Friday OT: online petitions?

jonny_trousers

I'm sure I'm not the only one here who signs online petitions, and mostly I'm sure I'm doing the right thing, but it's recently occurred to me that I do tend to sign very quickly as a knee-jerk reaction to the link I've been sent, perhaps without fully considering all arguments. Clearly these petitions do have the power to exact change (as we've seen in the news this week with that 'PUA' loser having his visa refused) and so I'm now wondering if these things might be too easy to sign? They do gather public opinion, but do they gather fully considered opinion?

meanredspider

Yup - I think there's some mob mentality about some of these petitions. Ironically, it probably gave the guy the oxygen of lots of publicity that he'd have never had otherwise - he must be delighted.

The trouble with petitions like that one is that there isn't a "vote" - one like this might have had quite a few people that felt that freedom of speech was more important but there's no option to counter-petition as far as I'm aware. So all you need is the mob (informed by the Daily Mail) and that's enough.

CiB

I always avoid them. It used to mean something if 130 people phoned the BBC to complain. Now that everyone has instant access the fact that 5000 people have clicked on a link and agreed slightly, agreed a lot, or really really really agreed to something is meaningless.

Add to that these things usually amount to would you like free money or would you like fluffy kittens to be free to gambol in the fields under fluffy clouds, they're generally worthless.

surrey_commuter

I have never seen one which leads me to think that you automatically have a skewed sample of people who believe that signing/voting will make a difference

CitizenLee

Petition or Survey = Avoid for me.

tangled_metal

The last online petitions I looked at all had a biased bit at the top that was meant to elicit signatures. I've no problem with that but it does make it reliant on the potential subscriber to the petition to research the arguments on both sides to make an informed decision. If they don't then IMHO it's all pointless. Add to that you do k I'll not know if every signature is genuine, is a fully informed decision and not sure to external influence whether obvious or subtle.

Add in that you get links posted in special interest forums like here and all of a sudden you get momentum. There's no open.discussion involved in online petitions. If someone came round your house with a paper petition for you to sign it has some merit. You would probably have nothing to do with them, treating them like any other salesman, canvasser or charity beggar.

The whole ease with which you can just put your J Hancock down also devalues them.

I think you can guess I haven't signed one since the MRT no VAT petition a couple of years ago. I knee jerked that one then looked into it and realised it wasn't as big thing as the petition made out. They'd not actually save alot because they have plenty of tricks to avoid the VAT already. It was still worth signing but I felt duped by the wording which made it sound like the Exchecquer was taking a lot of money from these charities which was not actually true.