Watching the remarkable Xeni Jardin tweet her mammogram and cancer diagnosis, then blog eloquently about it, then crowdsource opening up her own MRI data makes me ask: Why are we so secretive about sickness and health? And what do we lose because we are?
The answers to the first questions are fairly obvious. First, we keep our sicknesses secret, we say, because we fear we could lose insurance. Except insurance companies force us to reveal our medical histories anyway. And let’s hope that Obamacare — may it survive the Supreme Court — succeeds in outlawing the denial of health coverage due to preexisting conditions. Next, we fear that we could lose jobs. Except in cases where a condition would affect job safety, shouldn’t employers be told that they cannot discriminate on the basis of health? Whether or not society chooses to address these issues through legislation, my point is that it’s possible to do so.
The other reason we keep sickness secret — the bigger reason — is stigma. We don’t want people to know we’re ill. But in this day and age, why should anyone be ashamed of being sick? To be clear, I am not saying that anyone should ever be forced to reveal health information. But why should our norms, stigmas, and economic considerations force us not to reveal it?
Imagine if we didn’t feel compelled to hide our illnesses. Imagine if we could be open about our health. What good could come of that?
We could learn more about correlations, which could yield information about causation and even cures. Given large data sets, we could find out that people who get a disease share common behaviors or characteristics. We might gain the opportunity to discover an environmental cause to a local outbreak of, say, breast cancer, enabling a community to fix the condition and prevent more cases.
Of course, I want to emphasize the conditional: correlation *could* help. One data point is never meaningful: That I’ve contracted one heart condition and two cancers since being at the World Trade Center on 9/11 is meaningless — unless there are many others in the same boat, and even then, one mustn’t jump to conclusions about causation. Still, more data is always better than less.
With openness about health, we could do a better job connecting people who share conditions to get information and support and each other. I am on the board of Learning Ally, formerly Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, and at our last meeting, I was struck by the barriers that stigmas put in the way of young people getting the organization’s help. I heard how getting our software on iPods has helped more kids use the service because they no longer have to carry around a special device that marks them as different — stigma. I heard a mother say that school officials warned her that her child would be labeled — stigma — if she got him appropriate services, but she said she’d eagerly embrace the label if it got her son the help he needed.
On my blog, I’ve been in a debate about the recommendation by a government panel that men shouldn’t be given the blood test for prostate cancer anymore because, statistically, it hasn’t been shown to save lives. That’s because medical science can’t yet distinguish between fast- and slow-growing prostate cancer. I say men should get the test. I say we should be talking openly about our prostates as women have fought to talk about breast cancer. More information and communication is always better than less.
The real question is what men choose to do when they find out — through a biopsy following the blood test — that they have cancer. Perhaps more men should choose what the doctors call watchful waiting over surgery. But, you see, the problem is that we don’t have *enough* data to make a good decision. I want to know, based on the largest possible population, how long it took prostate cancer to spread after it was found. Then I could decide how long to watch and wait. But I don’t have that information. So I chose to get the cancer out of me. I could make that choice only because I had the test. I had my own data. If I had the data of millions more men, I could make wiser decisions.
How could get get more data?
Step one is to encourage men to talk about their prostates — and, yes, sorry, their penises — so we disarm the stigma about it and get more men to be aware and get tested and share their experience.
Step two is to create the means to open up and share as much health information as possible so researchers, doctors, and hackers can dig into it and find correlations and patterns and questions worth pursuing, perhaps leading to answers.
When I talk about the principles of an open society in Public Parts, this is what I mean. Rather than reflexively declaring that sharing information about ourselves — our bodies as well as our thoughts and actions — is dangerous, we must stand back and ask what benefit could come from such data, now that we have better technological means to open it up, gather it, and analyze it.
Only then can we balance the benefits and risks and decide, as a society, how open we want to be, how open we should and need to be — and why. That is the kind of discussion about privacy and our changing norms I’d like to hear. Let’s not just talk about what can go wrong now but also what could go right.
: LATER: Some added links:
* Larry Smarr quantifying his own health.
* On being a medical data donor.
* Give us access to our own health data, online.
