B. Dolan here. I created Knowmore.org, the Web's Largest Corporate Crime Database. AMA

Have you noticed any broad trends among corporate maleficence over the past 20 years?

Sure. They sort of mirror the same trends everywhere involving the gathering of global wealth and resources into the hands of fewer and fewer entities and people.

A short sighted view of "cost" and a minute-to-minute need to show profit have resulted in some really destructive modern trends. Companies funding climate change denial to preserve oil profits are a good example that isn't new to the past 20 years, but has been intensified and nearly wrecked our chances of surviving on the planet by most accounts.

In my adult life I've also watched the explosion of the tech industry and it's parallel threat of increased surveillance and lack of privacy. That feels new.

But a lot of it also isn't new. The willingness to brutalize, abuse, and endanger the most defenseless people on the planet in the name of profit is old, but continues in horrible new ways. You need only look at the Dakota Access fight to see that that part of the struggle has been inherited.

The privatization of human being's right to clean drinking water is global, new, and begging to be addressed.

Our ability to protect workers in certain industries has also been almost destroyed by globalisation. That's new. I've talked to union leaders who fought for 2 years to restore worker's wages, only to win and have the factory close it's doors and move to Mexico. So the difficulty in trying to work globally to control corporations feels new.

Great question.

Have you got many threats from corporations due to the site?

the most threatened I ever got was by Dov Charney, former CEO of American Apparel. I didn't feel that threatened though. I talk about this in the fundraising video, but he screamed at me on the phone for nearly an hour once. The result was a 78 page report produced for the site that unearthed new evidence in the trial against him. I was eventually deposed over that. It was a whole thing.

We also experienced some vandalism over the years but stayed on top of it. That was part of the reason we narrowed down the interface from a wiki, which is how the site started out.

Wasn't he also the CEO that was in trouble for some sexual assault claims by his employees?

Yeah. That was the "whole thing" part. haha. He was eventually removed for his behavior. Which was a goddamn shame because his company was truly doing revolutionary things in some regard. His paternal wannabe Larry Flynt BS ruined a good thing though, it seems.

Hey B! Thanks for doing the good work my dude. This is such an important time to have tools like Knowmore available to us. Several moments ago, before i knew you were AMAing i had the thought that knowmore.org is so important but there is a large swath of people who are ignorant to what corporate manipulation of the consumer looks like. Or that it even exists. How do we reach those stuck in a paradigm? ALSO i was trying to look up Thomas H Lee & partners who owns Iheartmedia when i found out Knowmore is down. Can you serve any knowledge on that? Thanks again! Huge fan of you & your music.

I don't have any offhand info about either of those companies, I'm afraid.

Corporate manipulation of the consumer is a crazy history all it's own. The series "Merchants of Cool" is a great place to start, but I also love a documentary called "Century of the Self" on the topic. "Knowmore.Tv" was a section of the previous site that housed a free archive of movies on a lot of topics, which I'd love to see revived.

Uncle B will you tell me a story?

Once upon a URL, Good or bad, you could tell

What Trump brands can I avoid?

we made an infographic after the election to call out some of the ones that made statements of public support. https://twitter.com/BDolanSFR/status/804223743207862276

B, obviously a whole heap of the corporations covered are truly multinational but is there any plays for a UK focus as well?

Even if it's just some sort of framework for British people to contribute towards to help expand the whole programme to spread the word of unethical business practices the world over.

I just got off a Skype call with Indi Heath from Greenpeace UK, and we were talking about the possible ways our two organizations could interact. We covered a ton of British companies also, as the entire Global Fortune 500 had profiles last time the site was online.

What do we do about boycotts when people are kinda forced to buy certain products due to low-SES status?

This also sort of goes to the question about cutting out all 'unethical' purchases. As mentioned, that kind of lifestyle isn't exactly necessary or what this sort of activism is about. Targeted boycotts around issues ("Don't buy any ____ this Christmas and tell them it's because ____") have been hugely successful for example.

How's the fundraising going B? Any behind the scenes media stuff Pocasts, TV stuff etc planned or arranged?

A number of things we're working on from our end. I've gotten some volunteer publicity help and am working on getting the project in front of a couple large donors. We're also being pitched at the moment to a couple big podcasts that could be game changers if they accepted, so feel free to holler at people and personalities on social media.

