Editor’s note: This article was first published in January 2011; it describes the Facebook page as just launched, and its remark that banks’ abuses had not yet faced Web 2.0 reflects that month.
Following our previous post, Abuses we should report but never do, a small debate opened up: however much we try to plot against or boycott the banking system, we would never manage to unite enough to make some noise, partly because we need banks for our day-to-day transactions.
Of course, then I started thinking that needing banks is one thing, and wanting the current banking business model is quite another, and that model only understands one language: money. Clearly, I don’t expect people to mobilise overnight to report abuses such as high fees when an instalment goes unpaid, or to file a class action for “fraud” over the sale of an investment product that benefits only the private bank and clearly harms the small investor. Harassment by finance companies and lenders’ customer-hunting methods come right behind the banks.
Even so, we’ve created a Facebook page. We’ve called it “Un Banco no es tu amigo” (A bank is not your friend), a nod to an old post published on Rankia (a Spanish investing forum) under the same title, which has become a classic thanks to how well it was written and the comparison its author made.
On this page we’ve left the wall open so that anyone can express their opinions and any blogger can freely post their articles, giving their opinion or complaining about the banking system and/or the bank responsible. The page has no administrators, so everyone is free to exercise their right to freedom of expression.
Why we created the page
I’d be lying if I said I had given up all hope that one day, together, we can change the system and put the banks in their place, because I don’t think it’s fair that banking is the only business that grows rich at everyone else’s expense in good times, and even more so in a crisis, without lifting a finger and without ever thinking with its heart, since banks even make money from their donations by deducting them from their taxes.
But to be honest, I also don’t think it will even go properly viral, because it’s well known that when it comes to a serious subject that some people are indifferent to, complaints like these stall.
Still, let me tell you that everyone stumbles with a bank at some point in their life, but they accept it and do nothing, partly because banks are untouchable. I, however, would like all of us together to touch them.
So let’s wait and see how the page does, and then we’ll think about whether something can be done, what we can do, or simply how we go about it.
Maybe the banks have always got away with it because, until now, their abuses had never come up against Web 2.0.
Featured image: Kārlis Dambrāns, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.
