{"id":1369,"date":"2003-12-19T11:20:12","date_gmt":"2003-12-19T15:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2003\/12\/19\/dont-mess-with-the-internet\/"},"modified":"2003-12-19T11:20:12","modified_gmt":"2003-12-19T15:20:12","slug":"dont-mess-with-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2003\/12\/19\/dont-mess-with-the-internet\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t mess with the Internet"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

So the American Family Association put up a web poll yesterday on
\nwhether people support gay marriage or not (you can find the poll here<\/a>). 
\nPurportedly, the results will be given to Congress to show that
\nAmericans don’t support gay marriage and thus we need to “defend”
\nmarriage from the ravaging homosexuals who will destroy it.  The
\npoll was designed in such as way as to guarantee the “results” that it
\nwill purportedly demonstrate.<\/p>\n

First problem: any Internet poll is an inherently biased sample, as
\nthose who answer the questions are not representative of the population
\nthat one is trying to gain information upon.  Perhaps these are
\npeople who just like to answer questions, or are particularly motivated
\non this issue.  And it only includes those people who have
\ncomputer access.  In this case, it initially only included those
\npeople who received the poll announcement from the “American Family
\nAssociation” (whose efforts have probably ended up estranging more
\nfamilies from their gay children [since its sole advocacy issue right
\nnow seems to be about gay stuff] than saving other families). 
\nThat group (who subscribes to AFA announcements) is pretty pre-disposed
\nto deny gays their civil rights.<\/p>\n

Second: if it exists on the Internet, it WILL get to the wider public
\neventually, and although the measuring instrument will still bear much
\nbias, the originator will not longer have the element of control that
\nthey would have had with a mail poll of their members.  Not to
\nsound too Tom Friedman here, but the Internet roars along on its own
\nlogic, and it’s uncontrollable in its eventual effects, at least in
\nthis regard.<\/p>\n

But thanks be to God, for the poll has gotten out into the wider
\nInternet.  Now the pro-gay marriage and civil union categories are
\neight points ahead of the anti-marriage category.  (You can find the most current results here<\/a>.)  AFA will
\nprobably pull the poll later today (as the American Anglican Council
\ndid at one point in a poll over the Gene Robinson consecration that wasn’t going the “right”way [pun intended]), saying
\nthat the wrong people had gotten to it and messed up the integrity of
\nthe results.  But such a statement belies itself — if the “wrong
\npeople” get to a poll that’s supposed to be reflective of some larger
\ngroup, then the poll was badly designed and presupposed its own
\nresults.  But they won’t tell you that they designed the “poll” in
\nexactly that way so as to cook it to get the results they wanted —
\nthey’ll just claim that someone else spoiled the party.<\/p>\n

But if you try to cook things in your direction in such an obvious way,
\nyou can’t cry “unfair” when the Internet foils your stupidly laid plans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So the American Family Association put up a web poll yesterday on whether people support gay marriage or not (you can find the poll here).  Purportedly, the results will be given to Congress to show that Americans don’t support gay marriage and thus we need to “defend” marriage from the ravaging homosexuals who will destroy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ontheweb"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-m5","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1369\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}