Essay on Free-Riding and Google Groups

I have been observing a computer-mediated communication channel on the internet called Google Groups. It is part of what is considered to be the Usenet system. In observing Google Groups the “free-rider”(Kollock & Smith p.110) problem proved to be extremely immanent. As the web and the internet expand, "free-riding" is becoming more and more of a problem that needs to be addressed, and from what I have learned and observed so far I have a feeling this problem may be here to stay. It proves to be a difficult, if not, impossible task to keep a mass amount of anonymous people under control. In the process of trying to terminate the free rider problem, Google Groups and many other Usenet channels, have made adjustments that either help to diminish free-rider efforts, or at least cut through the clutter that is accumulated through their actions, but no one has figured out the solution.

The Usenet is one of the largest computer-mediated communication systems on the internet (Kollock & Smith p.111). Google Groups is just one of the channels that make up this system. Google Groups is basically an online bulletin board. People leave messages for other members in their group to read and comment on. These groups are separated by topic and the members are all supposed to interact, and contribute useful information to each other based on these topics. The point of this communication channel is to provide a way for a mass amount of people to share ideas, opinions, information, and even to just interact with each other about specific topics and issues. This is useful because many of these people would have probably never have had a chance to interact before, and this can provide an effective way for the spread of information to take place.

These Google Groups are effective in the spread of information, but there is an issue that is hindering what could be the maximum efficiency of Google Groups and the other channels involved in this Usenet system. I was first introduced to the idea of the free-rider problem in my Com430Z class recently. One of the readings that I was assigned was called “Managing the Virtual Commons”. It was written by Peter Kollock and Marc Smith, and was published in Computer-mediated communication: Linguistic, social and cross-cultural perspectives, in 1996. The term “free-rider” (p.110) had a different meaning to me before I read this article. I previously believed that the term referred to people who were just looking for a free ride in the perspective that they would use other people’s information and ideas for their own benefit and not contribute anything back. This is a big part of what the term means, but from the reading I realized that people who try to disrupt the order of these communication channels, by veering away from the topic, advertising, or just posting comments that have no meaning or relevance, are also considered to be free-riders.

Since the beginning, the internet has been intended for the use of communication. Communication channels like Google Groups obviously fulfill this intention. From my observation of the channel I chose to research, I really got a chance to get a good look at this free-riding problem up close. I chose a Google Group labeled rec.food.cooking. This group’s topic is basically food, and involves anything that has to do with it. Some examples would be recipes, cooking, and other food related issues. Right in the beginning of my observation I noticed that many people weren’t talking about anything even remotely close to this topic. People were posting inappropriate comments, advertisements, and engaging in conversation that could not be considered useful to the topic at hand. The problem with this is that the people who created this Google Group did it for a reason, and now there is so much clutter that the purpose is being diluted. For example, if I wanted to see what the latest recipe someone had posted was, I would have to sort through a significant amount of “junk” to try to find what I was looking for. Google has come up with ideas and features to try to help solve this problem. The group I observed has search tools to help narrow down what you are looking for by title. This really does help the situation, but people still post comments under titles that don’t match the content. This group also has a list of popular topic on the side of its page where the comments are posted. This also acts as a search tool. The next feature is that there is a way for profiles to be created. This could serve to be helpful when trying to determine the integrity of comments and information being posted. Another feature is that you can engage in a more direct chat with whomever you wanted to. Even though these all could be very useful, the fact that people can still lie and/or chose to be anonymous still hinders the efficacy of this channel and others like it. The two features that seemed like they could be most effective were the fact that you can’t post comments unless you were a member, and that you could report comments to be investigated. These would defiantly help cut down on clutter.

Free-riding affects everyone on the web using these communication channels, whether they realize it or not. It discourages people from using these communication channels; therefore information that could be very useful to others will not reach the vast audience that these channels provide. It also discourages people by taking away from their efforts and letting free-riders reap the benefits of their hard work. Maybe the reason for all of this is because people don’t stop and think about how this really affects us. One person may not realize how all this junk accumulates to form what I would call “Internet Pollution”. Another reason this may happen is because there are really no sound penalties or punishments for these actions. The only thing we can hope for is that the effort to stop this free-riding problem will continue, and maybe later on down the road we can find the solution.


Kloolock, Peter & Smith, Marc. (1196). Managing the virtual commons: Cooperation and conflict in the computer communities. Is Susan C. Herring (Ed.), Computer-mediated communication: Linguistic, social and cross-cultural perspectives (pp.109-128). Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

rec.food.cooking