Change.org was launched in February of 2007. Since then it has taken great care to balance delicately its existence as a for-profit organization and its role as a platform for collective action. The flaw in government that it seeks to correct is that of responsiveness and consumer representation. Its way of doing this is simple. Individuals or users start their own petitions on the website; their target is contacted through email to notify them that such a petition has been created. Collecting signatures is a matter of convincing those on social media networks to fulfill an act of slacktivism in its purest form: clicking a button to indicate that they’ve signed the petition, and if they feel particularly moved by the cause, having them write a short comment about why. So far this method has proved remarkably successful through a matter of sheer numbers. Perhaps the most famous example is the petition that was started by a lawyer representing the parents of Tayvon Martin calling for the prosecution of his killer, George Zimmerman. Created just as the story was gaining coverage by national sources of traditional media, it eventually collected over 2 million signatures, many of which were added after the goal – the prosecution of George Zimmerman in a court of law – had been reached. Other successes have to do with consumers appealing corporations to change certain practices; the threat of mass boycott or public ire offered by hundreds of thousands of signatures is often enough to have companies considering other options.

But as effective as Change.org is as a tool for applying pressure to those in power, it rests uneasily with Benkler’s idea of the networked public sphere. The freedom from commercial interests he alludes to isn’t entirely present. Although it costs nothing for individual users to create petitions on the site, the company subsists on revenue from charging for the promotion of petitions and the hosting of petitions for non-profit organizations. The latter makes its business model more akin to those of companies that exchange user data for money; the tacit understanding is that while signing the petitions paid for by one of these non-profits, you will enter your email and therefore be added to the organization’s mailing list. And though the model under which it operates certainly relies on a massive number of users to generate excitement, momentum, and support for its petitions, it is with a process that can hardly be considered collaborative. Most users rarely participate outside of supplying signatures and possibly sharing links on social networks – movements related to the petition and any follow-up actions are coordinated and conducted almost entirely by those who organized the petition in the first place. This low investment of resources requested of the average participant is arguable what makes Change.org efficient – it unites a vast number of minor indications of support into something formidable. It, however, comes at the cost of true, meaningful interaction with public issues. There is nothing very introspective about clicking a button or sharing a link on a cause with which you are already aligned. Change.org might be a valuable tool to direct collective action, but it must not be mistaken for a public sphere or a platform engendering true, substantial participation.