I wasn’t sure I could watch 50/50, but I’m glad I did … just as I wasn’t sure I could watch The Big C, but I’m glad I get to see that, too.
I’ve merely had cancer lite (twice: prostate and thyroid). Not having had to go through the horrors most cancer patients endure — chemo and radiation and clocks with 30-minute hours — all I can really speak to is the realized fear of it. I’ve long dreaded cancer, then I met my dread. Even though I tell my own jokes about it (want a limp dick joke? or a throat-slitting gag? I gotta ton of them), I didn’t know that I’d find others’ humor in it.
But I did. Each in its own way, the movie and the show take the muffler off of cancer: the hushed tones, the embarrassed awkwardness, the unmentionableness of it. They don’t exploit their tumors for cheap laughs. They don’t find nobility in metastasis. They don’t jerk tears. They simply have the courage to treat cancer for what it is: just another fucking disease.
50/50 is just a bromance with not only bad girlfriends and crazy mothers but also tumors and rude doctors getting in the way of getting drunk and laid. The Big C is darker. Laura Linney’s family is a sitcom family bizarre enough for cable. If these were shitty shows, cancer wouldn’t rescue them. But they’re each good. Yes, all the characters end up learning more about the meaning of life. But they did that, too, on Leave it to Beaver. That’s the point. It’s just life. And death.
Here’s another free excerpt from Public Parts — a day before its formal release in print, e-book, and audio tomorrow. This audio excerpt comes after the earlier piece about the Germans and privacy and it’s about my own publicness and privacy. Warning: penis ahead.
One more free excerpt — the introduction — is here.
I’m either a two-time loser or a two-time winner, depending on how I fill my glass.
I have cancer again, this time in the thyroid (last time in the prostate). I had half of my thyroid taken out in 2002; it had no cancer. The second half was just excised (I’m running out of spare body parts). Just got the pathology report. Unfortunately, it did not include the most beautiful word in the English language: “benign.”
But it did include what may be the second-most comforting word: “contained.” My Sloan-Kettering surgeon said that because the tumor was small and contained, he’s not going to move to the next common step in treatment: radioactive iodine. He’ll watch it with sonograms and if something does grow back, I’ll be glowing in the dark. So now, every six months, we’ll track my two cancers, hoping for no reruns.
I debated whether to blog about this, just because at some point, you needn’t care about my ailments and I am wary of sounding like I live in the old folks’ home (you know the joke all your grandparents have told: time for the organ recital). I’m also quite aware — especially after seeing my fellow patients in the hospital — that I have cancer lite; beside my roommate, who had Steve Jobs’ reported first operation, the ominous Whipple procedure, I have a paper cut.
I believe in sharing if there’s something to be accomplished with it. So I come back to that word: “contained.” In both these cases, my cancer was contained because, thank goodness and modern medicine, it was caught early.
So that’s the moral to this story: Go see your damned doctor if you haven’t recently. My thyroid got swollen the first time around and that’s what led to surgery and then monitoring. My doctor testing my PSA caught my prostate cancer. I’m overdue with a colonoscopy — and sure as hell do not want a hat trick. But I will go as soon as I can. You should, too.
Before my thyroid surgery, I told you that there was a risk of damage to my voice. My foes will be sorry to know that I am still in full voice (and temper). The last time I had the operation — it’s rare that one can perform consumer comparisons — my throat hurt like hell for more than a week but this time not. There are two more splashes in the glass, over the half mark.
I’m blessed that the cancers were caught and contained. It’s creepy knowing that some leftover rogue cells could come back and wondering whether other brands of the disease are building elsewhere. Yesterday at a conference on privacy, someone used that word to describe online tracking and sharing: “creepy.” Ad targeting is not creepy. Cancer is. But I keep reminding myself where my glass is.
I’ll give you an update about my prostate another day.
I appreciate every time you, my friends, wish me well. But I’m not fishing for that so you needn’t. Instead, please go see your doc. It’s check-up time.
They’re very nice there, but I really need to stop hanging out at Memorial Sloan Kettering. I’m headed back Friday to get the remaining half of my thyroid out.
