

New App Lets You Boycott Koch Brothers, Monsanto And More - duggieawesome
http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2013/05/14/new-app-lets-you-boycott-koch-brothers-monsanto-and-more-by-scanning-your-shopping-cart/?partner=yahootix

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kevinpet
So you're telling me you get my email, my political inclinations, and my
offline purchasing habits.

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.

~~~
StavrosK
I don't understand why things just _have_ to be online-enabled nowadays. It
seems like this app could be implemented with a daily-updating list of which
products belong to which company, but my understanding is that they do a live
server check, which wastes data and is very bad for privacy.

It seems like "talking to a server" is the default for everything nowadays,
even when it doesn't need to be.

~~~
VLM
"my understanding is that they do a live server check, which wastes data and
is very bad for privacy."

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.

~~~
StavrosK
Sorry, don't read too much into my comment. "My understanding" just comes from
the parent comment, I haven't tried the app out.

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benjohnson
As a someone who supports the right to life, you'd think I'd be interested in
this app, but on reflection, I not interested.

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.

~~~
bilbo0s
heh...

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.

~~~
davidw
Maybe you could also have it do face recognition and tie that in with
sentiment analysis of people's twitter, facebook and Google+ feeds so that you
can be cold and aloof or just plain avoid people with "bad" viewpoints.

~~~
pi18n
I'd like a red X over people that discuss, say, the political opinions of
celebrities.

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.

~~~
davidw
To me, it seems too tribal and "total warfare"ish. Remembering and boycotting
a few things... sure, although generally that doesn't have much effect. But
tagging all products that have some association with people who don't fit your
world view seems scary and close-minded to me.

~~~
pi18n
Ah. I agree with your first point, it's ineffectual. But my hope would be that
an app can help people boycott more effectively (who would guess that bottled
waters are sold by Coke and Pepsi?) and have a greater total effect.

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.

~~~
yareally
> (who would guess that bottled waters are sold by Coke and Pepsi?)

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).

~~~
VLM
If you research it you'll find both are bottled filtered tap water. For awhile
I tried figuring out where they were bottled, mostly unsuccessfully. The holy
grail would have been finding competing plants in the same city bottling the
same municipal tap water, but I was unsuccessful. Not all corporate bottling
plants bottle all products at every plant, I couldn't figure out which of my
coke products came from the nearest syrup plant in Chicago or bottling plant
in Quincy although it seems all Pepsi products are reminiscent of the
proverbial "thousand mile salad" and come from the sand states (or what we in
the center of the country call fly over, because we fly over those states on
our international vacations which we can easily afford because we don't live
on the coasts)

~~~
yareally
Oh yeah, I think at least one of them says it's tap water in the fine print on
the bottle (or did). Pretty funny though.

Not water, but oddly, Dr. Pepper is bottled by Pespi here. In other parts of
the United States, Coke or 7up bottles it.

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kevinthew
So what exactly makes the Koch Brothers and Monsanto worse than Facebook (also
a horrible political lobbying monster corporation)? Because they're not tech
companies who your friends work at?

~~~
aaronbrethorst
Koch Brothers: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-02/koch-brothers-
flout...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-02/koch-brothers-flout-law-
getting-richer-with-secret-iran-sales.html?nr_email_referer=1)

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"

~~~
xenophanes
How can you poison people with DDT? DDT is harmless to humans. It's been eaten
in large doses to demonstrate this point.

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.

~~~
leoh
This is simply not true. There are scads of studies that have established
DDT's potential for human toxicity in diabetes and cancer. Not only that,
DDT's LD50 is not particularly large.

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.

~~~
xenophanes
Source?

Or more importantly, where is the evidence that exposure to much lower dosages
of DDT causes more harms than millions dead of malaria?

~~~
brucefancher
Yeah, but malaria mostly only kills (tens of millions of) children in poor
countries in Africa and Asia so it's of no concern to right-thinking
environmentalists in rich Western countries.

~~~
Xylakant
You're exaggerating. Malaria is a killer, but it's not tens of millions of
children per year. The WHO estimates a number just shy of a million, about 50%
children. That's still a sizable number and in principle you're right - most
of them are in poor countries.

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.

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svmegatron
Awesome! I've been working on something similar:

<http://www.collectiveoffset.com/>

I think this is an interesting concept and it will be cool to see how this
space evolves!

