WTF: Here’s what I did in 2020

Written By Nandini Jammi

All year, I’ve been peppering you with updates on social media. Some were small. Others were significant. Still, in a year where every day felt exactly the same, I have often felt like a hamster stuck on a wheel slowly edging towards Hell.

I have never done a public end-of-the-year retrospective. But this year, I have felt the same pangs of despondency as everyone else,  and the fear that perhaps nothing I do is actually making a difference. 

Now as I look back, I feel that I owe it to myself - and to you - to take stock of what I’ve done this year. All were in service of my chosen mission: to pave the way for the just and inclusive world we all deserve to live in.

If anything, I hope it shows the value of proving yourself wrong, proving yourself right and pushing your own boundaries everyday. And perhaps, that it may serve as proof that it’s always worth taking that first step into the unknown. Because even if it feels like nothing is happening, it is.

Here are the highlights of my year:

  1. Launched BRANDED

In January, my then-friend (now business partner and friend!) Claire Atkin suggested that we start a newsletter. I was not enthusiastic. “But who’s gonna read it?” I asked.

I’m thrilled that I was so wrong. We grew BRANDED from 0 to 4200 subscribers this year and were cited in numerous breaking stories in Buzzfeed, Gizmodo, El Pais, Deutsche Welle, and many more. 

BRANDED has exceeded our expectations in every way. It has become our platform for change. Some of our readers have even turned into our collaborators. This thing is just getting started. 

Want in? Sign up here.

2. Got white nationalist Stefan Molyneux deplatformed 

Stefan Molyneux is a dangerous white nationalist and conspiracy theorist. I finally got him banned from PayPal, Mailchimp and Soundcloud. 

Stefan is a special kind of dangerous: he knows how to radicalize young men while also drawing within the lines of tech platforms’ rules — at least enough that they waffle on whether they’re banning a dangerous individual or trampling on his free speech rights.

This was an arduous, months-long process. SoundCloud has a three-strike policy that forced me and other volunteers to listen to his podcast and document exact instances of him breaking their ToS. Even after admitting he was on his 3rd strike, SoundCloud was inventing excuses to keep him on the platform.

I pushed on and held them accountable, knowing that getting one white nationalist suspended on these platforms will make it easier to suspend the next one. This work is all about setting precedents.

3. Convinced the first tech company to ban the Trump campaign

This barely registered as a blip on the radar in this crazy news cycle, but a tech company actually banned the Trump campaign this year. Seriously!

I called out Hotjar for marketing themselves as an “anti-racist” organization while working with the Trump campaign. I fully expected them to ignore me. To my surprise, Hotjar’s leadership  actually undertook a review of the accounts— and ended up banning both the Trump campaign and the GOP for violating their ToS.

I’m not at all surprised that Hotjar was universally celebrated and lauded by their customers for taking a stand and sticking to it. This is what people want to see. A company that listens, admits when they got it wrong and stands by their values.

No tech company has ever barred a presidential candidate or a political party from using their services. It was unprecedented — until it wasn’t. I am positive Hotjar’s (very impressive) announcement will be used in case studies in business schools in years to come.

A special shout-out to Twitter user @CarterD who took the time to write Hotjar an email, and got the ball rolling. 

You can also read HuffPo’s coverage of the story here.

4. Reported four (4) websites for fraud

There are thousands (hundreds of thousands?) fraudulent websites out there. I reported 4 to Trustworthy Accountability Group for plagiarizing (and monetizing) news stories from legitimate news publishers, the industry’s answer to ad fraud. Three of them have been demonetized. Another is under review.

Why do I bother? I do it to highlight the fact that adtech companies are not vetting their inventory. I do it to continuously bring attention to the enormous underground economy that is undermining the free press is financed by our own advertising dollars. And I do it to demonstrate that the mechanisms that are supposedly in place to combat the issue are inadequate at best. 

5. Helped Kroger employees get their bonus pay

One of my proudest accomplishments of the year: I helped Kroger workers get paid sick leave and forced the company to extend “thank you pay” for all essential workers through June.

In March, I launched a MoveOn.org petition calling on Kroger to implement paid sick leave for all their employees. It garnered more than 87,000 signatures and days later, Kroger relented.

Two months later, I collaborated with investigative reporter Judd Legum’s Popular Info and United Food and Commercial Workers International Union to call on the company to continue paying their workers an extra $2/hour. They relented again. This was $130 million that Kroger had no intention of parting with...that ended up straight in the pockets of your local grocery store worker.

P.S. I also randomly was featured as a LinkedIn Editor’s Pick - a first for me!: 

6. Launched Check My Ads (and started working with clients!)

Claire and I went from collaborators to business partners this summer when we launched Check My Ads. We were both newcomers to the space and really had no idea what to expect. But here we are, six months later. We are in business, working with our dream clients - including Fortune 500 companies and global consumer brands - who trust and value us. 