The biopsies show no cancer but the nodules growing in my thyroid could turn bad, so they say it has to come out. The first half came out about a decade ago. I asked them then why they didn’t just take it all out, since the medication I take obsoletes my thyroid anyway. Risk to the voice, they said. Oh, joy.
When I get laryngitis, that’s a straight line: Oh, many will celebrate Jarvis losing his voice. Now it’s rather sobering, as I make my living teaching and talking. Look at it this way: What’s worse for someone in my position–damaging my potency or my voice? That puts my last operation at Sloan Kettering in perspective.
I haven’t given you a progress report on my prostate recovery in awhile. That’s because there’s not much new, fortunately and unfortunately. But since I said I’d be open about these things, I’ll give you an update soon.
This surgery is no big deal; I know since I’ve had it before. It’ll hurt like a beast to swallow for a few days. For a few weeks, I’ll look like I had my throat slashed, unsuccessfully. And then I’ll be my usual ornery self, I hope. If all goes well, I plan to be growling on This Week in Google next week, as usual.
I finally get into Howard Stern’s studio for the first time and what do we talk about? What else? Small penises. How appropriate.
I was headed in yesterday morning to talk about Lotus Notes vs. Google with Howard’s tech guru, IBM’s Jeff Schick, and get a tour of the studio and its operation. Then Howard invited us in, on the air. We talked geek stuff for a few minutes (more on that later) when Howard asked what I was up to next. I came prepared. I said I was working on a possible book about publicness (new idea) and wanted to talk to him about it. Ask what you have to ask on the air, Howard said. So I asked him whether he had regrets about his public life and about his view that people are better off public. He said he thought his listeners were better off because he was willing to talk about anything, even masturbation and lesbians.
I told Howard that he had cleared the way for me to — even inspired me to — talk about my prostate cancer in public. Howard, of course, cut to the blunt question: “Are you getting it up now?” Answer: no.
We talked about the gory, intimate details of prostate cancer: the strange, “internal” orgasms; the harpoons up the ass for biopsies; the garden hose out of the dick after surgery. The cast groaned at each of these. “You fucking shut me up,” Howard said. I fear I was discouraging men from getting tested when I meant to do the opposite. And Howard acknowledged, as hard as it was, that he, too, would have opted to get the cancer out. Hell, he can’t stand sniffing brass polish on his condo door without thinking he’s getting cancer.
I wish I were funnier and more fun. Over the years, I’ve called into the show about the First Amendment and the FCC, about gadgets and geek stuff, and now about cancer. What a ball of fun I am. Good thing we didn’t talk 9/11.
It was great fun visiting the show. On the air, as a guest, I stood right inside the door, by a wall behind the couch, with a headset and mic on. To my right was Fred and I was delighted the first time he played a sound effect to back up what I was saying. I got Fredded! To my left was Jeff Schick and behind him, behind glass, Robin. Howard sat three-quarters of the way across the studio — quite a distance — in his command center, looking a little gaunt (too much exercise, I’d say), and beyond him was the Wheel of Sex and the Gary puppet and all that.
As soon as the show went to break, folks walked into the studio, Howard chatted a bit, and I left him to his work. Outside the studio. Steve Langford of Howard 100 News held his mic in front of me sucking quotes out with his puppy-dog silences. They take video. They get releases.
And then Jeff and I toured, meeting Scott the Engineer, Sal and RIchard (so polite), the Howard TV folks, and more. The amazingly nice Gary Dell’Abate and I talked gadgets. What impresses me is just how nice these folks are. Makes you want to work there, even with the ball-busting.
LATER: Howard talked about prostate cancer again this morning after having obsessed on it last night: “I was so upset for him. And then of course, it turned to me and I have cancer…. Seems to me that doctors ought to sit down and figure out how to remove prostate cancer without removing a guy’s boner…. Every male on the planet should be donating money to prostate cancer research….
“I just had a bad day with that. Every day seems like a bad day to me because everything drives me nuts.”
Here is video of the talk I gave at re:publica 2010 in Berlin on The German Paradox: Privacy, publicness, and penises. (Don’t be frightened by the first moments in German; it’s just an introduction and a joke — with fire extinguisher — about how I had threatened to Hendrix my iPad on the stage in Berlin.)
