New App Lets You Boycott Koch Brothers, Monsanto And More
forbes.com
forbes.com
T&C includes the "no class action" and binding arbitration clauses. Privacy policy doesn't actually mention anything about campaigns I use or products I scan, which makes my suspicious mind ... umm... suspicious. At least it omits the "or as otherwise allowed by law" blanket "we do whatever we want" clause.
They do say they won't sell or rent personally identifiable information. I'm not sure if they could weasel out of it by using some sort tracking cookie, but it looks like they seem to be limiting themselves to selling aggregate data.
I'm not a lawyer, of course, but I don't think I really said anything anyone else can't read for themselves.
It seems like "talking to a server" is the default for everything nowadays, even when it doesn't need to be.
Hmm so it doesn't work online where I buy tons of stuff from Amazon Prime, and it doesn't work in brick and mortar because my brick and mortar and steel grocery store has absolutely dismal minimal coverage if any (maybe they have a jammer?). I suppose it would work great at the farmers market ... where everything is grown locally and mostly organically so it doesn't have much of a point anymore. Other than stunts in front of a camera for journalists I'm not sure where I could use this app.
https://www.wealthfront.com/static/documents/wealthfront_cli...
There is a "no class action" and arbitration clause. Hell, it's data sharing policy is even worse:
"We do not share non-public personal information about you with unaffiliated third parties with whom we have no contractual business relationship for their independent use unless (1) you give us permission, (2) it is necessary to complete a transaction on your behalf, (3) it is necessary to protect against fraud, comply with a subpoena or other court order or is otherwise required or permitted by law. We do not sell information about you to outside unaffiliated companies."
That carefully tip-toes around the idea that they "can" share non-public personal information about you with affiliated third parties whom they do have a contractual business relationship with. Note the conditions they provide are only for sharing with unaffiliated third parties.
"We do not sell information about you to outside unaffiliated companies." "unaffiliated third parties with whom we have no contractual business relationship"
Heck, these two lines essentially suggest that affiliated and unaffiliated have nothing to do with contracts. Therefore, they are free to sell information to whomever they deem they are affiliated with.
My point isn't to pick on you or your company, but merely to point out that what you are suggesting is pretty common-place.
Turning everything in ones life in to a form of politics would be way too draining I'd think and ultimately not a productive as one would like.
I'd rather spend ten minutes a day helping on a suicide prevention hotline, or donating resources to newly expectant mothers, than try to ferret out every last connection to abortion clinics by furtively scanning bar-codes every time I went shopping.
The Citizens United decision means the money you spend is used to influence the political process. It's part of what you're buying, so why not factor it in to your purchasing decision?
Because one hallmark of a civil society is the ability to have vigorous disagreements in the political sphere and yet continue to live and work together as a community.
I can't pick and choose if I want to pay for tanks but I can certainly not pay companies that are actively trying to hurt the people I love with my money.
Obviously its fabric will survive your boycott of Chick-fil-A, but letting the political bleed into all aspects of our lives is something I find intensely distasteful.
Why imply not funding things you object to as not being civilised? Makes no sense. Or is it just a justification for laziness?
It's funny... the UX person in me was thinking it would be easier just to take a picture of your shopping cart and have it highlight the items you shouldn't purchase. Just based on packaging. Then I thought ... hey ... an even better idea would be to hold the phone up in front of the shelves and have all of the offending items X'd out.
Then I thought ... man ... all of this would be a LOT easier if Google Glass had a better camera! Maybe Apple will make a better pair of glasses and in the not too distant future we can just walk up the aisles and have all the products we wouldn't want to support X'd out for us.
Point is... in the future you will most likely not have to scan the bar code. The software will just put X'es over all of the products that are "bad" by some definition set by you. That would be a pretty interesting use of something like Glass I think.
Also I think avoiding products if you disagree with the company owners is laudable and I don't really get why you are responding with such snark.
I don't think it would be like excluding all the products that don't fit my world view, but excluding all the products from actors whom I think are doing severe damage to the environments and legislatures of the world's nations.
Maybe it's a bit of a reach, but the Coke/Pepsi vending machines here have water in them and that was how I figured out each company also had their own brand of bottled water they also sold (Aquafina for Pepsi and Desani for Coke).
Not water, but oddly, Dr. Pepper is bottled by Pespi here. In other parts of the United States, Coke or 7up bottles it.
I agree that it's good for people to support companies they believe in, but that takes introspection and investigation. This app promotes neither.
I agree it becomes really silly beyond one or maybe two steps. IBM in the 1930s was about the limit of "second degree hate"; I'd still have been happy to mow the lawn of IBM employees back then. I probably would have had problems doing business with IBM directly if I'd known all the details. The only transactions I'd have done with nazis were sell side death transactions, i.e. real life Castle Wolfenstein.
The Koch brothers probably aren't going to change their behavior no matter how much boycotts cut into their bottom line. If you cut off all revenue to every business they have an interest in, and everyone in the world refused to send them another dime even by buying up their failing businesses at fire sale prices, they would still be richer in their cash holdings than most people ever dream of being. They'd continue to have more influence on world affairs than most small nations.
