Tech Is Political: Take More Action Against Countries and Organizations Engaged in Wars, Genocides, and Misanthropy

Published on Aug 21, 2025, filed under misc, advocacy (feed). (Share this on Mastodon or Bluesky?)

Our governments don’t do enough—some not even anything—to force an end on wars, genocides, and misanthropic (e.g., xenophobic and homophobic) conduct of state actors.

Instead, you can argue, by their inaction and by allowing international institutions like the United Nations and the International Criminal Court to be weakened (e.g., by ignoring arrest warrants), they even make things worse.

However, we can each set up our own personal policy where we draw what line, and there are many non-violent ways to take action.

For us as consumers, social media participants, and website owners, here are some options we can take on any country and organization linked with crimes against minorities or humanity itself.

• First, confirm what countries are engaging in (or starting) armed conflicts as well as genocides. Wikipedia isn’t perfect, but it seems pretty reliable in establishing these facts.

  • Also research major companies either from such countries or substantially supporting such countries and therefore their wars and/or genocides. For Israel’s killing of Palestinians, for example, the U.N. published a report on the companies benefiting from occupation and genocide.

• Consider canceling subscriptions or purchases from such countries.

• Consider canceling cooperations with anyone from such countries.

• Consider not buying products and services from anyone linked to such countries. (There are useful apps for this purpose, like Boycott X.)

• Consider not selling or offering services to such countries, either.

• Consider unfollowing anyone linked to such countries on social and professional networks.

• Consider removing links to anyone from such countries, linking to archived versions (using e.g. the Wayback Machine or archive.today), or adding rel=nofollow to the respective links.

• Consider not visiting—and blocking—sites from such countries. (I built a Chromium browser extension that can be used for this purpose, AWAGAM—anti-war, anti-genocide, anti-misanthropy. It’s a community project that already surfaced Russia and Israel starter blocklists, lists you can customize and extend per your own policies.)

• Support—e.g., donate to—the people affected by war, genocide, and misanthropy.

• Ask others to consider the same options.

If you are rightfully doubtful after seeing how much cancel culture backfired, leading to strengthening the Right, then I’d argue that wars, genocides, and misanthropy are actually appropriate exceptions.

The individual impact of these steps may be small and then largely symbolic, but, with a large audience, it may already be noticeable and effective. With more and more people joining, however, the cumulative effect is going to be more than symbolic—it will be substantial.

We can all contribute to positive, constructive change. And there’s no way around dealing with the absolute a__holes. No matter that there aren’t that many—given how much damage they cause, we need more hands on deck.

About Me

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m a web developer, manager, and author. I’ve been working as a technical lead and engineering manager for companies you’ve never heard of and companies you use every day, I’m an occasional contributor to web standards (like HTML, CSS, WCAG), and I write and review books for O’Reilly and Frontend Dogma.

I love trying things, not only in web development and engineering management, but also in other areas like philosophy. Here on meiert.com I share some of my experiences and views. (I value you being critical, interpreting charitably, and giving feedback.)