The Account Has No Face

A group account cannot post as one member; every word it sends out is the group's. The long form's line is not about intentions (Big Book, p. 565). It is "in such a way as to implicate A.A.," and an account with the group's name on it implicates the group every time it speaks. Bill W. saw what one member could do once he made the A.A. name his to use (A.A. pamphlet P-17, p. 53): "it was in the power of an A.A. to marry Alcoholics Anonymous to practically any enterprise or controversy at all, good or bad." Marry, meaning tie together for good in the public's mind. He was describing a man who had to declare his membership to the whole public to do it. Today it takes a password. A meeting starts a page so people can find the schedule, and one night the news touches drinking, or an election, and whoever holds the login shares something. It reads as the group's view, because there is nothing else it could read as. And somewhere a man still drinking, scrolling for a meeting at midnight, finds out which side the room is on before he finds out what time it starts. Test it tonight: ask who holds your group's password, and read back everything that account has posted that isn't about meetings.