I made a mistake and the first thing to do when making a mistake is to admit it to yourself first and to others afterwards. While trying in my own small way to build bridges that unite humanity, pontifical infallibility is not among my prerogatives.
Having to create an online petition and coming from an era in which signatures were collected with pen and paper and by talking to people, I chose to use an instrument I didn’t know, but I had read and heard about, probably the most used: change.org. Change.org has removed my petition and my account without any reason and did not respond to my request for explanations. Fortunately.
Rule of life: if the majority goes in one direction, before following it you should always check because it is most likely the wrong direction.
It is my habit to check everything possible, but in this case because of hurry and distraction I did not do it, and for this reason, I feel the need to apologize to a group of kind people that in order to help me, unknowingly followed me into a bad place.
I have to explain why change.org is to be avoided, let’s start from the name, Change.org, in reality, this is only the name of the Internet site, of the Internet address, the full name is Change.org, Inc. for those who do not know it, Inc. means “incorporated”, it means that it is part of a for-profit corporation.
The .org domain suffix should mean organization, but anyone can buy it and it is no longer necessary to be an organization to acquire it.
Change.org makes almost all of its users believe it is an organization, but this is not illegal. As Tomio Geron wrote on Forbes: “The service is free, and with a name like Change.org the company even sounds like a not-for-profit. But it’s not.”
Change.org was founded in Delaware, for those who do not know, Delaware is probably the most used tax haven in the world and is not a lost island, it is a state of the United States of America, of which many know less than they should, using the old words of The Guardian “The world’s top secrecy jurisdiction. Register a company here and no one will ever know. If you have overseas income, it will be tax-exempt.” That is why there are more companies in Delaware than inhabitants. To understand how this could be possible I suggest you watch “The Laundromat”, a film directed by Steven Soderbergh.
Immediately after publishing my petition on change.org I started receiving money requests so that it would be shown to more people, I don’t give money to illegal parking valets and obviously I don’t even give it to change.org. Those who signed also received deceptive requests for contributions, paid to help Giovanni, but if they had paid, they would not have helped me, they would have helped Benjamin Michael “Ben” Rattray’s bank account, Founder and CEO of Change.org, Inc.
According to Tomio Geron in 2012, the annual revenues of Change.org, Inc. amounted to at least 15 million dollars, I believe that today they are many more. Millionaires and billionaires love Delaware.
If change.org does nothing but ask for money in the light of day, without making you believe that you are helping someone else, we could even forgive it, but no, it seems that it does not do just that.
According to an article published in L'Espresso, change.org sells personal data, and has a diversified price list, it sells retail or wholesale.
We are goods, our names, our email addresses are the labels to buy and use us.
Change.org is also very suitable for astroturfing. “Astroturfing is the practice of masking the sponsors of a message or organization (e.g., political, advertising, religious or public relations) to make it appear as though it originates from and is supported by grassroots participants. It is a practice intended to give the statements or organizations credibility by withholding information about the source’s financial connection.”
Change.org, Inc. can deny what it wants, but who can believe a company based in Delaware?
Personally I will never use change.org again, that’s why I made a system to create petitions on this site, it respects privacy, it doesn’t sell data and there aren’t even boring captchas to click (“Completely Automated Public Testing to tell Computers and Humans Apart “). I created it in one day (using resources kindly made available for free), obviously, there is not the same user base as change.org to sell to “help” the petition, but it still works, like the system from a website that, thanks to it, earns at least 15 million dollars a year. If someone is interested in publishing a petition here, they can contact me, if the idea is intelligent and good, in the sense of address to good and not to profit, this tool will be made available for free. Once again I want to thank all those who have offered me or will offer me their support.
Sign the petition if you want: https://bielefeld.we.bs/petition-proof
