Forum Post: Make them lose Money... and they will listen.
Posted 12 years ago on Nov. 15, 2011, 8:16 p.m. EST by AngryAntiBanker
(7)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Hi Everyone,
Like many of you here, I'm extremely pissed with damn banks and investment houses. I'm pretty sure most of these banks, and the people running it, don't care about the whole movement, at least I haven't seen any changes or any of those pricks complaining. The only way they would care is if they would somehow lose money because of it.
There is one way to make them lose money - Legally. Advertising costs through pay-per-click in Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.
For example, if you go to Google and type "Chase", then the first result is an advertisement. Every time a person (even the same person) clicks on that ad, Chase gets charged a fee. I don't know what the fee is for the word "Chase" but it's no less than around $1. I advertise my business through those search engines and some times I pay up to $10 every time someone clicks one of my ads.
Just have 10,000 people world wide (which is not that many people if you think about it) look in Google and Yahoo for any word or sentence that says "Chase" or any Bank out there. If each person looks for at least 3 words a day, then the Bank will lose money to those advertising agencies about $1,000,000 a month!
All those people spend the whole day occupying public spaces and nothing solid being achieved. Hell, have them all spend the entire day, everyday, clicking on internet advertising for these banks, and the banks could loose hundreds of Millions of dollars each month!!! That would make them pay attention. 10,000 people clicking at a rate of 20 ads per hour, for 10 hours, comes out to at least $60 million a month.
My two cents.
well, I guess this idea didn't gain much traction...
I totally agree with the title of this post, but not necessarily with the methods described.
Hitting these predatory corporations in the pocket book is absolutely the only thing they will understand and react to. Most of these large corporations could care less about your rights or your resistance actions. They have the power to guard against this type of thing till kingdom come.
You need to fight them by organising an effort to boycott a chosen corporation and STICK TO IT. Get your details down and choose one particularly obnoxious greedy corporation and organise a proper boycott. As an example, what do u think would happen to McDonalds if suddenly half of their normal customers chose either to not purchase fast food, or chose a competitor (Please be advised that this is not an attack on the McDonalds Corporation as I have no knowledge of their corporate practices...this is just an example of how an effective attack could be implemented against the target corporation).
As a Canadian who is visiting the United States I have seen a lot of corporate greed that needs correcting. But as your country's founders knew, it takes some sacrifice to preserve the freedoms they fought for...often with their lives.
Before you can make an impact on this problem, you are going to have to sacrifice in some way. And since the pocketbook is the only thing these predatory corporations understand...this will have to be your sacrifice also.
it would work if you get enough people to click once a day. i just put in my click for the day.
well, they just lost about $20 on me today
By the way, if you agree with doing this, please spread the word (Face book, tweeter, email, letters, pigeons, etc.)
Do you think we should make this public? Wouldn't they switch up fairly fast? Maybe the banks and google?
I think it's a win-win situation. Google/yahoo/microsoft want to make money, so they're not going to remove the ads on behalf of the banks unless the banks say so.
If the banks remove the ads, then they'll lose business two fold: First, new clients who would have otherwise clicked on an ad to get a deal on mortgage, credit card, etc. would not know about those deals unless they actively call the banks, and we all know nobody uses the phone nowadays (lol) and when you call those banks, they put you on automated answering machine for like 20 minutes, so, probably they would take that business to a local smaller bank. Second, if Google/Yahoo/Microsoft are making less money because of this, then there's less flow of money going somewhere else, which as we all know from our 2007/2008/2009/2010/2011 experience, the banking system is Very much dependent on the flow of money anywhere in the world; it's just a huge spider web, if one part of the web is damaged, the whole thing comes down.
If the banks do not remove the ads, then they'll be losing money directly by all of us clicking on their ads.
I think by the time everybody in this movement has clicked on an ad at least once, these banks would have lost so much money they would have no time to react... enough damage would have been made, definitely not to make them go out of business, but most definitely to make them listen.
In the end, someone needs to step up and clearly show a laundry list of what we the people want. We can win battles, but without a well defined goal, we'll lose the war.
Sounds great! Should we organize this? Maybe just target one particular bank? Or split up the banks amongst participants?
If you know how to organize it, then I'm 100% behind you.
We should target one bank at a time to make the most concentrated damage and instill fear in the other banks.
I'm going to be biased because I've dealt with these banks, but I'd love to start with Chase or Bank of America.
I hope that tomorrow when more people are on this forum, a lot of them take interest in this. I started with Chase but for the past hour I've been hitting Bank of America. I'm down to target whichever one people can agree on.
Awesome, we'll see if this gains traction.
