WHAT’S IN A NAME?

There are a million legitimate reasons why standing up to bullies may require a pseudonym (and a cowl), or even anonymity.

As has been clear for centuries, and even more so in this moment of inescapable mass surveillance, some of us — by nature of our birth nation, skin color, ethnicity, sex, gender, religious beliefs, and/or who we love — are in far more clear and present danger than someone like me.

And yet — millions of people over decades and centuries have stood in broad daylight and put their names and their bodies, their finite time and resources to the test, on the line, to fight for a better future for themselves and the generations to come.

Most of those have been those most marginalized or directly threatened, who had nowhere to hide, who didn’t have a choice but to put their name and face into the ring. Meanwhile, wealthy people have hidden behind their names and titles for a very long time.

That isn’t the rule: some privileged — safer — people chose to be allies — chose activism — over silence, too. Our predecessors imagined and constructed, often in the aftermath of great violence, the institutions that increased peace, childhood life expectancies, knowledge and more.

But it’s time for more. Much more.

More recently, The World Wide Web has provided both a safe haven for anonymous discourse and activism, and also lots and lots of harm from a distance, through mis and disinformation or just actively planning genocides and hate crimes.

Unfortunately, network effects and monopolies have meant most discourse and organizing, both good and bad, has been consolidated into just a few unfathomably large platforms, all of which are protected (to an extent, kind of) by 26 words that made the internet — Section 230.

What Section 230 is really protecting a platform from is dangerous — but supposedly not quite criminal — speech.

So, user generated content.

When we built the underlying social infrastructure of What Can I Do?, we decided not to allow for almost any user generated content, besides a headshot and a short bio for your profile. One picture, one single text field.

The most significant reason why we made that choice is because we simply do not have the resources to moderate UGC of any kind, much less dangerous or criminal speech, pictures, threats, whatever. It’s the internet — every open text field is asking for trouble. But also, plenty of other platforms allow you to express yourself in any number of characters. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here. Best wishes.

So, like the share plate method I used to feed my young kids, virtually everything you can do in the app is something we already chose.

All that said, there was one other open field that we couldn’t eliminate: your name.

What’s in a name?

Everybody’s born with a name, a lot of us earn nicknames, or go by our middle names, or last names.

Sometimes we change our name, sometimes we give our kids our own names, and sometimes our kids have different last names than we do, sometimes not. Some of us have stage names, or legally changed names.

Eventually, one way or another, you present yourself in public in the way that feels most comfortable to you, and everything you do gets attached to that name. If we’re not complete assholes, some part of our name might get handed down to the generations after us. “Make a name for yourself” can mean a lot of things but what it usually means is to make it mean something, to somebody, to history.

After a couple hundred thousand years, a few names have persisted, immortalized for one reason or another, remembered in adulation, fondness, or despised, long after our bodies have decomposed back into the soil. As they say, you die two deaths — the real one, and the one when the last person says your name for the last time.

Some names are both loved and feared, some attached to deeds in drastically opposing ways (take “Obamacare”, for example). Some cultures have multiple names, some even have secret names.

But for as much as we idolize and put historic figures on pedestals, they’d be nothing without the movements marching and fighting and voting alongside them, their efforts compounded across millions and decades.

WCID is one tool among many, and like the rest of our work, it’s allied with many other tools and standing on the shoulders of so many organizing platforms before it.

This is humbling and freeing — we can only help change the world. It also means we are freer to have an opinion on how our platform works, because there are so many others that compliment it, where you can express yourself more, more freely, or even not at all.

Our opinion (which is always subject to change!) is that WCID has an opportunity to start connecting and aggregating people in real life again, to establish trust again, and that it will only be as effective as it can be if the people who are following and being followed are real people.

How do we, uh, do that?

First, we cut out the bots.

We rely on Stripe to safely verify the identity of everyone who wants to make their profile public — which is a choice you can totally make on your own. Unfuck the world in private for as long as you want, truly, but either way — you’re a real human.

Second, if you make your profile public, we ask you to share your name. Which is…complicated.

For many people, the name you use most often in public is a close match to your given name, with endless variations on the margin. We (Conor) initially coded the field to ensure you used one of these marginal variations in your profile.

It was a fucking nightmare.

In addition, this regulation ignored the many people who use an entirely different name, for whatever reason, but especially those folks who do so to protect themselves.

Again — we have very, very few resources here. We aren’t Bumble or Instagram. But we also aren’t Discord.

It’s very, very important to us — and, we think, to rebuilding trust and Compound Action — that someone who takes an action, and inspires you to follow them, is who they say they are, and vice versa.

So here’s what we’ve settled on: We created a field called “Display Name”, and want you to use the name you use most in public.

No other strings attached, aside from the handy-dandy filter that checks for bad words.

Use the name you’re known for, that you’ve already chosen and established for yourself, whether you’re a student, a scientist, a senator, or the CEO of Partners in Health.

Understand, though: when you get verified by Stripe — confirming you’re not a bot — and then put your most well-known name out there on WCID, you’re asking for trust from the community.

While WCID doesn’t really offer any opportunities to do bad shit, it’s very important you don’t ask for trust unless you want to earn — and are prepared to carry the burden of — more of it.

Here’s what it means in practice:

We don’t and can’t track many of the actions you take, so instead we just straight up ask you if you did it or not.

If you click yes, we add it to your Action History, for your reference and for everyone else who follows you. We also use it to intelligently nudge you to take related actions, to help us throw the kitchen sink at whatever problem.

But we also ask you as a test.