As we continue to work together everyday, Claire and I marvel at the talents each of us bring to our company. It is a rare thing to find someone who complements you so perfectly and I am truly lucky to have found a partner who just totally rocks. I don’t want to get into the specifics here, but we are truly double trouble. 👯‍♀️

7. Left Sleeping Giants

Over the last four years, Sleeping Giants became an inextricable part of my identity. It changed my life, it changed my personal goals and my career. Leaving it was the most difficult thing I have done this year. One of my biggest fears was that I would never be taken seriously without it, and that I had already “peaked”. How wrong I was.

My viral essay about leaving the movement I had built resulted in support I had never imagined. More importantly, I was finally recognized for the pivotal role I played in Sleeping Giants, which has helped bolster my work outside of it. To everyone who supported me through this, thank you. It means everything to me.

P.S. I received more messages than I have ever received in my life, and I am STILL working my way through them. If you haven’t heard back from me yet, I promise I’m not ignoring you!

8. Got banned from LinkedIn

Deloitte has made a fortune off caging asylum-seekers and just because they do it in suits and just because they sit behind computers doesn’t make it any less demonic. I don’t care what you think. I don’t care if they try to sue me. Go right ahead. They should be universally shunned, not invited to panels on mother%#*ing feminism in the workplace.

Anyway, speaking the truth is what got me temporarily banned from LinkedIn. I had to promise not to leave comments on their account anymore. But I have my ways.

9. Deplatformed so many Nazis

I like to start every Monday morning with a little light deplatforming work. I’m not organized enough to keep track of the number of Proud Boys, Nazis and white nationalists I got deplatformed this year, so you’ll have to believe me when I say “a lot.” 

They use donations platforms, email marketing services, social media, e-commerce, payment processors just like the rest of us. But they’re building businesses to harm our society, not contribute to it. 

I remain adamant that this is a business problem and one that tech platforms need to solve on their own. It shouldn’t be up to a bunch of random unpaid Twitter users to flag up your own problem customers for you. 

10. Broke big stories in BRANDED!

When we weren’t covering the news in our newsletter BRANDED, we were breaking it...thanks to our readers! 

  • We collaborated with numerous industry leaders to help bring awareness to the dangers of keyword blocking.

  • We collaborated with Zach Edwards, a data supply researcher to break a story on dark pool sales houses, the secret “backdoor” method the bad guys use to collect your ad dollars. That research ended up in a national security report published jointly by Harvard Kennedy School and the German Marshall Fund.

  • We also worked with Dr. Krzysztof Franaszek, founder of Adalytics.io, who reached out to tell us that he could see the secret page-level classifications that brand safety tech companies use to block ad revenues from the news. 

Zach tells us that he had shelved his research on dark pool sales houses for years, until BRANDED came along. He knew it would be the perfect place to publish the story. In fact, we are the only newsletter dedicated to educating brands and marketers about how the adtech industry really works - and it’s a role we take seriously.

11. Spoke, interviewed and helped shape the conversation

Speaking is one of the most important ways to claim your seat at the table. 

This year, I was on Irish radio talking about the dangers of brand safety technology, on Turkish TV commenting on Facebook’s advertiser woes, and interviewed in two documentaries (one is forthcoming!). Sleeping Giants had its very own chapter in Anika Gupta’s How To Handle A Crowd.

I gave talks on content moderation, disinformation, brand safety’s impact on the news industry, my experience running Sleeping Giants...for someone who was previously terrified of public speaking, it really felt like being thrown in the deep end.

One of my favorite things of the year were: 

The absolute highlight of my year was keynoting for Allyship & Action, a conference & community dedicated to bringing diversity to the advertising industry. They just hit it out of the ballpark.

12. Launched a new personal website

Last but not least, you are reading all this on a brand new website.

For a VERY long time, I believed there was no way to turn my activism into a career. For that reason, I insisted on keeping my career (product marketing consulting) separate from Sleeping Giants, which I felt was a time-consuming hobby at most. 

But this year, I proved myself wrong. As Check My Ads took off, I decided to make the leap and embrace my role as a full-time activist and entrepreneur, and lean into the person I have become over the past few years. 

Truth is, I’ve built a new website every year for the past four years, and this is the first time I feel truly comfortable with how I’m presenting myself to the world.

What can I say? It’s been a journey.

Next year will be bigger

This was a bad year, no getting around that. And on many days, I felt like we were moving backwards. So I think I’m saying this to myself as much as I am to you: Every little thing that you achieve is a step, a precedent, a building block for something bigger.

There are so many supporters and allies who helped me through this year. I am endlessly grateful for you. In 2021, we are looking at bigger things….a podcast, a book...and I fully think we’re going to blow you away. Stay tuned. 

Happy holidays and see you in the New Year!

Nandini Jammi
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