Scott Galloway has never been one to whisper when he can shout. The NYU marketing professor, serial entrepreneur, and co-host of the massively popular Pivot podcast alongside Kara Swisher just launched what might be the most ambitious consumer boycott in Big Tech history. And his weapon of choice isn’t picket signs or protest marches. It’s your credit card.
The campaign is called “Resist and Unsubscribe,” and the premise is deceptively simple: cancel your recurring subscriptions to America’s most powerful technology companies for the month of February. Amazon Prime, Netflix, YouTube Premium, ChatGPT Plus, Uber One, Apple TV+, Microsoft Office, Paramount+, and X (formerly Twitter) are all on the chopping block. The goal? Make Wall Street flinch, and in doing so, make the White House pay attention.
Why Subscriptions, Why Now
Galloway’s thesis is rooted in something he understands better than almost anyone in media: the economics of recurring revenue. These aren’t companies scraping by on thin margins. These are businesses trading at 30, 50, even 100 times revenue, and their stock prices are, as Galloway puts it, “priced to perfection.” That means even modest drops in subscriber counts can send shockwaves through share prices.
“The Trump administration doesn’t respond to outrage,” Galloway said in a YouTube video announcing the initiative. “It responds to economic signals. It’s not about ideology. It’s about mechanics.” He points to a recent precedent: when markets wobbled after “Liberation Day” tariff announcements, the administration quickly reversed course. The conclusion Galloway draws is blunt. Presidents respond to market pressure. And the fastest way to create market pressure is to target the companies that represent more than a third of the S&P 500’s total market capitalization.
The Full Target List
The campaign’s website, resistandunsubscribe.com, divides targets into two tiers. “Ground Zero” includes the Magnificent Seven-adjacent subscription services: Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Netflix, and, notably, OpenAI, marking the first time an AI company has been grouped with established tech giants in organized consumer action. Participants are urged to cancel Prime, ditch YouTube Premium, drop ChatGPT Plus, and hold off on buying any new Apple hardware until March.
The “Blast Zone” goes further, naming companies Galloway identifies as “active enablers of ICE,” including AT&T, Comcast, Charter, Lowe’s, Marriott, Spotify, FedEx, and UPS. ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol have reportedly spent $140 million on cloud services from Amazon and Microsoft under the current administration, according to Forbes.
What Sparked This
Galloway launched the campaign in the wake of the fatal shootings of Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, two U.S. citizens killed by federal agents while legally observing ICE activities in Minneapolis. Those incidents, combined with what Galloway characterizes as an aggressive immigration enforcement strategy targeting 3,000 arrests per day, pushed him past the point of commentary and into action.
The campaign also followed a nationwide general strike on January 31 that left many small business owners choosing between supporting the cause and keeping staff employed. Galloway deliberately designed his boycott to sidestep that problem. “It’s easy for me to tell other people to stop working and take the risk of getting fired,” he acknowledged. “That kind of walkout would only hurt small businesses and probably lead to more job losses.” Instead, the sacrifice is personal and voluntary: give up Netflix for a month, find a local bookstore instead of Amazon, take the bus instead of an Uber.
Is Anyone Actually Doing This?
The short answer: yes, and more than you might expect. Galloway told Swisher on the most recent episode of Pivot that he’s received “close to a thousand” emails with screenshots of people canceling subscriptions. His website generated roughly 250,000 unique page views in a single day. He’s been making the rounds on CNN, MS NOW, and other networks, and the campaign has been covered by NPR, Newsweek, the BBC, and outlets across Europe.
The anecdotes are colorful. A woman in Portland went back to buying DVDs rather than paying for streaming. A man in Georgia started shopping locally in the cold instead of ordering through Amazon. One participant sent a cancellation message to OpenAI that read like a breakup letter: “Despite the personal inconvenience to me and my family, it’s worthwhile; our republic is in peril.”
Even Galloway himself is walking the walk. He switched from AT&T to Noble Mobile, canceled his streaming subscriptions, and told Swisher he’s considering selling his stocks in the targeted companies and moving assets to regional or Canadian banks. “Yeah, it sucks when you got to walk the walk,” Swisher noted. Galloway didn’t disagree.
The Skeptics Have A Point
Not everyone is convinced. Lucy Atkinson, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin who studies consumer boycotts, told NPR that asking people to opt out of Big Tech is fundamentally different from boycotting a single retailer. “Big Tech is baked into so many of our day-to-day activities,” she said, adding that the most successful boycotts happen when consumers have viable alternatives.
And there’s a legitimate tension at the heart of the campaign: organizers need Meta’s platform to spread their message, which is why Instagram got a pragmatic exemption. Users are asked to stay on the platform but avoid clicking advertisements. It’s the kind of compromise that reveals just how deeply embedded these companies are in daily life.
Some participants worry a month isn’t long enough. Brian Ward, a boycott participant from Georgia, told NPR he hopes to stay unsubscribed beyond February. “I really think that if I can, I want to stay unsubscribed from most of these for as long as possible.” Galloway conceded the criticism is fair. “I think they may be right,” he said. “I purposely tried to shape the movement around putting as much power and decision capital in the hands of the individual.”
The Bigger Picture
Whether “Resist and Unsubscribe” moves the needle on stock prices or immigration policy remains to be seen. But Galloway’s campaign has already succeeded at something arguably more important: it has given millions of Americans a framework for understanding their own economic power. The idea that your $14.99 Netflix subscription is a political act isn’t new, but Galloway has packaged it with the kind of clarity and marketing savvy that makes it feel actionable.
There’s early evidence that coordinated consumer action can work. French tech giant Capgemini announced this week it would divest from its U.S. subsidiary following scrutiny over contracts with ICE valued at up to $365 million. Target executives have already acknowledged that ongoing boycotts contributed to sales declines. And the Disney+/Hulu cancellation wave after the Jimmy Kimmel suspension showed that streaming subscribers are willing to vote with their wallets when they feel strongly enough.
“The most radical act you can perform in a capitalist society is non-participation,” Galloway told NPR. Whether that’s idealism or strategy probably depends on your politics. But the $14.99 question is real: in an economy where seven companies control a third of the S&P 500, does the unsubscribe button carry more weight than a ballot? Galloway is betting the answer is yes. And at 250,000 page views a day, a lot of people seem willing to find out.