14 DAY TRIAL // The Change.Org website just got a taste of its own medicine after Linus Torvalds started a petition addressed to said website with a simple request.
Change.Org is a very popular platform and lots of people use it to start petitions. Most of them don't end up anywhere and there have been very few instances when something posted on Change.org actually made a difference. As it turns out, their scrutiny regarding the people who actually post stuff is lacking, to say it gently.
It turns out that the website doesn't actually check who is posting petitions, which means that it's very possible that some of the materials and initiatives posted online are not from those actual users.
“Somebody signed a Change.Org petition in my name, and using a really old email address of mine.So since I apparently had an ‘account’, I reset the password, and made a petition of my own. Change.Org - please change your dickish ways. Ok?” said Linus Torvalds on this Google+ account.
This is the actual petition posted by the actual Linus Torvalds (who took the username Completely Fake Linus Torvalds just to make a point).
“People claiming to be a person they are not, and ‘signing’ petitions on Change.Org as somebody else just makes Change.Org look bad when there are fake pseudo-celebrities out there. Also, it results in more spam in my mailbox when people use my name and email to sign ‘me’ up for random petitions. And it's just bad form. Please verify email addresses before allowing people to use them. If somebody enters an email address, send a confirmation to that email that contains some kind of cookie that they need to verify that they actually have access to that email address.”
Other online services usually provide some form of check to ensure that user is who he says he is. This can be easily verified on Twitter, Facebook, but on Change.org no one seems to care if a petition is made correctly.
As you can expect, Linus' petition on Change.org towards Change.org is already a success and it has gathered 160 signatures, way more than the 40 he was looking for.
Linus Torvalds doesn't usually mince his words when he has something to say and he managed to make a lot of people and companies uncomfortable, pushing them in the right direction. It remains to be seen if Change.org does something about it or if this petition is just going to be lost in the trillion and one of online petitions already in existence.