eli5: How do online petitions work? Are they effective?
In: Technology
Online petitions have a cause that they want to address, and aim to have a particular number of signatures (online its basically name and email) to say that X many people deeply care about the stance the petition represents. Because there is no legal binding that comes with it, they’re often ineffective in terms of affecting change.
However, the word “effective” depends on what you mean. What a petition does ultimately provide you with is a list of people’s email that took time out of their day to sign what appears to be a meaningless gesture. That means you have X amount of people who cared enough to sign, and perhaps out of that number there may be Y amount of people willing to donate to a cause. You essentially have a list of people that may ***potentially*** want to work alongside you towards solving a problem, and seeing that type of support may be one of the few things people who are oppressed can lean on.
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