly snark.
That’s the way I took it. You just sparked some memories of prehistory for me. 🙂
This is an old article. The proposed sale to Ethos Capital did not go through. Nonetheless, your general point is valid.