Not a bad idea but keep in mind you’ll also potentially be adding yourself to lists. i assume i just ended up in a few databases i’d rather not be in by doing this snooping alone. Hard to tell the sheep from the wolves. I’m not an american though and my country isn’t currently on “hardcore mode” political setting. Stay safe, friend.

It really does.

I’d go with buycott until something better appears tbh. I’m gonna see how it works for me. Too tired to keep snooping for today.

Yes this sounds right and it also makes sense.

Buycott seems promising cause campaigns and boycott lists are user-driven (which, you know… could also be faked I guess) and haven’t found anything fishy in their policies yet, but still snooping around on them. Gonna look into their ownership now.

Edit:

So umm… apparently Buycott was founded by a random 20 something year old LA dev (Ivan Pardo), a 2008 CS guy from Colgate University who basically coded it on his own. Boycott’s social media has been inactive since 2016.

Their business model is they sell access to their barcode API, which basically means they sell the pics of the barcodes and the product descriptions people add voluntarily to companies to do what they want. Not great but you know… better than digital marketing services.

Buycott is related to solidarity tech, which Ivan Pardo also founded, and is a CRM who claims to be “helping unions & grassroots organizations build people-powered movements that transform society…” which could be legit. They’re not free and they’re not cheap and they claim to cater to unions, advocacy orgs and non profits… but idk. Am I full paranoid delusional or does this sound like a honeytrap kinda thing? Like if I was an evil right wing politician this is exactly the kind of company I’d want to have leverage over to be able to sabotage opposition. And we don’t know who Pardo’s partners are. Only that he’s founder.

Oh, also, solidarity tech openly claims they give their customer info to Google analytics in their terms, which, you know… Kinda concerning when your “I’ll handle your grass roots movement” software sees no reason to not freely give your information to the most blatant and thinly veiled CIA front in contemporary history.

In their webpage they say they are “Trusted by Progressive Campaigns and Causes” and name a full total of 5 clients: Debt Collective, UAW, Pilipino Workers Central and CWA. As a non american I don’t know what these things are…

idk I don’t trust them. But I’m also running out of options at this point. Might as well use something. They seem like the best so far.

I checked out boycat.io

Searched a bunch of “everyone knows they’re bad” companies and the info they provided seemed accurate, reasonable and well sourced.

However, their business model seems kinda fishy. first of all they sell “I’m a nice company” certifications, which in itself s a conflict of interest, but especially if you can’t find who the owners of boycat are anywhere on the site or the internet, their whois information is private and if you look at their privacy policy, they allow themselves the right to track “usage data” (i.e. what you scanned) and “location data” which they later allow themselves to “share” with “service providers”, which are “companies providing hosting, data analysis, marketing, customer service, and technical support.”… so umm… Yeah. Basically same conflict of interest as the other company, but less explicit.

And again,. not once do they say who owns them, how they started or is behind them nor do they provide an explanation on why they don’t talk about themselves… Cause I could understand well intending devs trying to keep private to stop companies from threatening them, but tell the community this is why you don’t share your info. Their contact us doesn’t work either.

I would really like to see something community driven but i guess big companies could infiltrate something like that easily. I’ll look into other solutions and let you know if i find anything promising.

ps: 90% of their news were about Israel-palestine, which, you know… OK, good and important but ummm… I’d also like to know about other stuff.

Sure. Mentioning them helped me remember i have to get my act together regarding who i give my money to, so even if they’re evil now something good may have come from using and naming them. Thanks for the reminder. I needed it.

I found the thing you mentioned a good idea so I googled the app to find out how they decided who should or should not be boycotted. I landed their homepage and it said they offered digital marketing solutions.

I’d love to use something like that if community driven but sounds like an important conflict of interest.

It is the norm for companies in most if not all major stock exchanges. They have to report activities and earnings to stockholders.

Well, I don’t know. Maybe you’re right. You just didn’t offer any acknowledgement of the difficulties OP faced, which didn’t sound like a picnic. People tend to have trouble finding empathy when they’re frustrated, stressed or in any kind of distress really. This and some of the wording in your final paragraph is what gave me that impression.

But yeah, I don’t know what’s best or what you were feeling when you wrote it. You may have a better idea than I do for all I know and you’re free to disregard my comment.

I’m not the advice police or anything. Just someone who thinks compassion helps communities grow healthier and was chipping in.

Either way, have a good week.

I get your frustration with this kind of attitude. I also felt like a reality check was warranted. However, when people are evading or grieving about something, even if being childish, in my experience it’s usually better to validate their feelings first and then compassionately convey the harsh realities that they must face for their own sake and perhaps that of others.

Slapping people with the harsh truths they have trouble dealing with can do wonders for our frustration, but i think it’s not the best approach for those who need some guidance.

An extreme version of this would be the father that yells at his child and tells him he will never amount to anything with this attitude, in frustration, as a response to the kid’s depression. I was this kid.