We want to trust you. We ask you if you took the action because we trust that by attaching your name to it, you’ll answer honestly. That if all the people who took the time to follow you asked you if and why you did it, and how you did it, that you’ll have an honest answer you’re proud of.

Every single one of those after-action questions and every one of your WCID followers isn’t for your vanity — it’s an intentional, step-by-step renovation of shared trust.

We are in a moment when it’s clear we can’t just say “I’m one of the good guys”, throw a black square on our Instagram and call it a day. We all — all — have to go well beyond silence, beyond neutrality.

We judge ourselves by our intentions, but others by their actions, and it’s time we measured up and put our names on the line. When we do, even more people will, and so on, and then we’re unstoppable.

Conor hates when I call WCID a search engine. I imagine he’d also hate it if I called it a social network.

Both of which are fair — it’s neither.

Our search isn’t open world, it’s painstakingly populated by hand. And as described above, our social mechanisms are intentionally limited in flexibility and utility.

But they’re also much more intentional than just “search” or “get followers” — the entire point of populating our database with measurable actions, the entire point of following someone on WCID, and of encouraging real people to follow you, is to combine forces IRL to unfuck the world.

There’s much more to come there, but we really can’t afford to do superfluous bullshit: because of our bootstrapped resources and long-term theory of Compound Action, we laid foundation very early that we haven’t even begun to build on yet, but couldn’t afford to strap on later.

That said, we have been adding more intentional connective tissue to the app (coming soon!) and today we’re excited and honored to give you the ability to share your name, to use our app to make something even more of your name, to associate yourself with actions designed to unfuck the world for as many people as possible, in a moment when people are genuinely scared to do so.

I’m asking you to say “This is who I am”, and then leave a breadcrumb trail of your most measurable deeds, for others to follow. That’s all you can do in our app. Just a bio and a name. No other words.

Will you say “This is who I am” and let your actions speak even louder than your words?

Normally I’d sprinkle a bunch of quotes throughout the post to break things up, to make a point, etc.

But today I’ve dropped a whole bunch below. What I’d like you to do is read them — slowly, thoughtfully, however short or long — in the context of what we’ve talked about here.

When you see “you” or “me” or “I” or “our” or “we”, imagine the power and stakes of attaching your name to such an action as described, however philosophical. Associate the quotes with yourself. Imagine the author is talking to you, to us, specifically. Calling you out, calling us out, asking us whether we’re up to the task.

Imagine it’s a beloved teacher or coach or mentor saying or writing this to you, specifically.

Imagine them knowing you read it.

Imagine you knowing they know you read it, and now you can’t escape their expectations. You’ve been called upon.

Will you respond?

“Our job is not to feel hope — that’s optional. Our job is to be hope, and to make space for the chance of a different future.”
— Emily Johnston

“They tried to bury me. They didn't realize I was a seed.”
— Sinéad OʼConnor

“What happens when we have eroded trust in media, government, and experts? If you don’t trust me and I don’t trust you, how do we respond to pandemics, or climate change, or have fair and open elections? This is how authoritarianism arises—when you erode trust in institutions.”
— Hany Farid

“In becoming forcibly and essentially aware of my mortality… what I most regretted were my silences… My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.”
— Mary Shelley

“Not through me.”
— Subway passengers protecting Spider-man and a lot of other people who refuse to spread viruses or misinformation

“You don’t get what you don’t fight for.”
— Elizabeth Warren

“To sin by silence, when we should protest, makes cowards out of men.”
— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

“We don't give the public enough opportunities to see and trust warm bodies in public health. Messages must be delivered by real people, preferably the same people, in a style that feels human.”
— Katelyn Jetelina

“The LIGO Scientific Collaboration involves hundreds of people, many of whom have never met.

They use tools and knowledge contributed by thousands of others, who in turn rely on the tools and knowledge of millions of others. Such organization doesn’t happen by chance: it requires sophisticated technical and social systems, working hand in hand. Trust feeds evidence feeds trust, and so on.

The same holds true for society at large. If we undermine our self-reinforcing systems of evidence and trust, our ability to know anything and do anything will break down.”
— Matthew Hutson

“Always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
— Elie Wiesel

“Candor is a simple yet profound commitment to reveal and not conceal. Our commitment is to reveal our stories, holding them lightly and expressing them lovingly. At any moment we are either choosing to reveal or to conceal. When we choose revealing we’re choosing trust. When we choose concealing we’re choosing control. Trust is rooted in love and control is rooted in fear. We believe love-based organizations win over fear- based organizations.”
— Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, and Kaley Klemp

“Act as if your decisions have moral consequence.”
— I can’t remember

“Consumer trust is not necessarily based on the quality of reporting or the prestige and history of the brand, but on strong parasocial relationships.”
— Charlie Warzel

“Never trust any ruler who puts his faith in tunnels and bunkers and escape routes. The chances are that his heart isn’t in the job.”
— Terry Pratchett

“The secret of happiness is: find something more important than you are, and dedicate your life to it.”
— Daniel Dennett

“You can trust us to stick to you through thick and thin – to the bitter end. And you can trust us to keep any secret of yours – closer than you keep it yourself. But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word. We are your friends, Frodo.

Anyway: there it is. We know most of what Gandalf has told you. We know a good deal about the Ring. We are horribly afraid – but we are coming with you; or following you like hounds.’”
— J.R.R. Tolkien

“Don’t you want to know what you’re capable of?”
— Again, can’t remember, but you get the point. It’s not what someone else is capable of. It’s what you, specifically, with your hands, your voice, your skills, your resources, your instrument, your paintbrush, are capable of.

And of course, because this is a community of people who give a shit for a million different reasons:

“I am a part of all that I have met.”
— Tennyson