Resist and Unsubscribe - Subscriptions as Political Leverage
Subscriptions are the quietest revenue streams on Big Tech's balance sheets. Resist and Unsubscribe treats them as the most accessible point of political leverage, targeting both subscription-driven tech giants and consumer-facing companies contracting with ICE, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The idea behind Resist and Unsubscribe rests on a structural feature of modern tech economics: recurring revenue drives valuations. Subscriptions are priced for stability. They smooth quarterly earnings, anchor investor confidence, and feed directly into the revenue multiples by which public companies are valued. That same predictability is their vulnerability. Unlike a one-off purchase, a subscription can be cancelled in minutes, and once cancelled, the recurring line of revenue it represented is gone.
The campaign estimates that each cancellation removes roughly $15 a month in revenue per user. Multiplied across a plausible conversion rate, annualised, and applied to a standard industry revenue even modest participation translates into measurable market cap pressure. The point is not that a single cancellation matters, but that cancellations at scale reach the metrics that boards, analysts, and executives watch most closely.
Big Tech subscriptions to cancel:
- Amazon: Amazon Prime, Audible, Amazon Music, Prime Video, Amazon Grocery, and Kindle Unlimited
- Apple: Apple Music, News+, TV, One, Fitness+, and Arcade, along with a recommendation to avoid new Apple hardware
- WhatsApp and Facebook
- Google: YouTube Premium, YouTube Music, YouTube TV, and Google One
- Microsoft Office and Xbox Game Pass
- ChatGPT Plus and Team
- Paramount+
- Uber One
- X Premium
Instagram is kept in use as a channel for spreading the campaign itself, with a request to avoid clicking ads or making purchases linked from the platform.
ICE enablers to stop paying:
- AT&T wireless services (cited for roughly $90 million in ICE contracts)
- Comcast/Xfinity cable and internet (supplying ICE regional offices)
- Charter/Spectrum (cable and internet for an ICE Homeland Security Investigations office in Texas)
- Dell (cited for approximately $18 million in ICE contracts)
- FedEx and UPS (delivery contracts with ICE)
- Home Depot and Lowe's (for license plate reader data reportedly accessible to ICE)
- Marriott, including Bonvoy membership (hotels reportedly used for immigrant detentions)