My subject is all the more relevant given this week’s letter to Google with privacy czars in a handful of countries trying to argue that Google Streetview taking pictures in public violates privacy. In my talk, I argue that what is public belongs to us, the public, and efforts to reduce what’s public steals from us. Journalists should be particularly protective of what is public; so should we all. (The czars also argued, amazingly, that Google shouldn’t release betas. They come, you see, from an old world of centralized control — and the myth that processes can be turned into products, finished, complete, even perfect — instead of the new world of openness and collaboration.)
With so much discussion — even panic — about privacy today, I fear that we risk losing the benefits of publicness, of the connections enabled by the internet and our interconnected world. If we shift to a default of private, we lose much and I argue that we should weigh that choice when we decide what to put behind a wall — and there are too many walls being build today. But we’re not discussing the benefits of the public vs. the private. I want to spark that discussion.
I use Germany as a laboratory and illustration of the topic not only because I was there but because they have something nearing a cultural obsession on the topic of privacy. What’s true there is true elsewhere, including the U.S., though only to a different level. I also only skim the surface of the topic in this video; there is so much more to talk about: how publicness benefits the ways we can and now must do business; how it affects government; how it alters education; how it changes our relationships; how young people bring a new culture that cuts across all national boundaries and expectations; how it multiplies our knowledge; how it creates value; how it leads to a new set of ethics; and much more. But that’s for another time and medium.
In the talk, this all leads up to the Bill of Rights in Cyberspace, which is really about openness and protecting that.
At the end of my time on stage, I invited the room to continue the discussion next door in the sauna, Four guys did show up. Here’s the proof.
If you prefer, here is are my slides with the audio of my talk and discussion, thanks to Slideshare:
And here is a slice of an illustration of my talk by AnnalenaSchiller.com (who tweeted beforehand about having to draw a penis for the first time in her talk-illustration career) that appeared in the German paper Der Freitag this week:
Yet more: Here’s an interview with dctp.tv in Berlin that summarizes my views:
: LATER: Penelope Trunk, who lives in public, writes: ” The value of your privacy is very little in the age of transparency and authenticity. Privacy is almost always a way of hiding things that don’t need hiding.. . . And transparency trumps privacy every time. So put your ideas in social media, not email.”
: AND: I just got a message on Facebook from the woman I talk about in the Sauna in Davos, the one I said was an American freaked by the mixed, nude crowd of sweaty Russians and me. She thought it was quite funny … especially because she’s French (living in America).
Here’s audio of an appearance on The Takeaway on public radio this morning about the American Cancer Society’s new prostate (PSA) screening guidelines, telling doctors to discuss the test and its implications first — the moral equivalent of the breast-cancer-screening shift of a few months ago. I disagree. As the n in a hundred whose cancer was caught by screening, I caution that the interest of the individual are not aligned with the interests of the aggregate — that is, it may not seem worth it to statisticians to save just one more life … unless that life is yours. For those coming in because of the show, my story is here.
I just had my three-month check-up after surgery for prostate cancer and the news so far is good: My PSA (a measurement of the antigen produced by the prostate, which shouldn’t be there once the gland is gone — unless cancer cells are elsewhere causing trouble) came in at <0.05, just what it’s supposed to be, I’m told.
In the interest of continued transparency for the sake of those who follow, here are the other updates (TMI warning):
When my surgeon, Raul Parra, came into the examining room at Sloan Kettering this morning, he said, “How are you?” I said, politely, “Fine, how are you?” And he replied, “No, how are you?” It’s the one time when someone really means the question. And the answer is that I do feel fine; I feel great, in fact. I get tired still and fellow patients warned in comments under my previous posts that’d be the case. But other than that and the two items I’ll go into next, I wouldn’t know I’d had major surgery only three months ago. The wounds are healed, the pain is long gone, and I can carry on as before.
