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

Originally posted by Ghost375
WOOOT! Let's boycott companies because we don't know anything about science!


I have seen absolutely no studies that show GM food is harmful that don't make extreme scientific mistakes.

Stay ignorant ATS!

Speaking of ignorance...

Even if you do not believe that GM products are harmful to the Human race, you cannot seriously believe that any corporation should have the right to OWN a natural product, process or vital commodity of life? You cannot SERIOUSLY agree that a soulless and corrupt corporation should have the right to own FOOD and dictate who gets to grow something, who gets to eat

Unbelievable

a login is required to use this app. Some apps which require a login are fishy IMHO

But otherwise this app is a good idea. Hopefully someone will make a similar app which doesn't require a login.

After downloading this and setting it up, I have to say that I am incredibly impressed with this, and I would have paid for it. The people who created this and are operating it should be making a living from this and encouraged to develop more apps and similar services. I would gladly pay or donate to support this group of people.

It should also be pointed out that this app is far more powerful than just being useful at helping you make good buying decisions...

Right now, your politicians can be paid to make decisions that go against your rights as a citizen, they subvert the democratic process and spend money to support something that goes against the wishes of the majority. Using this app will not just make you more aware of the companies you support and their actions, it could lessen their ability to pay politicians to make decisions to benefit them.

Here's a good example...

Lets say a corporation has paid a few hundred thousand to a campaign to block gay marriage. You scan something and it tells you about it, so you stop buying those products. If enough people are scanning and boycotting those products, that leads to a significant drop in profits for that company, and they then learn that making that decision has cost them a lot. It's no longer in their interests to pay any politician for anything that the public are going to be against.

If enough people are using this app, it will quickly change the landscape of politics and lobbying. Companies will be too scared to join a cause unless it is financially viable to do so. Religious and moral ideas will be the first to go. Companies donating money on principle to hold others back will be the first to be pushed out of the lobbying game - this is a great thing! If more than 50% of the public now believe that gay marriage should be legal, the opinions of a corporation should HAVE NO BEARING on the decisions of our elected, their money should not be entering into it at all. With this app, they are more likely to be held to account by the real majority, not just boycotted by those who happened to hear about what they supported.

As I said, this is more than just a way for you to boycott a company. If enough people are using this app, it could remove millions of corrupt $'s from your political process. Why would Mars Inc lobby for no GM labelling if they know that their position will be public and they will likely lose out on millions of $'s in profits because of it?

I'm just waiting for the option to boycott a nation to be added to that list. Then they need to adapt it to recognize logos too, for companies that do not sell physical products or companies on-line that support certain things.

reply to post by Flatfish


I love it when I see a tool the slaves can use to fight back. Well deserved S & F.

reply to post by amfirst1


Hmmmmm...sigh...excuse me while i whisper...and before you completely show you'r ignorance before all, i recommend you show reality in that it was Bush who paved the way for "extortion payments" to Big Bank and Investment Interests. He told the public that they are "too big to fail" thus translated for the morons means "too big to jail."
You see, in fascist America, our elected public servants aide and abet the criminal element when they raid the treasury. It's the perfect scheme when you think about it. Only in America where you can be a socialist and demand payment from the people to cover the losses of you'r criminal behavior, and also be a capitalist to receive the "private proceeds" when such antics go undetected.
Your job in this scheme is to shut up and go to work to pay up so you won't become a detriment to those who robbed you in the first place.
Capisce?

reply to post by Rocker2013


I thank you for your well thought out reply.

I really think that this app and others like it in the future, will enable the voting public to regain the ultimate authority with respect to seeing that our wishes get the consideration and respect they deserve as opposed to being drowned out by corporate interest.

I guess you might say that this has the potential to turn "us" into the most powerful lobbying arm the world has ever seen and it's free.

Who could ask for more?

reply to post by Rocker2013


Does the app identify only a company name, not necessarily the parent company? Koch Industries is mostly oil, minerals and such technologies. In fact I can't find much of anything an average consumer would use, with the exception of Georgia Pacific products which are mainly TP and other paper products. What name is going to show up on your smart phone when a bag of Green Giant corn from the grocery is scanned? Or maybe a bag of potato chips, will it say Frito Lay or Monsanto? Considering Frito Lay and Green Gian are both Monsanto owned, how specific is the app?

