Gatekeepers: The Wing, Facebook & The NYTimes (Cafe Society Dinner Discussion #8)
Plus: Diversity @ Maxwell, The Sweetgreenification of Society & Charter Cities
Cafe Society is Maxwell Social’s weekly magazine on the intersection of community and society — an anthropological look at the underpinnings of what makes the world tick, written by David Litwak (@dlitwak) and the Maxwell team.
Hey friends,
Because we didn’t want to come across as tone deaf, minimizing the massive issues going on both with African Americans and in Hong Kong, we decided to pause and skip a couple weeks of this newsletter. We also debated on whether to say something but we felt uneasy doing so, feeling like many of the statements of support came across as pandering and opportunistic virtue signaling . . . even the NFL, after belittling Kaepernick for years, is suddenly woke . . .
Our feelings were aptly summarized by Professor Galloway in Just Don’t:
Just Stop It. Systemic racism is a serious issue, but a 30-second spot during The Masked Singer doesn't prove you are serious about systemic racism.”
So I’ll leave it with this - as a company intimately interested in organizing communities that are diverse, we’re asking for your help on one thing internally before moving onto the weekly update: if you know someone from a diverse background who would love our mission to build a new type of social club, we’d love to chat with them.
Onto the update that we’ll keep relatively short.
Gatekeepers, Openness & Open Society: What FB, The NYTimes and The Wing All Have In Common
I started writing this week’s article with what we thought was a relatively small insight — what do the debate about Twitter and Facebook “censorship,” the CEO of The Wing stepping down and the Tom Cotton Op-Ed in the NYTimes all have in common?
Answer: They all revealed gatekeepers who either don’t understand that they are gatekeepers or what they are gatekeeping for, and the misunderstanding of the tacit agreement they have made with their users has started to blow up in their face.
But we kept on coming back to Facebook and its fundamental misunderstanding: they think they have been empowered to guard against any threats to openness and transparency, while many of its users think they have empowered Facebook to guard against threats to an open society, i.e. protect the truth and facts…
Thanks, and if you enjoyed our newsletter please send it to a couple friends!
Have a great week!
David (@dlitwak), Kyle, Joelle & Dana
