New App Lets You Boycott Koch Brothers, Monsanto And More By Scanning Your Shopping Cart

[David Zephyr]

Hope this is helpful to all in the DU Community. I found this story fascinating. If this has been reported here earlier, apologies for any duplication. Vote with your money, not just at election time, but all year long.

In her keynote speech at last year’s annual Netroots Nation gathering, Darcy Burner pitched a seemingly simple idea to the thousands of bloggers and web developers in the audience. The former Microsoft MSFT +2.29% programmer and congressional candidate proposed a smartphone app allowing shoppers to swipe barcodes to check whether conservative billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch were behind a product on the shelves.

Burner figured the average supermarket shopper had no idea that buying Brawny paper towels, Angel Soft toilet paper or Dixie cups meant contributing cash to Koch Industries through its subsidiary Georgia-Pacific. Similarly, purchasing a pair of yoga pants containing Lycra or a Stainmaster carpet meant indirectly handing the Kochs your money (Koch Industries bought Invista, one of the world’s largest fiber and textiles companies, in 2004 from DuPont).


http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2013/05/14/new-app-lets-you-boycott-koch-brothers-monsanto-and-more-by-scanning-your-shopping-cart/

[Bay Boy]

1. Only read what you posted...

...how does this help in boycott Monsanto? I don't think they have an consumer products on the shelves. Their seed gets made into soy & corn oil, gasohol and is fed to beef cattle in the form of corn. It's pretty much everywhere.

[egold2604]

2. The app is too overwhelmed to work

I just signed up and and got the following message

We're experiencing an unexpected influx of users. No activity yet.


I understand that this app will let you scan bar codes and see if the company is owned by Koch Industries and /or has GMO products in it.

As far as being overwhelmed. This is either because far too many people are pissed at the Koch Brothers/Monsanto and want to boycott their products or it is a denial of service attack from said Koch Brothers and their minions from the dark side.

[cprise]

4. How its engineered matters a great deal

A 20-something smartphone developer is bound to place most processing requirements on the servers. These people tend to forget how powerful phones and PCs really are.

Update: Clicking on the Home button on the Buycott webpage causes it to demand that I log in via Facebook or Twitter. I'm liking this guy's style less and less...

[cprise]

3. I wonder what the potential of this is to backfire

Corps could start sharing info about consumers and activists, if they don't already, preventing them from getting jobs they would need to buy the stuff in the first place.