Since you have used the app, can you explain exactly what I would see?

I grabbed this app around a fortnight back & have found it to be pretty good.

Once the database grows larger it will become even better so this is something to be very excited about!

Anyone care to share the android apk?

reply to post by Byrd


If you want to boycott Walmart or any store; don't buy their house brand such as Great Value, which is Walmart's brand... that's the flagship ensuring enough profit on to stay in business. Floor wax companies will have other floors to sell wax too like they did before that company came along.

I'd rather not support a business that has a political agenda; that most all of it's customer are unaware of it having, and are unwittingly funding without their knowledge... by say buying pizza or chicken sandwiches, the customer thinks hey I'm just buying pizza; well, if you're buying Domino's you're also paying for a pro-life lobby, or Chicfila and it's anti gay lobby.

If the people sending them the cheese or chickens know this and have no qualms then I have no qualms about their cheese or chicken business pain either.

I think customer have a right to know what they are paying for, and it's pretty underhanded to make them fund a political side agenda that they aren't aware of. I don't see why such an app would be seen in a negative light... customers usually want to know what they are paying for, maybe they would say hey... I like your whatever but I'm not paying for your political agenda that I don't like... so apps such as this are a good watch dog for customer protections, that don't want to fund Koch or anyone else's questionable political agenda's through purchase.

reply to post by Rocker2013


Exactly, and why this app is a good thing... the phrase you get what you paid for doesn't apply anymore... you get some political agenda from a corporate lobby on top of it as well. Just like the new ammo fees are going to be used to lobby for anti gun policy. For an example; that is the worst form of this type of added fund for lobby taking place... they are essentially forcing the pro gun people to fund the anti gun people with the extra ammo fees. It's pretty mind blowing, corporations need to have entity status not people status.

That status just takes all of the power out of the hands of the real people, making the corporatocracy the real power of government, because they have millions from unwitting customer's purchases to fund whatever lobby they want... that most likely, the customer would not agree with at all. Hopefully more app's are on the way.

Originally posted by StoutBroux
reply to post by Rocker2013

 

Does the app identify only a company name, not necessarily the parent company? Koch Industries is mostly oil, minerals and such technologies. In fact I can't find much of anything an average consumer would use, with the exception of Georgia Pacific products which are mainly TP and other paper products. What name is going to show up on your smart phone when a bag of Green Giant corn from the grocery is scanned? Or maybe a bag of potato chips, will it say Frito Lay or Monsanto? Considering Frito Lay and Green Gian are both Monsanto owned, how specific is the app?

Since you have used the app, can you explain exactly what I would see?

No problem... The database details who owns what brand, so it's not just the brand you scan, it traces ownership all the way back to the largest owning corporation.

Let me explain it more in-depth...

You start up the app, and you can pick causes to follow. For example, you can click on Avoid Koch Industries, and you'll get a page detailing why you might want to boycott them. You then select this and add it to your list. There are all kinds of campaigns there, from avoiding factory farming to avoiding companies that use sweat shops.

Then, when you're out shopping, you open the app and select SCAN from the bottom and you get a little camera window to put over the bar code of the product and it scans it. If the item has never been scanned before it'll come up with what it thinks it is (using bar code database information as far as it can) and ask you to confirm what it is so it can be added to the database for others using the app too - this is genius, because it means the database is publicly built and always growing!

If it's in the database already then it'll tell you if there's a reason not to buy it. You get a red bar at the top saying "You're avoiding this company" and then it says why you are avoiding it and what they are linked to that you have selected to avoid. At the bottom of that you can select "Family Tree" and you get a detailed tree of where that brand or company is, and who owns it... it's interesting to see how many companies one brand is owned by.

For instance, I scanned a box of Maltesers (Mars) and it gives me a warning that they spent $376,650 to No on prop 37 - they lobby to stop me from knowing that there is GM ingredients in their products. When I click "Family Tree", I can see that Mars Chocolate UK owns another 11 companies, with 40 products between them. That's just one of their companies, there are another 18 companies which all own other companies and lots of other products beneath them, all of this is owned by Mars Inc.

In total, Mars Inc operates 95 companies beneath it, and it sells 1587 products through its brands and companies around the world, and if you scan any of them (food product or not) it'll tell you that you're boycotting them for their position on honest labelling.