My incontinence is almost over. Almost. Every time I have a few dry days in a row and think I am about ready to throw away the pads, I am struck down as if by God punishing my hubris … with a drip. Damn. If you see me in the halls suddenly grimacing in frustration and anger, that’s what happened. I’m hopeful I’ll be rid of the pads soon. But truth be told, if this half of the condition never got any better, I’d find it livable — far better than what I’d feared. For that, I’m grateful.
The impotence is another matter. Not a bit of progress there. And it’s not just that I can’t have an erection, it’s that the poor thing is chronically deflated, like the Balloon Boy’s craft at the end of its flight. I could be assured victory in a small-penis contest with Howard Stern. Yes, you know a man is talking about his penis when juvenile jokes start. Here’s how silly a man’s mind can get: I’m going to Munich in January and enjoy going to the (co-ed) sauna in the hotel there but I’m once again feeling like George in Seinfeld’s shrinkage episode. Yes, it matters.
I can have orgasms but they’re strangely muted, as if wrapped in cotton. And they are quite strange being dry (the seminal vesicles are removed with the prostate.) I’d also been warned about that. I was prescribed Viagra but stopped taking it for a bit when I was getting palpitations and I feared an onset of afib (my heart arrhythmia; don’t I sound like an old coot, recounting my ills?). I’ll try Cialis next. The doctor said the nerves he moved out of the way and spared in surgery can begin healing anywhere from three weeks after surgery (I’m not so lucky) to two years. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.
That trip to Munich comes on the way to Davos and this year I’ll be participating in a dinner about prostate cancer led by Dr. Jeffrey Drazen, editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, and including Dr. Patrick Walsh, who, Dr. Parra explained to me, is the father of radical prostatectomy and the nerve-sparing procedure (thank you, sir) along with other leading doctors. What the hell am I doing there? I’m to bring the patient’s perspective.
I plan to say that publicness has benefitted me and that I wish the doctors would, in turn, be more public. The response I got from my posts here was helpful not only in the support I received but especially in the information I got from fellow patients who proceeded me and told me in frank and brave detail what I would experience. I owe them all. I’ve argued before that doctors should use the web to become curators of the best information they have. And together, the more we talk about this, the more we will bring it to the attention of men who should be screened and take away the mystery, fear, and stigma associated with cancer and surgery affecting our penises.
My bottom line: I am glad I was screened. I am glad I have written publicly about the experience. I’m glad I had the surgery. And I’m very glad today to see that less-than sign: <0.05.
My prostate cancer was caught with multiple PSA tests that weren’t out of the normal range but that were rising fast. That led to a biopsy, which found cancer in 1 of 12 samples, meaning it apparently was caught early. That led to surgery, which confirmed my malignancy but also that it was contained to the prostate.
I say, thank god science for screening. Those tests gave me information I needed to make a choice. Without the information, I wouldn’t have had the choice.
But there is a growing rumble about curtailing screening, especially for the erogenous-zone cancers of the breast and the prostate. See today’s New York Times report on the debate about the efficacy of screening to save lives.
Note that plural: lives, not a life. This isn’t about me and my cancer. This is about statistics and money. The question they’re asking: Is it worth it to find these cancers and cut them out at considerable cost if we’re not sure those cancers would have killed all those people who had surgery? But who’s to say what’s worth it?
What if I’m the one in a hundred who would die without the screening and surgery? Only one way to find out: keep the cancer in me and wait. Indeed, I had that choice — “watchful waiting,” it’s called. But without the screening, I wouldn’t have had the information to know that was cancer was in me until it spread — until it was too late. I wouldn’t have known I had a choice.
As The Times points out, part of the problem here is that researchers don’t know whether some prostate tumors are more certainly deadly than others and I’ll agree that more research is inevitably a good thing.
But this discussion is really about playing the odds with my life – and who gets to roll those dice. I want to be the one who makes this bet. I want to have the information to make it. But implicit in this debate is the idea that insurance companies want to make the bet and they want to do it for everyone at once: “Let’s curtail the screening and see what happens. OK, so one more person in a hundred dies, but we also saved huge money.” Worth it? Not if you’re that one in a hundred. Not if that one is me.