~~~
alloftheabove
Cool project.

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?

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femto
An alternative is to specify generic items (eg. breakfast cereal) and let the
program construct a shopping list that most closely fits your criteria (eg.
brand XYZ fruity munchies). For each item, maybe offer a pop-up that lists
alternatives in descending order, so you are not happy with a suggestion you
can easily scan for and select a "next best"? You can then use your shopping
list in the normal way.

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?

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jack-r-abbit
Honestly, this sounds like just too much trouble and I guess I just don't
really care enough. If I refused to buy anything that was made or sold by
anyone that had ever done harm to anyone, I'd probably starve to death...
homeless & naked. I've spent the last 2 years reading the label of every food
item I buy my son because he's allergic to eggs and soy (and we avoid nuts
because we're too afraid we'll kill him with one) so I can tell you a little
something about how much of a pain it is to scrutinize every single item you
purchase. It is not as easy as it sounds. And even if there is an app for
that... it will still suck. Personally... I don't think this is worth it. To
each their own.

~~~
AJ007
Consider the possibility that the point is to not purchase consumer goods from
corporations.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
Unless I buy everything on Etsy.... aren't most things coming from
corporations?

~~~
gurkendoktor
> If I refused to buy anything that was made or sold by anyone that had ever
> done harm to anyone, I'd probably starve to death...

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.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
And ultimately... that is why this type of activism usually fails eventually.
First, in order to pick the lesser of two evils, you still need to scrutinize
every item so you know which one is the less evil. That still takes time and
after doing it a few times and realizing your trip to the market, etc took
twice as long as it should, many people will not continue. This app has been
all over my Facebook feed. So I imagine a decent number of my friends shared
it... but probably didn't install it. That is not any more useful than
changing your profile pic "to support" what ever cause is viral this month. Of
those that did install it, you've given them the out they need... _only when
you have time to spare_. After trying it a few times and seeing how it effects
their life, maybe that one time they are in a hurry and don't have to time to
figure it out, they just go with it. Reminding them just how much work the
boycott is. But that was just one little fudge... they'll do better next time.
Right... this little chip in armor is all it takes for so many people to
eventually give up. Only the most dedicated people will continue for any
length of time that would even be noticed by the corporations... but probably
not enough people to make them change. Sure that is a pessimistic, cynical
view but tell me you haven't seen this exact set of events happen time and
time again. We'd like to hope this time would be different. But history is a
pretty good indicator of the future.

~~~
gurkendoktor
I see this all the time. But I also see people who can't be bothered to vote
(even in referendums), or can't be bothered to use the gym membership they've
proudly bought, or are in the habit of eating junk food every day. Should we
now give up on everything that has a little friction?

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.

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a3n
Note: you don't have to do this in the store. You can buy your stuff as usual,
scan it at home where you may have better connectivity, and then revise your
shopping list for next time.

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.

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protomyth
So, the evolution of this is some app running in your glasses that rates
everyone you meet on some criteria based on what your preferred media
source(1) (e.g. MSNBC, Fox News) says about the companies they buy from and
the artists/writers/politicians they like.

1) note, facts require research not punditry

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jbigelow76
The Revolution will be an In App Purchase.

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tmrggns
As I go through a store using this app, a storekeeper stops me, concerned that
I'm just using his store for "showcasing". Luckily I'm able to explain to him
how the app is helping me not buy many of his products. Once he learns this,
he is much relieved and lets me go on my way.

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harryf
The iOS app appears nicely designed but the server side is struggling.
Couldn't create an account, app website is very slow <http://buycott.com>

Looks like Ivan could use some help

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danilevy
That's seriously genius. I can't believe how creative people are honestly.
Can't wait to use this app.

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vijayr
wow, this is very interesting. It would be awesome if they can give away the
data that powers the app. Others can build their own apps

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quattrofan
Nice, now we just need one to avoid products made in Israel.

