change.org has a profit motive to deceive people into using their platform to create petitions. The profit motive is twofold: 1, the more people who sign change.org petitions, the more emails and names and data they can harvest to sell for profit, and 2, the more change.org petitions there are the more it becomes the default when people are thinking of starting a petition, feeding back into 1. Additionally, not being based in or operating within NZâs jurisdiction means they operate outside the relevant regulatory processes (not that it matters, because any petition process other than the official one is equally worthless). Change.orgâs privacy policy, in section 4, states explicitly: âWe disclose Personal Data to service providers, advertising partners, parties you authorize, the Change.org community, affiliated entities, andâas requiredâlegal authorities. Some disclosures may be considered a âsaleâ under certain state laws.â
If you use change.org, your personal information becomes a product to be sold and profited off of. It is linked closely with political causes you care about and is sold to whoever will pay for it, including advertisers and governments anywhere in the world.
In Aotearoa/New Zealand, any petition that is not created either via petitions.parliament.nz, or on paper with a parliamentary petition cover sheet, is not counted in the House.
⢠Be created by anyone, from anywhere in the world, for any cause, regardless of residency or citizenship,
⢠Be signed by anyone, from anywhere in the world, regardless of residency or citizenship,
⢠Are statutorily obligated to protect the limited personal data they are required to collect, and not share it for any reason except for those required for the official processes (especially not profit),
⢠Are easier to sign and share, and have greater transparency about the legislative and regulatory processes involved,
⢠And actually have legitimacy in NZ Parliament, and can be accepted by the Petitions Committee and MPs and presented to the House.
All of this is to say that the nearly 55 thousand signatures to stop the construction of an AI data centre in invercargill mean virtually nothing because they are on change.org rather than in an official petition.
Change.org is profiting by obfuscating the official processes for petitions in NZ, and intentionally hiding the fact that petitions on their website are not able to be considered in NZâs parliament. They collect and sell your personal dataâincluding your political views and the causes that you care aboutâand sell them to whoever will buy them, including advertisers and governments.
The more people in NZ that know about the official petitions process and who sign petitions done via that process, the more robust our public institutions become.
1st link is the info page for parliamentary petitions.
2nd link is the parliament petitions page.
3rd link is change.orgâs privacy policy.
https://www.parliament.nz/en/get-involved/have-your-say/guide-for-petitions/
https://petitions.parliament.nz/
At Change.org, PBC (âChange.orgâ), we take your privacy seriously. Please read this Privacy Policy to learn how we treat your personal data.
blakekathryn
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