Avoid Yelling Please

At YouOwnYou, we’ve decided not to yell at each other or at companies. Here’s why:

YouOwnYou is the community of people who create their own terms and conditions for how they want companies to treat their trust, privacy and ESG standards (environment, social and governance). Your terms and conditions are instructions for what’s acceptable behavior from companies. If a company is not meeting your terms, then you can change suppliers or give that company the chance to change their behavior. You show them your Objectives and they show you their Key Results.

If, for example, you want companies to supply great shoes and a carbon-neutral plan, then YouOwnYou can help! We’re building technology that allows your personal terms and conditions to be shared with every brand in the world. If your Objective is to live in a Carbon Neutral world then, using YoY, shoe brands can qualify to be your supplier as long as they show progress toward their CO2 Key Results. (Part of what YoY does for its members is collect data from companies. We do the work of keeping track of their performance so you don’t have to.)

Yelling doesn't really fit into this approach to change. The YoY model is about inviting companies to match their behavior with your terms and conditions. It’s a reward-based system where companies that earn your trust also earn the chance to be your supplier.

But this isn’t the main reason why we’re against yelling.

Yelling has become too common in our online lives and, for the most part, it’s produced division and anger but not enough change. If the Objective is to change behavior, then being angry online is not working well enough. In fact, YouOwnYou believes that yelling at each other or at companies makes us weaker in our digital lives.

If the Objective is to change behavior, then being angry online is not working well enough. In fact, YouOwnYou believes that yelling at each other or at companies makes us weaker in our digital lives.

Why?

Mainly because yelling divides people into isolated groups. And when you’re divided it’s harder to join forces in the areas of your life where you actually share common interests.

Say, for example, that you and I are totally different and don’t share anything in common. But we both want to keep our online data safe and private. Our individual ability to get the Privacy Key Results we want is weaker if we can’t cooperate on the one issue we actually agree on.

Yelling at each other (literally or online) seems like a symptom of a broader cultural issue that has been touched on in the documentary film The Social Dilemma. But we think it’s also weakening our ability to create benefits that can be shared by everyone.

How can we influence the behavior of companies so that their Key Results match our Life Objectives?

We believe in pooling our common interests even when we disagree on other stuff. And to do that well, we need to make this a yelling-free zone.

Here’s an illustration of us not getting along, not being able to cooperate and, maybe even yelling at each other. Our common interest in Privacy is divided and isolated. That makes us both weaker than we could be if we worked together on Privacy, the one issue that we can agree on.

And here’s an illustration of us not getting along and having nothing in common but finding ways to leverage our common interest in Privacy:

Finally, here’s our vision at YouOwnYou for what happens when lots of people with different views share a common interest in Privacy.

There’s been a lot of yelling over the past decade or so and not enough change.

We’d like to change that.

Meanwhile, companies - and the people that run them - are asking for instructions from their customers for how they can be trusted.

YouOwnYou is a way to create the terms and conditions for better and more trusting relationships based on matching the Key Results of companies with the Objectives of people. The more people that create their YoY terms and conditions, the more we think companies will change their behavior to match the priorities of people.

We think it’s an exciting and hopeful new approach. Almost worth yelling about. Almost... 😎