We've also got a list of user submitted aggregator type sites we'd also like to see the site get covered by. Things like Upworthy, Metafilter, etc. In the past week though the fundraising has recently plateaud a bit, which tells me we've reached our core audience and now need to break through to a new one.

The main difference between Kickstarter and Indiegogo is that Kickstarter makes you set a time limit, and doesn't charge people unless the goal is reached. Indiegogo lets you raise money indefinitely, and charges people right away.

In your video you said "This crowdsourcing campaign is meant to be an up or down vote on whether KnowMore.org needs to be around anymore. If it doesn’t meet its funding goal, we won’t take a dime of your money" - when do you intend to end the campaign, and if the goal is not met, refund the money? I’d like to know before I commit to donating.

We haven't set an end date on the campaign, so much as we have made a list of ways to possibly promote the cause which we are making our way through. This AMA is part of that process.

We've created a list of a couple hundred media outlets, organizations and people we'd like to get this project in front of. This is what I'd call the best push I can give it, which I'm committed to doing. I'd say if we are not more than 60% funded by April, we should be done 'the list' and have an indication of whether the idea has taken hold or not. If we're not there by that time, the money will be released back to all of the donors and we'll be looking into some way to release the database as a .torrent file or something.

Really cool idea. How searchable and how far back will the data go? Would it be possible to track trends with the data? ( such as locations, nationalities, dates etc?). I would be curious to see how, as laws changed globally, the shenanigans shifted as well.

That's a really interesting idea. The possible applications of the database are beyond my imagination to be honest. In the past the way the information was put to use by Knowmore mostly centered around the search engine and a browse function called 'BEHIND THE LOGOS', where you would see a field of corporate logos and clicking one would bring you to the company's profile.

We also had an award winning Mozilla ad-on that displayed companies ethical ratings as you shopped in webstores or visited pages associated with them.

But yes... the possible applications are endless and the data is only limited by those researching it. We covered Bayer and IBM's involvement in Hitler's Germany, for example.

How did you make the transition from being a rapper/writer to someone interested in crime statistics and what inspired you to make a corporate crime database website?

"Crime statistics" is not exactly an accurate way to talk about what Knowmore contained. It provided a 'rating', but that rating was just a visual representation to let people know there were issues they might want to look into.

For example, you wonder where Poland Spring water comes from. You enter that in the search bar, which brings you to the profile for Nestle. You see an icon that represents human rights which is bright red as in 'Negative Rating'. You read down the page to see that Nestle was given that rating due to their past with breastmilk in the third world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestl%C3%A9_boycott

I never made any transitions that I know of. My fader is broken. Everything just plays at once. I made a decision for myself early on that I couldn't just rely on my art to make an impact in the world. I needed to get my hands a bit dirtier and try to create some useful tools. I've continued doing that as a rapper and an activist, I hope...

Do you think it is possible in 2016 to live an enjoyable life whilst avoiding all products made by less than ethical corporations?

This is a popular line of questioning when the idea of ethical consumerism comes up, but I think it's a sort of misleading way of thinking and talking about what we're doing.

If we an't alleviate all the suffering in the world, should we alleviate any of it? No one is telling you you need to become a monk in the name of social justice... but your strategic participation in a couple things could help people in their fight and mean the world to the people being effected.

That's my approach, anyhow. No disrespect. My life is getting enjoyed though.

book marking to read up on this later. definitely a cool idea. Fellow Rhode Islander so props to you in general. do you have a comp sci background? or howd you get involved? if its in the video dont answer lol

I don't have any computer science background, no. 401 in the place!

I got involved after working for the campaign to elect John Kerry in 2004. In the aftermath of that, feeling like a sucker and thinking about the other ways I "voted" every day. I had read Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser at the time and was amazed at how much dirt was behind a happy meal. I realized no one would ever realistically have the time to compile all that information, but that it should be compiled and easily accessible. I came up with the idea for Knowmore because it didn't exist.

Im a big fan and cait wait to see this site grow.

What will be the first things you accomplish with the seed money?

