OpenWeb is on a mission to improve how we talk to each other online. We do this by creating online spaces for debate, discussion, progress and understanding between people. We have a vision of a web that is more open — where publishers have the tools to create and foster community, outside the walled gardens of the monopolistic social and ad platforms.
Part of living up to that vision means working with publishers who align with our values.
Just yesterday, OpenWeb ended platform services for a number of partners. We found that these sites had escaped our efforts to partner with publishers that live up to our standards of integrity. It’s not the first time we’ve taken action like this and — as publisher partners evolve in their individual approaches to content — it probably won’t be the last.
This raises a question we’ve never publicly addressed as a company: What are OpenWeb’s standards for determining which publishers do and don’t align with our values? Let’s talk about how we decide who to partner with.
Our partnership standards are a set of rules through which we determine what publishers are appropriate to partner with. We arrive at them by leveraging a variety of respected third-party resources.
These resources help us stay up to date with publishers’ actions. They include indexes and databases of false news, hate speech, conspiracy, and disinformation websites. If a partner is designated as such by these respected sources, we will end our partnership with them. If a prospective partner with these designations reaches out to us, we’ll decline their interest — we’ve done it many times.
We’re truly committed to holding ourselves accountable, and to constantly improving – and we love to hear feedback and suggestions on how we can stay aligned with our mission. Let’s have a conversation.