I am 55 years old and in good health with a wife and two children. Faced with the choice of not knowing whether I had cancer, I chose screening. Then faced with the choice of leaving cancer inside me because it might not kill me (that is, something else could kill me sooner than this slow-growing tumor), I chose – my wife and I chose – to get it out. In my grandfather’s case, no other disease or accident got him first; his prostate cancer killed him.
My insurance company will probably pay $25k for my surgery to take out my cancer. I am now facing some inconveniences. Worth it? I’d say it is. Will the insurance company think it’s worth it? Don’t know. Don’t care. I don’t want them making that decision. I will make it. That is the point of having control of information about my health: my information about my life. That is the point of screening.
If this were a purely economic decision, then some would die. Imagine you’re Frank Purdue and you can spend $100,000 to save a few chickens worth $100 on the market; you won’t do it. But we’re not chickens. At some level, it’s always an economic decision, I know. That is why I support government involvement in health care. Yes, I’m a free marketeer when it comes to other industries, especially the press (because I’m also a First Amendment adherent). And yes, even when government is involved, it can decide not to spend money for expensive treatments or old people (the stories we keep hearing about the U.K.) – but at least then we hold political pressure over the government. Chickens don’t vote. Patients do.
As a matter of statistics and odds, I know screening results in treatment that adds to costs. But it also saves lives – no matter whether we know precisely how many. I believe screening saved my life and I chose not to have been proven right by waiting.
So get your screenings, folks, get ‘em while they last. I’m due for another damned colonoscopy (which I’ll get after my rump feels repaired from the damage of my last surgery) and I’ll get it because they found a polyp in me (benign) last time; I won’t take the risk. You should get your PSA tested, men, and your mammograms, women. And then you can make informed decisions – informed by data and your doctors. It’s the information that gives you the choice. That information is yours.
: MORE: This discussion also leads to the work Doc Searls has been doing with vendor relationship management and personal health records. We not only need the information, we need it in a form that is usable, and we need control of it — because it is, again, our information about our lives.
: Later: Andrew Tyndall of the Tyndall Report (and a friend and fellow prostate guy) reports on TV’s reports on the story.
You may not want to read this post. It defines TMI. But in the interest of continuing to chronicle the saga of my prostate cancer – for the benefit, I hope, of those who follow – the time has come to write about my penis. Specifically, what it doesn’t do.
Incontinence and impotence are two frightening words for a grown man but they are the side-effects of removing the prostate and its cancer with it. Worth the price, or at least that’s the calculation one makes beforehand: Cancer or erections? Cancer or dry underwear? Cancer loses.
I didn’t know quite what to expect of the incontinence and didn’t hear a clear description (maybe because I feared hearing it). I was dreading puddles on the floor. But it’s nothing like that. It’s a matter of dribs and drabs. I wish I understood the physical explanation of what’s happening but the end result is this: Sometimes, when you expect it (standing, coughing, lifting…) and sometimes when you don’t (that’s the tough part) you feel – in the excellent description of Howard Stern Show producer Gary Dell’Abate – something moving where it shouldn’t. Drib. Next time, you hope you remember to clench your muscles first.
When I left the doctor’s office after my hosectomy, I was outfitted in a gigantic Baby Huey diaper plus a pad – which only heightened my fear – but I quickly realized this wasn’t necessary and downgraded to pads. After much trial and, thank goodness, no error, I found my dream brand. I can’t believe I’ve become a connoisseur of such products but I recommend Poise Ultrathins. [Confidential to the FTC: That is not a paid commercial endorsement). I should also note that nighttime is not a problem at all; no latter-day bedwetting for me. So it’s inconvenient and distracting but as with every step of this process, I have seen that I’m luckier than I thought I’d be.
As for the penis’ other job, well, that’s not going so well. The nurse warned me not to expect anything yet (it has been four weeks since surgery) and so I suppose I shouldn’t be depressed. But it’s hard. Because it’s not.
We men have complicated relationships with our penises, of course. We follow them (that’s why they’re in front). They tell us what we like. They have minds of their own. We anthropomorphize them; some give them names (I don’t; it’s just it). So when I see mine looking like an emaciated, depressed, shrunken old man in a hospital bed, well, it’s hard not to empathize.