Rofl! They know how to make money,; you dweebs don't. Why don't you try to make some money instead of mooching?
LOL, why doesn't google just hire shills to sit around clicking the ads themselves, to raise revenue?
Anyway, they are more sophisticated than that. Do you really think they don't record and account for obvious false clicks?
Like I said, I used the system, and know it pretty well. You can't click the "back" button and click the same add over and over. And you can't search for the same word every time.
Hiring shills... why would google try to commit fraud? It's easy to get the IP address of anyone who's on the internet.
The movement should demand that each bank/ company that received a government bail out must in return bail out the tax payers who owe that bank. For example, if you owe Bank of America, they must now absolve your debts. Financial justice for all
Amen
the middle is good because you bet to watch the poor and the rich trip, stumble and fall. LOL
Up!!!!
If someone knows how to organize 10,000 people to do this, then the next step would get these same people to rally against debit/.credit cards for a month or so, that would be worst that having the bank employees go on strike.
Good idea!
Yes, they could adjust, but in the mean time they suffered millions of dollars in losses, enough to make them pay attention.
Also, adjusting would be very very difficult because these systems are automated, so changing the code is not easy. And again, the search engines would lose money, so it's not like they will be in a hurry to fix anything.
But yes, this is not a silver bullet. It's just one of the weapons in the arsenal...
This would work for a while, until that ad rates were adjusted to take into accont the false "positives" the opposition is immoral and maleficent but they are not stupid...they too can adapt.
Of course forcing them to change their modus operandi is a good thing anyway......but this tactic is not the whle answer.
Meanwhle, I'll do it ten times today! :-)
i'd say if you owe a lot, then the debtor owns the debtee.
You think that an electronic exchange could be used instead of banks and money? Isn't that what we have now, with debit cards? Cash is quaint. Maybe Occupy should become a bank? Shoot me down if you want.
Personally, I'm not against the idea of a bank. It's convenient to have banks, makes life easier for everybody in so many different levels (like being able to use a credit/debt card). However, I'm against this Wall Street attitude that they think they are so much better than us and they are entitled to make all these millions of dollars by first defrauding people and investors, and second by taking bail out money. No shame at all. And they still have a firm grip on both Democrats and Republicans. The purpose of what I'm proposing would be to take the pressure to the banks front door and force them to stop taking advantage of all of us. It's almost like they think they are the only "phone company in town" and therefore whatever the little guy has to say is worth nothing. I'd love to see more competition. The government, those idiots, instead of breaking the banks in little pieces to stimulate competition, they made the banks so much bigger than before, that now, the banks are the ones telling congress what to do.
You owe a little, the bank owns you. You owe a lot, you own the bank. Can we leverage this?
Shule.... wow! that's a great idea. We need to get someone out there to develop an ad clicking software, but not a Virus... we got to keep this legal. If that can be done, then we're in business.
Time, thanks for the comment. I'm with you. Going to the park is not going to make a difference. The thing about protests in Europe is that in Europe, Government is afraid of the People, while in America, people are afraid of the Government. Then again, USA is doing a lot better than Europe lately....
Super idea. I just clicked on a Chase Bank ad ten times. I wonder if there are some smart geeks out there who can come up with some type of automatic clicking routine?
Occupy Black Friday is the way to make them lose that money.
http://www.stopblackfriday.com/
Yes, I agree Gypsy, if 1% of the population in the US would stop using the debit/credit card for just a single week, it would translate in Billions of dollars lost in revenue. Again, though, it's really hard to coordinate that many people to do such thing.
Frankie, thanks for the comment. We're a specialized Engineering company, so $10 is nothing compared to the cost of the product we sell. We're "grateful" to google, about 50% of our sales come from google ads. The Lawyers have it more expensive, they pay up to $70 per click on the word "mesothelioma". So, it just depends of the business. But, yes, it is a waste of money if you think of for example, searching for "Chase" on Google displays one of their ads... why in the world would Chase waste money in advertising their own name? So I say, make them pay by clicking the hell out of their ads. All you need is a relatively small crowd to make them pay a bunch.
A national burn your credi cards - repudiate your debt day, say next 4th of July, would win this fight in a single stroke. Period. Does that idea appeal to anybody? I have thought this over very intensively. It would work. I really have nothing more to contribute now. Good luck.
