David Hogg bullies TripAdvisor into boycotting Laura Ingraham. Here's how to delete your TripAdvisor account and data.
David Hogg angers easily, it seems. After Laura Ingraham tweeted an article about how he complained when colleges refused his applications, Hogg went into full-on campaign mode, and encouraged his 600K followers to spam advertisers with requests to boycott Ingraham's show.
One of the companies targetted was TripAdvisor, who have since withdrawn their sponsorship and issued the following statement:
We believe strongly in the values of our company, especially the one that says, "We are better together."
We also believe Americans can disagree while still being agreeable, and that the free exchange of ideas within a community, in a peaceful manner, is the cornerstone of our democracy.
We do not, however, condone the inappropriate comments made by this broadcaster. In our view, these statements focused on a high school student, cross the line of decency. As such, we have made a decision to stop advertising on that program.
It is important to note that TripAdvisor has a global and diverse customer base, and is an active advertiser on a number of networks including news. Our media buys target a variety of time slots and audiences. That said, we will continue to monitor where our advertisements appear in the open market to ensure they fit our guidelines.
As TripAdvisor has now joined the ranks of politically aligned companies, you may be considering deleting your account. Thankfully they make this quite easy to do. Click on your photo, from the drop down choose "Account Info", and choose "Close Your Account".
If you're using Facebook connect - surprise, surprise - they're sharing your activity with your friends. You'll want to revoke access to Facebook before closing your account.
You'll also need to disconnect your Google account and any other apps you have linked. Sadly, it's a lot more difficult to archive your data, and you'll have to manually retrieve each review and photo you've posted there should you wish to use it on a different website. Keep in mind that TripAdvisor wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for the user generated content - and they're scared stiff of losing that.
Update your email settings so you no longer receive any marketing promotion from them. Also do a quick search on Google for "Trip Advisor" and use the Personal Website Blocklist extension built by Google for Chrome to stop any results from the site showing up in search results. There are alternatives for other browsers.
You may want to post a short note on their support forum about why you're deleting your account, and have a look through the anti-gun folk who are acting like it's no big deal. They're getting in quite a tizzy about the whole thing, so keep on trolling them, safe in the knowledge that it won't matter if you end up getting banned.
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Other recent articles on my blog:
» David Hogg: "Fuck college & fuck the SAT!"
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