This shows more powerfully how important and effective this app could be at really changing companies and corporate business. These brands and companies beneath Mars funnel money to the main brand, the one that makes all the major decisions. So if thousands of people are all boycotting all those items now, across the range, because they know a product is owned by a brand that's owned by a company that's owned by Mars Inc... then that multiplies the damage done to that corporation.

Corporations have before relied on peoples ignorance of their brands and corporate ownership. Did you know that one box of Maltesers is in a chain of companies like that? Mars sells everything from chocolate to chewing gum to cat food to soap, and they have relied on the fact that you wouldn't know they make soap and cat food if you ever found out about them trying to stop honest labelling.

Just as their design allows them to funnel profits up and become more and more powerful, we can now use crowd power to use that design against them to target boycott damage

There are a couple of things that go against this app though... 1. you have to create a basic account. But really, this isn't so different to you joining twitter or a forum. Paranoid people don't like it, but I don't think it's that much of a big deal. 2. The time it takes to scan and give a result is about 6 seconds for me, but it could be 1 second if it recorded your items on the phone. I think a future development would be to retain commonly scanned items on the downloaded app to make the result immediate on more items.

But, apart from those two things, I love it, and I think everyone should have it. I just don't know what I'll do when I discover that every brand of coffee has become evil and there's nothing left to choose from - start drinking only tea I guess! lol

This. Is. AWESOME.

It's too bad I hate phones of every kind... BUT I will be asking my fiance to DL it to his android. This will be a GREAT way to help me start being proactive against Monsanto. GMO's aside, they're #ing scum when it comes to treating farmers with the respect they deserve! (Not to mention that stupid seed patent bull#.) This app will also help alleviate some suspicions I've been having about this local grocery store I've begun shopping at.

I'm actually getting excited about grocery shopping.

Any app that gives people more knowledge to make an informed decision, is a great app. Kudos to the person that developed this. Now if only there were an app that gave voters unbiased information about a candidate before they vote............

Money is the only language the .01% understand, this is a game changer.

All the PR firms in the country can't stop this.

UPDATE:

It's back on Google Play.

PERMISSIONS:

It wants access to your camera, and access to the network. That's it.

ACCOUNT:

All it asks for is a valid e-mail address, a name, and a password. I put in my pseudonym and it doesn't seem to care.

FUNCTIONALITY:

4G service is terribly slow, which probably has nothing to do with this app. So these tests were done with Wi-Fi enabled, GPS switched off, on a rooted phone with CarrierIQ and any other hidden provider spyware (that the guys at XDAdevelopers are aware of) removed.

Once it was up and running, I grabbed the first thing I could find in the pantry - a can of Hormel Chili (please don't bash me for this, the smell of chili makes my wife ill so I can never make it myself, I'm trying to make the best of it).

It scanned it in right away and pulled up a picture of the item along with its nutrition facts and other information in the Product Info pane.

Flipping to the Family Tree pane, it showed a nice diagram of the parent company (Hormel Foods Corporation) along with all of its associated sibling brands.

On to the last pane: Campaigns.

Several listings popped up, ALL of them indicate that Hormel Foods Corporation is against requiring the labeling of GMOs on their products and donated $374,300 to defeat Prop 37 despite overwhelming public support.

CONCLUSION:

This thing is fantastic. It can sometimes be a bit slow, and there are a few bugs I've discovered (a big one is that my phone has a slide-out keyboard and whenever I do this the app will crash) but nothing that I wouldn't expect from an app that is brand new, FREE, and is still essentially in beta.

I would definitely throw monetary support behind this app and its developers, and it seems I need to shop for another brand of chili when I want to satisfy my fix.

... wonder what else is lurking in this pantry of ours ... time to find out!

Finally I can take it for a test drive

Is this app not on android? I cant seem to find it...

edit: nm found it. doh!

reply to post by PlausibleDeniability


He had to take it off android for a bit,because it had some bugs. He fixed them ,and its back up . I've installed it. Haven't used it yet. There are some bad reviews of it,but it is probably shills. I wont comment until I've actually used it .

Has the app been hacked?
How do you download the frapping thing? (android)
I am getting foisted over to google (don't like google) and am asked for email, google account (don't have one Don't have a facebook account either) etc etc etc.


It's just a tiny program are there mirror sites?