The only way you, OWS, all will make a difference is if you affect the day to day operation or flow of life, commerce, and or government. As i once witnessed in France, their government wanted to raise fines, tolls, taxes, etc. on all commercial truck drivers and trucking companies. What happened next was amazing. All French trucking companies and drivers criss crossed their trucks across all major highways in their country, completely blocking and disabling the transportation of all goods throughout the country. This lasted for about a week or less, until the government backed down and reversed its decision. It worked because it takes a protest of this scale to affect change. Occupying a park, although symbolic, will never ever ever do anything to change how disgustingly our government and the rich control all our lives, and continue to make the rich richer. You need to regroup, and i mean regroup all OWS protesters from across the country to a few very large simultaneous protests because small groups here and there won't really make a statement and can be easily intimidated and disbanded by authorities. You need a board of smart leaders that can effectively communicate a set of real smart ideas and demands and better organize the movement. You need to continue to use social media as a way to communicate as they did in the middle east to oust their dictators. But most of all you need to make one massive statement by protesting and affecting the day to day operation or flow of life, commerce, and or government. It will be the only way that you will get the govt and the rich to stop.......turn around......and stare in awe at the EPIC scale of the movement before them, and realize that the time has come, and that We The People have officially drawn the line in the sand, and are no longer willing to play their game any longer. IT IS THE ONLY WAY. Thank you.
Yep. That's another example of the power we can wield outside the political realm !
See http://occupywallst.org/forum/the-power-of-the-people/
Rbe, Either way, someone is going to lose money. I know one "specialist" on wall street, a trader, doesn't create wealth or jobs for anybody, just moves money "invisibly" electronically from someone's hand to someone else's, makes $400K/yr. Most of those $400k comes from people like you and I, bailing in out these bastards.... The entire financial system is so dependent on flow of money. It's a huge ponzi scheme, as long as nobody stops the music, there are enough chairs for everyone. No flow, means no money for them.
This Idea of making them lose money through worthless ads clicks is one of those flow-stopping strategies. I guess you could also stop buying/selling stocks, stop using credit/debit cards, take your money out of the bank and put it under the pilllow, etc. But those strategies seem very very hard to coordinate among many people. It would be nice to see a Run on the Bank on Chase or Bank of America, but, good luck convincing people to do that. The Feds would reimburse the money to the depositors who still kept money in those accounts... and I doubt this time there would be a bail out.
Should we draw too much attention to this idea? Wouldn't they change up?
Sounds good! I'm doing Chase now!
Let's do it.
gnomummy, Thanks for the comment. I know financially it should work, I own a small business and I "lose" a good amount of money on this pay-per-click advertising. The only thing that might happen is that the banks might decide to stop advertising on the internet. Or, if they are loosing tens or millions of dollars a month, maybe Google/Yahoo/Microsoft will start freezing the accounts because they know advertisements are getting clicked as a "Occupy WallStreet" extension. Who knows. I know for sure that if you are able to get a lot of people to agree on a given day to do this, then the amount of money lost will be so much and it won't give time for the banks and the search engines to react. Again, I'm assuming $1, but it could be a lot more, it depends on the word/sentence being advertised. When you do this, you cannot just type the word, click on the ad, and then click the back button and press the ad again, google will not count that as a click, it needs to be a new search every time, for different related words.
This is an intriguing, out of the box, idea. Let's hear from some of you that know whether this is a viable idea. Will it work? Is there a downside? I, for one, will put this on my to-do list while I await some more responses. And AngryAntiBanker, I suggest reposting this periodically to garner more responses.
Point is, if the banks lose money, with or without tax breaks they are still losing money... And finding 10,000 people world wide is not that hard. Just in the USA, you can probably get 50,000 people.
A company doesn't make money with tax deductions, they make money by simply making money... it's just like the rest of us. If you make $100 and your tax rate is 20%, then you get to take home $80, so, you only lost $20.
If you spend $100 and you get to TAX deduct the full $100, then you really LOST $80.
Make the banks lose money, and they will lose money with or without tax breaks.
but those are advertising expenses and they're tax deductible, arent they
Yes, they certainly are. lol
Excellent tactic for Asymmetric Economic Warfare !
We need to use and further develop the tools and strategies of economic warfare against those who are waging it on us.
OPT OUT of loan payments and mortgages, bank accounts, insurance and taxes.
OPT OUT of corporate goods and services. Find ways to cost them money or make them lose money.
If we put the health insurance companies out of business, they will no longer be able to block universal single payer.
Oh, and I guess I good idea would be to target one bank at a time.
download the opera browser, open the link and set it to auto reload every 2 seconds, then open 10 or so windows all set to do the same thing, leave and come back next week....
nice, I'll try it
If you're paying $10 per click, then you need to be protesting Google and not the banks. lmao
Jokes aside, as a business guy with a long presence on the web, spending big money on pay-per-click is one of the biggest wastes of money there is. Go ask some successful small online business folks what they did wrong when they started out and I guarantee that will be real high on the list.