Conflict tends to create resistance, you know? He was right too, but not a great way to convey his message.

I try to go with the following algorithm for this kind of situation: remind self of importance of compassion -> validate feelings -> convey perspective -> advise

Just my 2 cents. Hope you have a good week.

edit: some clarifications.

You’re not rambling about nothing, and yes, you got dealt shit cards by the croupier of life. Lots of people have it easier in many regards. I can understand your frustration and resistance. You got robbed of your childhood and that sucks.

However, life is unfair and life is relentless and that ain’t changing anytime soon. If you don’t find a job/income source within a reasonable time frame, you’ll be back in a different kind of hell.

I understand you are grieving for your childhood, but sometimes your material situation becomes more urgent than your feelings. How urgent finding a job is depends on your personal finances and security nets available.

I suggest getting a job for your own good. Life is unfair but all we can do is adapt and look out for ourselves and those we care about.

If you play your cards right career-wise, you might be able to dedicate some time to self discovery now or more later on, when you have financial stability.

Good luck to you, friend.

Those poor advertising service providers!

We should eat some gorilla munch in their honor.

Prolly mostly body language and/or pheromones. Both massive channels of communication that everyone understands on some level but not so many think about consciously.

Also, it seems to me that traumatized people are more likely to belong to certain scenes than non traumatized folk. People pick up on that, even if they don’t realize they do.

We’re now interacting online, for example, in the fediverse. I’d be willing to bet we’re all more likely to have suffered social trauma than the general population is. I know I have.

I didn’t think it was! Mine wasn’t either! Sorry if I came off aggro. D:

You seem to have confused me for someone who is willing to explain or be held accountable for their statements.

Of course!

I used to work in financial report automation and was recommended to some rich dude. I tend to choose my clients carefullly so we talked and he seemed like a nice guy. Talked about his charity organization a lot. I took him as a client.

The project was a nightmare. No one in his team was willing to be specific about any critical details and he didn’t really know what he wanted so he kept changing specifications.It also quickly became evident He was doing shady shit with his numbers. I was screwed, though, because had no other jobs and and was about 100 hours of unpaid work in at that point. I figured i’d deliver and then just never talk to the guy again. There was lots of progress at that point too, but he missed the first agreed payment. Then he missed it again. Then the time for the second payment came and he hadn’t paid the first yet.

I asked his team and payments were always “coming next week”. Eventually one of his team members felt bad for me and confessed that they had received instructions directly from him to say this but not pay me.

I realized he was going to stiff me. I asked for a meeting to review progress with him. We met up, he asked me how i was doing. With a smile and never being threatening or rude I told him i was having some tax trouble due to an accounting error. I then said “but thank god my sister works in the (local version of the) IRS/tax service so she helps me with my questions”. This is true btw.

He raised an eyebrow and asked me a bunch of stuff regarding my sisters position and how the organization worked. I didn’t really reply to his questions. Instead, i said “well i gueas the most important thing is that there are 3 ways to get an audit: random selection, inconsistency in ingormation by reporting agents such as banks and real estate registries or…” and then I paused for a split second and said “anonymous tips.” And then I kept talking about my fictional “accounting error” and acted like nothing happened. The information regarding how to get audits is all true here btw.

This was a threat. And not an empty one, mind you. His charity organization was a tax evasión maneuver, and not a neatly tied one. I could cause a lot of damage to him.

The meeting went on talking about work alone.

People like him understand these subtelties. I asked him about payment at the end of the meeting and he apologized and told me i’d get paid this very week. I got paid the next day.

I could have gone to authorities anyway, but people like him can be extremely dangerous if you do them harm. He had the resourcea and connections to make me miserable if he chose to. With this it was understood, by both of us, “don’t fuck with me and i won’t fuck with you” Threats are better for everyone when dealing with these types imo.

Note that this situation was nuanced, and what i did was use the leverage i had on something I knew he cared about in a way that he would understand but never dorectly threatening him.

I did this in front of his team. While everyone understood what had happened, i have all the plausible deniability in the world and it was subtle enough for him to not feel hummiliated.

Sun tu says something like “provide your enemy with a golden bridge to retreat through”. He also said “the supreme art of war is to defeat your opponent without ever fighting”. I feel like i only truly learnt the meaning of those words after this situation.

Sorry for the shit spelling. Am on my phone.

Hope it helps.

It’s all very context dependant… You need to evaluate in what aspects you have leverage or may be a threat with the specific person and suggest you may cause damage in that regard. You can do this by mentioning other situations with other people or anecdotes or whatever. For example, if you’re able to cause reputational damage to someone, you may mention about having a downfall with someone and hinting on how it was bad for them.

I’ll provode a concrete example from my life in my reply to the other person who asked in a min.

This is very nuanced and context specific. It should be done carefully, as all things should when dealing with psychos.

So am I.