While occasionally boycotts have encouraged changes, it typically only happens when other companies get involved.
Consumers "voting with their wallet" very seldom accomplishes much, except giving people a sense of having "done something".
That said, if companies and advertisers start publicly pulling support (like we see here, and the Mozilla story), it can start to raise internal flags, and (occasionally) lead to change.
While I get somewhat nervous about bureaucrats that don't understand technology writing overly broad laws, I do have to agree that legislation is often the most effective driver of change.
> While occasionally boycotts have encouraged changes, it typically only happens when other companies get involved.
The other companies getting involved are a result of the boycott and the attention driven by it, so that's just a mechanism of the effect of boycott's, not an indication that they lack effect.
And even if they are weak, that doesn't mean they aren't one of the most effective mechanisms consumers, as such, have to effect change: that would only be rebutted by the presence of demonstrably more effective methods available to consumers.
> While I get somewhat nervous about bureaucrats that don't understand technology writing overly broad laws, I do have to agree that legislation is often the most effective driver of change.
Outside of direct democracy systems (including limited direct democracies, like representative systems where citizens retain the power of initiative), legislation isn't a power of the people generally, but a power that the people can indirectly influence by other means. And citizen influence campaigns against government (especially when there are entrenched interests opposed) are not notably more efficacious than boycotts against businesses. (Indeed, boycotts against businesses are often resorted to -- and sometimes successful in producing legislative changes -- after conventional citizen activism directed at legislative change without boycotts fails.)
Well, the shops were lacklusting so everyone decided "let's not go there". Most of those were in locations that would be convenient too, you didn't even need to go out of your way to go to a Target. People still decided not to shop there. That's pretty much voting with your wallet.
What other word would you use if a chunk of the population intentionally goes out of their way to walk to a store further away, just to not enter Target?
In the case of Facebook, users are the product. If they lose 20% of their users, the usefulness of their product diminishes.
Social media companies would literally vanish if all the users stopped using them. What would actual users stand to lose? Event scheduling seems to be the main reason I read on here why people stay. There are soo many ways to do that - it would not be a hardship on users if they view the social gain of #deletefacebook.
While occasionally boycotts have encouraged changes, it typically only happens when other companies get involved.
Consumers "voting with their wallet" very seldom accomplishes much, except giving people a sense of having "done something".
That said, if companies and advertisers start publicly pulling support (like we see here, and the Mozilla story), it can start to raise internal flags, and (occasionally) lead to change.
While I get somewhat nervous about bureaucrats that don't understand technology writing overly broad laws, I do have to agree that legislation is often the most effective driver of change.