I think it’s useless. Changing a profile picture is like saying thoughts and prayers or adding a tint to your Facebook profile pic for whatever is popular to support.

If you truly want to combat anti consumer practices, stop consuming it and actually complain to your consumer affairs regulatory body.

Changing your profile to clippy won’t do much outside of awareness. Louis rossmann says as much, the message is to change your profile picture and take action

The same as the pink ribbon for breast cancer: awareness. “Why is everyone praising Clippy?” becomes “Who the hell is Louis Rossman?” becomes “Why is Rossman so angry at tech?”.

But beyond a certain point, I think it just adds noise. Rossman’s original intention is to educate people about anti-consumer practices, and more importantly, to call people to action. Many people will stop at Clippy because it feels like they did something without any real effect. It becomes a feel-good pretend non-activism, like Kony 2012, or that one time David Guetta ended racism.

Somebody please show me the place where I organize and do this collective action thing, I have no idea what I’m doing. People keep telling me to do it but when I ask how they’re all like “you’ll know how when the time comes” or “what kind of question is that just go out and do something” or “easy, simply bring out the guillotines and-” it’s like guys, I don’t own a guillotine, I’m not a French historian, what do I do after work to make a dent in this?