On the other hand, most large corporations are more interested in money than politics, and politics is just a side game. So a moderately successful boycott of a single or small number of products sends enough of a signal back to corporate headquarters to change their behavior. If Whirlygig sales drop 10% because of their policy on Foozles, they aren't going to wait for Fizzbuzz sales to follow, they're going to reverse course immediately.
But nice try at sophomore cynicism.
Monsanto: poisoned people with Agent Orange, DDT, and polychlorinated biphenyls (re PCBs: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0101-02.htm)
Facebook: ???. I guess their CEO is an arrogant, 20-something billionaire, and they play fast and loose with online privacy. They have yet to kill anyone or commit treason[1]. So there's that.
[1] Or, as they'd call it on Arrested Development, "light treason"
edit: really, i'm getting downvoted by someone for civility?
The only harm involved with DDT is the millions of poor mostly-non-white people dead from malaria (including many children) because of the irrationality of some privileged wealthier mostly-white people (not including many children).
For more info start with http://industrialprogress.com/2012/01/26/the-story-of-ddt/ and google.
Salesmen used to drink large amounts of organophosphates to show farmers it was harmless -- now we know that class of peaticides cause serious neurological disorders.
Or more importantly, where is the evidence that exposure to much lower dosages of DDT causes more harms than millions dead of malaria?
However, the mechanisms that drive this are more complex. A grossly simplified version goes like this: Since the population that's hit worst has no buying power, no pharmaceutical company is interested in developing a vaccine or an effective, cheap treatment. Malaria is very much a poor peoples illness due to a variety of contributing factors: No access to effective treatment, no access to mosquito nets, no proper hygienic conditions, no enclosed living spaces that keep mosquitos out.
Just spraying DDT on every swamp in Africa is not a solution to the problem. DDT accumulates in the food chain, mostly in fat and gets fed to the children you're trying to protect via the mothers milk. It is linked to an increased rate of stillborn and cancer. It's really not the kind of stuff you'd want to use if there's any alternative.
Alex Epstein is the director of the Center for
Industrial Progress, an organization he founded
in 2011. Its mission is to "inspire Americans to
embrace industrial progress as a cultural ideal."
He is also a blogger at Master Resource, a "Free
Market Energy Blog," and a past fellow of the Ayn
Rand Institute, an organization that has received
funding from the Koch Foundations including at
least $50,000 between 2005 and 2010.
Some of my favorite blog post titles of his:
* Coal is Clean: http://industrialprogress.com/2012/03/12/coal-is-clean/
* Keep Our "Addiction" to Oil, End Our Allergy to Self-Assertion: http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?JServSessionIdr005=zvtlch4...
* Why We Should Love the Oil Companies: http://www.masterresource.org/2012/06/love-oil-companies-edu... (I think this might be my favorite for its shades of Dr. Strangelove's subtitle)
Statists don't like the Koch's because they hate anyone who believes that people should be free to make their own decisions without being ordered about by small-minded busybodies whose self-image depends on the delusion that they know what's best for everyone else. And rather than engage in debate, they find it much easier to just demonize their opponents with dishonest ad hominim attacks.
You do know they funded the Tea Party.
Really it all comes down to irrational hate by one side or the other and unfortunately this type of irrationality is best observed on sites like Hacker's News and Slashdot, Digg was bad too in its good days. The level of pretentiousness is astounding, but fortunately other than up/down/karma and bombastic posts the members of such sites do little else.
http://www.collectiveoffset.com/
I think this is an interesting concept and it will be cool to see how this space evolves!
I actually don't like the use of offset however. Why do I want to offset Chic Fil A? If I don't even eat there--I don't have anything to offset. Offset also makes me feel like I am helping to return to the current status quo. What if I don't want the status quo? What if I just want to fight Chic Fil A?
I think that the idea that users contributing a small amount of money to combat the negative spending of some corporations is incredibly sticky. ("Look at the power of my small dollars! I'm making this evil corporation burn their money!").
But how do you convince visitors to the site that this math adds up? Users may want to donate but would probably be more likely to donate if they were convinced their dollars had that much power. Maybe an infographic explaining it?
Maybe it could also offer the option to place the order for you, so it becomes an "ethical online shopping" site? Like any other shopping site, your list could be saved and reused/tailored next time. If the status of any item changes, a suggestion to change brands could automatically be made next time the list is used. Funding could be by negotiating a cut of each purchase with the vendor?
Boycotting does not have to turn into a religion that drives you into starvation. You can just try to support the less evil choice, or only when you have time to spare.
Just as we inside the HN bubble care about IP laws (see every thread about Apple's lawsuits), there are plenty of people who care deeply about food or other issues. And it's not a huge investment to use this app once during weekly groceries and figure out which companies are opposed to $personal_beliefs. After that a "good enough" boycott is pretty much zero effort.
I guess it is true that getting hundreds or thousands of other people to change their behavior a little bit can add up more than 1 person changing a lot.
If you get a hit on Choco-bits at home, then you know that you also won't be buying Fruti-bits, as they're both made by Sulfur Industries. I don't think you need to go slowly down the aisle scanning everything with a bad connection.
1) note, facts require research not punditry
Looks like Ivan could use some help