Who’s profiting from the outrage?

In 2012, a massive internet protest brought Congress to a halt. Millions mobilized online to stop SOPA and PIPA, two bills that threatened net neutrality and the free flow of information online. More than 7 million people signed petitions, and 4.5 million contacted their representatives. It was a catalyst moment that revealed how digital platforms could command widespread attention from traditional institutions.

That moment helped spark a market boom in online petitioning tools, CRMs, and campaign platforms designed to scale digital activism. More than a decade later, many of these tools have grown rapidly, and it’s time to take a closer look. Who owns them now? Are they controlled by private equity? How are their data practices? Are they properly amplifying grassroots power? As these platforms become essential infrastructure for modern movements, we have to ask: who really benefits from these platforms, and at what cost?

Here are four things to keep in mind about what’s happening behind the screen:

1. Who owns the user data, and how is it used?

Most major advocacy platforms, like NationBuilder and Action Network, are proprietary and closed-source, meaning they don’t share their code base or data practices in the interest of transparency. While it’s up to client organizations to dictate how to use the data they collect, the platforms still control the underlying infrastructure, retaining broad control over how that data is stored, accessed, and potentially leveraged.

Over the last five years, Apax Partners, a UK-based private equity firm, has slowly acquired much of the progressive digital advocacy ecosystem, including EveryAction, ActionKit, Salsa Labs, and NGP VAN, consolidating them under a single, profit-seeking enterprise known as Bonterra Tech. As the data processor, Bonterra Tech now controls the digital infrastructure housing vast amounts of user data collected by its subsidiaries. While data processors often uphold policies against selling or sharing user data, there’s often little clarity around how they may use the data internally. For example, Apax Partners also holds interests in defense contractors, including a company blacklisted by the UN for operating in illegal settlements in Palestine. With this in mind, it’s fair to wonder: Could insights from social justice campaigns quietly feed strategies for profit in entirely different industries?

2. Who drives campaign interests?

Implicit in their high costs, dominant advocacy platforms are often built to promote hierarchical organizing, where decisions are made by a well-resourced central org or campaign leadership without sustained collaboration with impacted communities. The platforms routinely gather personal data such as emails, zip codes, donation histories, and even personal stories but neglect to offer functionality that could drive the continued input or consent of the very people the campaigns aim to uplift, such as visibility into campaign strategies, insight into how their data is analyzed, or participatory tools for shaping campaigns.

Instead, these insights are available only to campaign managers to help guide top-down decisions on messaging, targeting, and fundraising, often at the expense of local groups. For marginalized communities, these platforms reinforce a dynamic where they are mobilized only during urgent moments but excluded from ongoing strategic planning and decision-making.

3. Are transactional engagements prioritized?

Nonprofits, like corporations, are also driven by return on investment. While the goal isn’t profit, success is still measured by quantifiable outcomes – usually the number of people who click, sign, or donate. Digital advocacy tools cater to this pressure by making it easy to generate high-volume engagement through quick actions. But this efficiency means focusing on surface-level interactions, favoring volume over substance. These tools can build off momentum and energy but aren’t designed to support long-term organizing or deeper community-building

The advocacy platform 5 Calls took off this year, recording as many as 700,000 engagements in one week. As a nonprofit with an open-source product, they value transparency and community involvement. But is that enough to counteract the broader trends shaping digital advocacy today? 5 Calls’s reliance on prewritten scripts and curated issues can reduce collective energy to a top-down transaction. Without strong feedback loops, they risk losing meaningful participant input and sustained engagement. As advocacy campaigns chase bigger numbers, tools like this become treated as substitutes for organizing, rather than one small part of a broader ecosystem.

4. How is the action monetized?

When people sign a petition, donate, or join a campaign, advocacy platforms collect not just their basic info, but also behavioral data, like what they click, when they engage, and how often they take action. This data is used to create pathways for fundraising and marketing automation, creating detailed profiles that can be leveraged for targeted outreach. These targeting tools are often a key selling point for platforms, allowing them to charge clients more based on improved engagement and donation results.

Platforms also benefit monetarily from the visibility and credibility of hosting high-profile campaigns. That attention attracts investors and institutional partners, concentrating power within the tech infrastructure. Grassroots movements, meanwhile, provide the energy but may not receive the resources. Take Change.org as a key example – while it’s branded as a public platform for citizen action, it’s actually operated by a for-profit company. The platform monetizes petitions by encouraging targeted viewers to chip in financially. However, those donations typically go to Change.org itself, not to the organizers of the petitions or the communities impacted. This is not an uncommon revenue model for online petitioning tools – the emotional urgency of social causes becomes a revenue stream, while the people doing the actual work remain unsupported.

What’s the Alternative?

To build truly liberatory digital infrastructure, we need advocacy tools that involve impacted individuals and communities in shaping how technology is designed and deployed. Open-source platforms offer a promising path, allowing movements to adapt and audit tools to serve their needs rather than corporate incentives. Beyond the tech stack, data sovereignty must also be prioritized with clear, enforceable guidelines about who controls information and how it’s used. And rather than tools that funnel people into campaigns for short-term gains, infrastructure should support long-term relationship-building and collective care.

The future of movement tech shouldn’t look like a sales dashboard – it should look like a transparent, participatory space where people co-create, share responsibility, and benefit collectively