The doctor prescribed a quarter of a Viagra pill every night, to prime the pump, apparently. I have a page of standard instructions that suggest taking a whole little blue pill once a week and then to, well, have a go at it. Imagine being a teenager and being told that masturbation is a medical necessity. Doctor’s orders. Sounds like fun, but it’s not. Even when things start working (I hope) they’ll be weird, as a good friend warned me. Today, there’s sensation but there’s no growth and when and if there is liftoff, there’ll still be no semen (the seminal vesicles were taken out with the prostate). This is changed forever.
I’ll spare you further progress reports on these topics. As you can tell from my lame gags about my lame thing, this is about as much transparency as I can bear. I have found my limit.
I went to Radio Shack today to buy wires and plugs to hook up my iPhone because the damned car radio has no plug and the damned FM kluges don’t work. I bought the wrong wires, realized it immediately, and returned in minutes to exchange them. Radio Shack, as it its irritating habit, demanded my phone number, name, and address. I refused. It was a cash exchange. The guy hassled me and then, on the fourth attempt, finally told his computer that I’d refused, which he could have done in the first place. I cursed myself for not going to Best Buy, where they don’t take your blood type to make a transaction; one of the reasons I like Best Buy is its no-nonsense return policy. They care about satisfied and returning customers over irritating rules. I tweeted that here. Now I’m blogging about it.
OK, so I just said something nice about Best Buy and something critical about its competitor. Look on my disclosures page and you’ll see that I had a business relationship with Best Buy. A few weeks ago, because of my book, they paid for me to come speak to various groups over two days (which I quite enjoyed and which taught me a lot about retail, which I’ve been contemplating and want to write about).
So is what I just said about Best Buy an ad? An endorsement? A testimonial? Or just a story and my opinion? I leave that to you to decide and trust you with that decision. My integrity and relationship with you depends on what you decide. I disclose my relationship for that reason. I believe in transparency and recommend it – in my book – to companies, governments, and journalists. So is this story an ad for my book? That, too, is up to you to decide.
But now the Federal Trade Commission is getting in the middle of our relationship. It has issued vaguely worded rules – amazing that they’re still vague after 80 pages – that make we wonder and worry whether my disclosure is adequate – should ever tweet carry a caveat? – and whether Best Buy will make my observations accurate (what if they give a customer a hassle on a return and that customer complains I misled him?). Best Buy, in turn, might need to worry about what I say about them.
Note that if I were writing for The New York Times – if I were, say, David Pogue – the FTC would not regulate my speech in this manner. First Amendment, you know. The press. But as a blogger, I am now a second class citizen in my speech. The government casts its net over all citizens who now use the tools of the internet to publish – no, to speak. This is a corollary to the debate that’s going on right now over who should be covered under a federal shield law. Who should be under the FTC’s net?
On this blog, that’s my problem and I can handle it. But what about all the huge proportion of the population who are now using the tools of the internet to publish – or what publishers and governments would call publishing when most of them think they’re just using blogs or Twitter or Facebook or YouTube or what comes next so they can talk with their friends – what about them? Now they have to worry about missteps.
Some of you have argued that the FTC is going after deceptive bad guys and that’s good. But what are the unintended consequences? What if one of those unsuspecting “publishers” falls for PayPerPost as Pied Piper and becomes human spam but the FTC sees her as a flim-flam mom? Some of you are pointing to the FCC saying it won’t be mean and it can’t enforce all its regs anyway so we shouldn’t worry – yes, selective enforcement, that’s comforting. But another FTC guy said absurdly that people who review books should return their review copies or they could be in trouble. Which is it? You could be the one person who was fined huge amounts of money because your kid pirated music in your house; you could be the example. Don’t want to take chances? Figure you’re playing it safe?
Welcome to the chill. We all have our own FCC now. Broadcast is an exception to the First Amendment’s prohibition on regulating the press. Now bloggers are, too, because we’re not the press. But we are, aren’t we? See, there are bigger things at stake here than just a few fake Viagra ads. (Mind you, I’m not endorsing Viagra. It’s not working … yet. Now how’s that for disclosure?)
