[sayhar]

I think this should answer your question: https://integrityinstitute.org/founders-letter

But also, our values: https://integrityinstitute.org/our-values

Also, succinctly -- this is a real, grassroots thing. We gathered a bunch of friends and coworkers for this big idea of "what if we had best practices and a professional association for integrity work, just like we do for cybersecurity" and then worked for 10 months to do it.

We've tried hard to put all kinds of pieces into place. We're making it a place that is both independent of companies and also safe for current employees of those companies to join.

It's also cool that we can draw on this community to give expert advice to stakeholders (policymakers, journalists, companies, academics, etc). Mad that congress doesn't understand how Instagram works, or whatever? We can explain things -- as people whose training was in looking at the total information ecosystem of a platform.

A goal is to have integrity work be at least as prestigious, valued, and essential as cybersecurity, or software engineering is. A thing where quality matters, and if you do shoddy work you will be called out on it.

Does that help?

[tmule]

Thanks! The values resonate strongly (rarely practiced in industry though - power, the pursuit of glory, and partisanship can and do form a toxic combination).

[malandrew]

a statement of values is meaningless. What organizational procedures do you have in place to prevent some faction from hijacking the organization and morphing it into an ideological echo chamber. The values on that page are as mutable as the html they are written in.

For example, in the past 10 to 20 years or so we've seen both the ADL and ACLU morph into institutions that would be unrecognizable to ADL or ACLU staffers from 10 to 20 years ago. No one ever imagined that they would abandoned their classically liberal values and replace those values with the illiberal "liberal" values they practice today.

[wutbrodo]

Was the ADL ever classically liberal? I don't mean that snarkily. I just don't recall much of a shift in their values in the way that's clearly visible for the ACLU and others.

[malandrew]

Probably not fully classically liberal like the ACLU once was but certainly far more classically liberal than they are today (which is pretty much not at all).

[beebmam]

The ACLU was founded by Hellen Keller, who was a lifelong socialist, among others.

[wutbrodo]

I don't think I follow your point. Are you suggesting that the ACLU was also never classically liberal because the one of the dozen+ members of the founding committee was a socialist?

[commandlinefan]

> morphing it into an ideological echo chamber

Assuming that wasn’t the point from the very beginning.