On May 14, 6:29*pm, "F.O.A.D." wrote:
New App Lets You Boycott Koch Brothers, Monsanto And More By Scanning
Your Shopping Cart

A group of developers has released Buycott, an app that shows corporate
ownership of common brands at the supermarket.

The app itself is the work of one Los Angeles-based 26-year-old
freelance programmer, Ivan Pardo, who has devoted the last 16 months to
Buycott. It s been completely bootstrapped up to this point, he said.
Martinez and another friend have pitched in to promote the app.

Pardo s handiwork is available for download on iPhone or Android, making
its debut in iTunes and Google Play in early May. You can scan the
barcode on any product and the free app will trace its ownership all the
way to its top corporate parent company, including conglomerates like
Koch Industries.

Once you ve scanned an item, Buycott will show you its corporate family
tree on your phone screen. Scan a box of Splenda sweetener, for
instance, and you ll see its parent, McNeil Nutritionals, is a
subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson.

Even more impressively, you can join user-created campaigns to boycott
business practices that violate your principles rather than single
companies. One of these campaigns, Demand GMO Labeling, will scan your
box of cereal and tell you if it was made by one of the 36 corporations
that donated more than $150,000 to oppose the mandatory labeling of
genetically modified food.

Buycott is still working on adding new data to its back end and
fine-tuning its information on corporate ownership structures. Most
companies in the current database actually own more brands than Buycott
has on record. The developers are asking shoppers to help improve their
technology by inputting names of products they scan that the app doesn t
already recognize.

And if this all sounds worthy but depressing, be assured that your next
trip to the supermarket needn t be all doom and gloom. There are Buycott
campaigns encouraging shoppers to support brands that have, say, openly
backed LGBT rights. You can scan a bottle of Absolut vodka or a bag of
Starbucks coffee beans and learn that both companies have come out for
equal marriage.

I don t want to push any single point of view with the app, said
Pardo. For me, it was critical to allow users to create campaigns
because I don t think its Buycott s role to tell people what to buy. We
simply want to provide a platform that empowers consumers to make
well-informed purchasing decisions.

Forbes reached out to Koch Industries and Monsanto for comment and will
update this story with any responses.

I see by that title that your " cockhole " Donnie will be by any
second to secure his dangling prize.......