Beyond the little black box: How brands are using their values to respond to racial injustice

Freedom

Freedom-seekers are problem solvers, and innovative thinkers, so it’s no surprise that the companies that attract these consumers exhibit similar out-of-the-box philosophies. To borrow a word from the introduction of this piece … what Freedom-seeking companies do is disrupt. And when it came to responding to the Black Lives Matter movement, that’s exactly what the best of them did. Amazon banned police from using their facial recognition software “Rekognition” for a year, firmly aligning with protestors and critics of police behavior. They were also joined by Google and Apple in programming pro-Black Lives Matter rhetoric into their voice-activated systems Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri, respectively. This action took a conversation that could be considered elective by some, and made it confidently up-front to all.