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Subscribe to UncategorizedCampaign Type: The Ultimatum
This is the second in a series of posts introducing the campaign types on The Point.
When I first started thinking about online ultimatums, I was amazed there wasn’t already a website for them. The Web seems like an obvious evolution of collective action; a way for scores of individuals to coordinate small actions that add up to something big and force change.
The makeup of an ultimatum
I’ll start with a quick description of how ultimatums work on The Point. There are four main components:
- Target: A company, organization, or person that you want to behave differently
- Goal: A discrete change that you want the target to make
- Action: What each campaign member will do if the target refuses to change
- Tipping Point: The number of participants that triggers the action
These four components combine into a sentence that reads like this: “[Target] must [Goal] or else [Action] if [Tipping Point] people join.” In other words: do something, or else, we will do something that will force you to do it (if we gain enough participants to deliver the necessary force).
Ultimatums can be customized to fit most circumstances. When organizing labor, for example, finding the first mover — that courageous person who is willing to risk their job to take a stand — is often the greatest hurdle. The Point is the first tool to make that concern moot through its conditional anonymity feature. You can start or join a campaign anonymously, and identities are revealed upon reaching enough members to provide safety in numbers. Creators can also notify stakeholders as their ultimatum grows, control who sees or joins it, set a tipping deadline, and more.
The tipping point
The tipping point is when the cost (to the target) of group action exceeds the cost of change. For example, when a boycott becomes more expensive than building a waste treatment plant, or when the cost of bad press is greater than the cost of following product safety standards.
By making action conditional on reaching a tipping point, The Point implicitly takes the following position: it often1 takes a critical mass of people acting together to force change. Further, we think that knowing action will have an effect inspires a motivating sense of empowerment in people that will increase participation. It’s a simple risk analysis; reduce the chance that an action will be wasted, and more people will take that action.
As an example, consider this Harper’s article calling for all Americans to participate in a general strike unless George Bush resigned or is impeached. Yeah, right. Try telling your boss that you’re staying home from work until George Bush resigns. This is a perfect example of an action that “tips” — if only a few people participate, the participants are punished. But if enough people participate that it becomes the norm, the participants are actually rewarded by not needing to work. The Point is the tool for bringing actions like this one to their tipping point.
Finding your problem’s tipping point
For some campaigns, these elements are obvious. Others require some research. The campaign creation guide is a helpful guide when the answer isn’t apparent.[work on this bit]
The challenge is quantifying the two sides of the equation. How do you find out the cost of a waste treatment plant? What is the cost of a single boycotter? Are there other factors that come into play — the target’s sensitivity to their public image, for example?
We’ve created several tools to help answer these questions. First, the campaign creation guide outlines the thought process behind creating ultimatums. Second, there’s the Problems area, a collection of wiki pages where people can gather intelligence and brainstorm strategies to solve shared problems.
Conclusion
We see ultimatums as enabling a deeply held American ideal — the right to peacefully organize — to the point that it’s virtually painless. It’s a big idea, and I’ve only scratched the surface in this post. What will the world be like when organizing a massive group action is as trivial as clicking a button?
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To be perfectly clear, we don’t believe every form of participation requires a critical mass to be worthwhile. For example, you don’t need 20 people to volunteer at the soup kitchen for it to make a difference — one person acting alone can have an impact (although, getting 20 people to volunteer based on a tipping point model might create a psychological bond through a sense of shared responsibility — see the social contract) ↩
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Scott Garman
I think ThePoint offers a really compelling way of organizing boycott campaigns, and I’m excited about the possibilities. However, there is one difference in the ultimatum type of campaign that seems to be a weak point: how can you trust that the campaign’s participants will follow-through with the ultimatum?
At least with fundraising campaigns you can tie participation in the campaign with someone’s contractural agreement to have their credit card charged when the tipping point is reached. But in ultimatums, how can you be sure that all members (or at least a reasonable threshold of members) are going to deliver the action needed if the ultimatum isn’t acquiesced to?
January 16th, 2008 at 10:20 pmAndrew
Good question, Scott — so much so, in fact, that it qualifies as a Frequently Asked Question.
In short, you’re right, there’s no way that we can be sure people will follow through, but we don’t think it will be as big a problem as it is for other methods of group action.
In long… when we looked at the big problems with participatory democracy, we started by asking the question, “why is it exactly that people so often fail to do what they say they will do?” The answer isn’t that they’re lazy or that they don’t want to help, but that when it comes time to act, they look around and realize that their contribution probably won’t make a difference. Voting is a great example. More people will show up at the polls if the race is close, because they think their effort might actually matter.
By triggering action with a tipping point — the point at which every person’s action is necessary and sufficient to force change — The Point creates an environment where each person feels like their contribution is important. We think that will go a long way towards increasing follow through.
We’re also working on a suite of features to make follow through engaging, fun, and enforceable.
January 16th, 2008 at 10:54 pmThe Point 1.0: A Sneak Peak (Part 1) | Make Something Happen
[...] they’d gain by changing policy. It’s a perfect compliment to The Point’s toolkit. Ultimatum campaigns are the “stick,” and this gives us the [...]
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