Feb 28th 2025 - Economic Blackout

Introduction

Today there has been a call to not spend money or use Social Media, especially Facebook and anything that carries advertising. We are fine to use small businesses, but Amazon, Walmart and the big ones are to be boycotted.

I am fine using Vocal to publish this, although I am not happy that their default share is to the platform formerly known as Twitter and they have no apparent presence on Blue Sky, although I share my Vocal work there.

So What Does This Mean?

Every time we use a card or PayPal or similar, we are tracked, and that data is then used to bombard us with advertising. Social Media platforms, banks and financial institutions obviously share data in order to make money from profiling us and targeting us with the correct advertising.

We generally allow this because it gives us convenience, we are told we can have things at the touch of a button. This, in theory, makes us reliant on all these platforms and then they can try to manipulate the wy we think and spend.

We actually have a choice, we can use cash to buy things, so we can't be tracked, but we use our cards because it is convenient for us, and the financial institutions get data on our spending habits that they can sell on to the advertisers. Loyalty cards are another way they get our data and many supermarkets up their prices if you DON'T use a loyalty card which is a bit Machiavellian to so the least.

Like with TV we do have the option to switch things off, so we don't have to use Google, Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, Threads and the hope is that this will show the oligarchs, corporations and financial institutiand that we can affect their business, and so they need to take notice of us rather than us kowtowing to their desires.

I need to go onto Amazon, but it will wait til tomorrow because I bought an item which was supposedly attempted to be delivered by Evri. There was someone in all day yesterday and no one tried to deliver anything (apart from Rington's Tea who left a note and luckily I caught the guy down the street). Evri sent a text with a link for redelivery, for which they were going to charge £2.50, and I know if I called them it would be a premium rate number. I won't be arranging redelivery and will tell the supplier to use another delivery option. This is another example of companies trying to take advantage of us, and I certainly will not be giving Evri any money.

While Social Media platforms help us keep in touch with friends and events around the world, it also puts our heads above the parapets for advertisers to target us, but again, often for our convenience, there is some price to pay.

Conclusion

I don't know if we will see any results of this action, the companies targeted will not say anything apart from maybe put up fees and costs to recoup any losses, but they will be aware that the public has the power to affect them.

We have seen the influence of big money on politics, which is downright wrong, no organisation should be able to affect the politics of a country using money.

While many are still complacent, I feel that there are movements now by those with the good of everybody in mind rather than the worship of the new great gods power and money.

Thank you so much for reading. I will not be on Facebook today although will share this on Threads and Blue Sky.