Good morning! To encourage Twitter to drop Alex Jones, I just blocked the Twitter accounts of every Fortune 500 company w/ a Twitter presence. Ready to mass block Twitter's most lucrative advertisers with me? There are three quick & easy ways. Instructions are in this thread.
Option One: The quickest, easiest way is to use a free tool called Block Together. Using it, I created a custom block list to which you can subscribe w/ a few clicks. This doesn't negate/overrule your own block list. You’ll just be blocking my own list in addition to your own...
To subscribe to my block list, just click this custom link: bit.ly/2MAd0tg. Then click the button that says “Block All and Subscribe.” Then click the blue “Authorize App” button. Voila! You’re now blocking all the companies on my list!
You can ignore the copy that says the app will be able to post to your timeline. It will not. That’s boilerplate copy that appears for all external Twitter apps. I’ve tested the tool it doesn’t do anything unexpected/unwanted. Here’s the link again: bit.ly/2MAd0tg
When Twitter drops Alex Jones, I'll immediately unblock all the companies on this list, which means that you will too — instantly & automatically. That’s the power of this method. If enough people participate, it gives Twitter a strong incentive to change for the better!
You can also unsubscribe from the block list anytime before that on your own, for any reason. Just go to the “Subscription” section of Unblock Together & uncheck “shannoncoulter.” Voila! You will no longer be blocking the companies in question.
Option Two: If you prefer not to use an external app, you can use this public Google doc: bit.ly/2MbSeEb. There are links to each company's Twitter page, so you can manually block companies at will. Even if you only blocked the top 25 to 50 , that would have impact.
Option Three: Twitter lets you import a block list as a .csv file. So, if you’re comfortable working w/ CSV files, download this Google doc, bit.ly/2vDjXTU as a CSV file. (It's just a very plain list of Twitter IDs b/c that’s the required format for this method.)
Then go to “Settings & Privacy” in your Twitter account. Select “Blocked Accounts” on left. Select “Advanced Options” & “Import a List.” Select “Attach a File to Upload” then choose the CSV file. When Twitter drops Jones, you’ll have to manually unblock the companies one by one.
And yes. You should be willing to UNBLOCK these accounts if Twitter does get rid of Alex Jones/Infowars. These kinds of consumer actions ONLY work if you’re willing to reward the company for taking the requested action. Otherwise, it has no incentive to do so.
Blocking these accounts until Twitter drops Alex Jones means you’ll no longer see either these companies’ timeline Tweets or promoted Tweets. You'll still see their promoted hashtags, but that’s not something most companies do very often.
I chose Fortune 500 companies b/c they represent the bulk of Twitter’s ad revenu. They’re also powerful enough to put real pressure on Twitter's leadership team. Finally, I feel it would be neither fair nor strategic to target smaller businesses, so I focused on the big players.
A few notes: not all Fortune 500 companies actually have a Twitter presence but every one that does is on this list. We also added several larger companies that are not in the Fortune 500 but that have run large Twitter ad campaigns in the recent past like Samsung & HR Block.
That’s it! Ready to flex your consumer power? If you block these companies using any of the above methods, use the #GrabYourWallet or #BlockParty500 hashtags to let me know. And if you have any questions at all, feel free to ask! I’ll try to answer all of them. Let’s do this!
Just adding a Tweet to the bottom of this thread to say that this mass block action was my friend @reifman's idea. Thank you Jeff for being brilliant!
Adding on to the original thread to say that we're now up to 5,380 people participating in the mass block of Fortune 500 companies on Twitter. That means for the last hour, we've continued to add about 40 new subscriptions per minute! How I love watching you all flex! 💪
Wow! I just checked and the mass block list now has 12,409 subscribers. This is amazing. I'm in awe of you all.
At ~ 5pm Pacific today, we passed the 20k mark. That's 20,230 people who have now told Twitter: either lose Alex Jones or your biggest advertisers will continue to lose access to our time & attention. 👛 🚫💥 #BlockParty500 #GrabYourWallet
We just crossed the 40,000 threshold for number of people participating in automated portion of #BlockParty500! It looks like there are a *lot* of people doing it who haven't Tweeted about it, which mirrors what we saw w/ #GrabYourWallet boycott. Quiet or loud, it's power. 💪
We're at 48,153 subscribers to the block list now. We may hit 50k sometime within the next few hours. Remember, many others have done the CSV and manual blocking methods. #BlockParty500
Great news: sometime last night, we sailed past the 50k mark which means that over 50,000 people are now blocking Fortune 500 advertisers on Twitter. I'm seeing strong activity around the #BlockParty500 hashtag this morning, so I'm hoping we can keep up the momentum...
Thanks SO much to the 50k+ people who have participated in #BlockParty500 so far! By the way, I will never reveal which Twitter handles are participating in this and that includes notable figures. I will take that information to my grave. +
The @BlockTogether app was created by Jacob Hoffman-Andrews (@j4cob), a senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (@EFF) which has a long standing commitment to privacy on the Internet. I trust it and the EFF.
So rest assured, if you would like to participate, but you can't let others know that for *any* reason, I understand and support that. I will protect your privacy.
Yes it's true! We're up to 71,000+ subscribers on the #BlockParty500 block list & have a decent chance of hitting 100k in not too distant future! Thanks SO much to all those participating & sharing the news around. If you're just joining us, here's how: medium.com/@shannoncoulte…
Well, Alex Jones is still on Twitter today, so I guess I'll be spending my weekend looking up the Twitter handles of the Fortune 1000.
The #BlockParty500 continues! This week I'll be adding top banks to the mass block list + the int'l handles of brands already on the list. If you used the @blocktogether app to participate, you don't need to do a thing! For option 3 folks, we'll be releasing an add-on CSV file.