The first move would be to create a bank account and an organization to receive the money, and a board to make decisions. next we'd be looking for proposals from web companies to handle the tech project and contacting all of the people who have hit his up offering free tech help and advise.
I'd want to do have a kind of round table discussion with those people and hash out the different views of how to tackle the database and get it all back online at the best possible cost.

Those'd be some of the first steps...

Hey there! Do you have any plans of teaming up with other orgs like Dem Socialists and/or Jacobin?

We've certainly tried through the years to team up with other organizations. In this fundraiser we're trying to raise a year's salary for a Non Profit Executive Director, and that type of activity falls under what we'd want that person to do.

In addition to fundraising, it would be the Director's job to build some of those bridges, or continue looking for new opportunities to do so. I have some activist friends who are very critical of the 'non profit industrial complex' and the world of grants and NPOs can be insular at hard to navigate at times. I know that from experience.

That said, we've never had a salaried person working on that sort of thing, and there is a ton of crossover potential among all kinds of activist organizations. What's great about the site is it serves a history of activism as much as a history of corporate malfeasance. It teaches lessons about how we're all fighting many of the same enemies, some of whom have been beaten in the past.

I've spoken with Chris Faraone of the Boston Institute of Non Profit Journalism (https://medium.com/@BINJ) about ways we could provide the site with fresh independent journalism were we to meet our funding goals.

I've also spoken with Indi Heath at Greenpeace UK recently about possible joint projects and coordination. I think there's room for much more of that, but working it all out requires time and energy from someone whose job it is to do so.

Hey B, big fan of your work as well as your friends at Strange Famous Records !

My question is: Do you actually belive in the reptilians?

I have met humans that make lizards look like dolphins.

who should we avoid?

that's a pretty general question.

I guess I'll just say people with those stick familys on their car for starters.

What are your thoughts on oatmeal cookies?

I'm down but you gotta make it sexy for me. Throw a little toasted coconut or peanut butter in there. Don't just give me raisins, nahmean. Let's live while we're alive.

Where would you start personally if you wanted to find more information on the business practices of a large company?

We developed a sort of method within each category over time. So for example if I wanted to know all about the political influence of a company I'd probably start with Opensecrets.org. If I was starting to dig in to the environmental record I'd hit up a number of environmental groups like the Sierra Club or Greenpeace and scan their archives. Actual contact info and a lot of stockholder information can be gotten through Hoovers.com. It was a time consuming process, but Knowmore provided a way for only one person to have to do that research that many people could then easily access and make use of.

If corporations were more focused on long term growth as opposed to quarter to quarter, would that have any positive impact on corporate crime or unethical practices?

I believe so. In fact though they're often so focused on growth it's a minute-to-minute game to lead the e-trading pack. The long term ability to continue doing business or say exist on the planet is never figured into the equation of most major corporations practice. That's bad for everybody, in my opinion.

I personally gravitate toward theories like "True Cost Economics" and calls to shift the paradigm of economic models being taught in business school to encompass the real impact of capitalism, generally.

Around 5 years ago I saw you open for Pip in a little place called the Sugarmill in Stoke-on-Trent in England. I have always wondered whether or not you caught any diseases whilst in Stoke? It's a pesky place.

Was that the Halloween show where I had a skeleton onesie on? If so, I think I got out of the onesie unscathed. Less sure about Stoke.

Do you like knock, knock jokes?

only when told by my four year old nephew.

If you are him... you are doing an incredible job with your letters.

Hey B. Long time fan, first time Redditor. What's your take on Standing Rock?

There's a lot to say about what's happening at Standing Rock. There's also a lot to say about what's still happening in Flint. I think these are the battlegrounds we find ourselves on, as lots of divergent issues all come to a boil at the same time. We also made this graphic to help people divest from and avoid companies that are funding the pipeline. https://twitter.com/knowmoredotorg/status/801964115770085376

What's your take on Standing Rock?

Hey B! I was at your Cincinnati show in 2015 (Mr. Dibbs was in the front row if you remember) and you performed an unfinished song themed after Wile E Coyote. That shit was a year ago, can I put it up on YouTube yet?

nope.

Ok.

thanks!

If you could go back in time to help a former you masturbate, would that be considered gay?

they told me this place had changed, y'know.

Prince or Michael Jackson?

Rick James

What do you think is the single greatest song of all time?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmN43GptSVo