John Watson's article, "73 million people can be a formidable group," recently published on American Thinker, brings to the fore something we can't afford to ignore: we are inadvertently helping enrich the very people who are hostile to us.  Our everyday habits of using search engines and clicking on internet sites are making billions of dollars for companies that suppressed important information relative to the recent presidential election.  The folks at social and news media went out of their way to lie, conceal, and tarnish and dismiss important information and repress our candidates, especially President Trump.  By utilizing their goods and services, we are rewarding their behavior.  Although conservatives don't usually riot, loot, or trash-talk liberals, if we can use our time and money deliberately and mindfully click, we can be mighty.

How?  Pay attention to where you click, and choose the right email carrier.  Making money is the number-one reason information is posted on the internet.  The value of the content to inform, misinform, confuse, or amuse you has become, quite frankly, secondary.  Displaying information doesn't pay the bills, so advertising revenue is sought just like in print publications.

While some advertising campaigns pay based on the number of unique visitors to a site, others require that the visitor perform an action such as click on a link (pay-per-click) or make a purchase (fee or commission) to receive payment.  The more web traffic they have, the more money they make.  Companies like Google have made huge profits from advertisements where some ad placement is bid upon, which means we see the ads that pay them the most first.  Publishers are also paid to run advertisements giving product information in the style of an editorial or objective journalistic article (advertorial content).

Unfortunately, our website clicks keep on giving.

Websites contain tags to enable third-party tracking and are an important part of marketing technologies.  Your browsing history allows websites to customize ads using types of products you have viewed and even what you have purchased online.

Tags also set cookies on your devices.  Cookies help build our profile so that advertisers can target our interests (behavioral advertising), and then the ad retargeting begins.  This is one of the reasons why I quit using Google a couple of years ago.  I would pre-shop my favorite stores' websites to determine if they carried what I wanted.  As a result, I was being bombarded by ads based on my internet search history.  It was annoying, seeing ads of things I had either purchased or dismissed.  If I had to see another ad, I would rather have seen something new.  After all, how many rock rakes do we need?

When looking at the cookies stored on my computer, I have noticed that there are cookies for sites I haven't visited, and I am assuming they were from ads on sites I did visit, so I routinely delete all cookies from my system.  Please note that by removing some cookies, sites where you have to log on such as your bank or investment companies may require revalidation to prove your identity.  However, you can leave those cookies on your system.

At a reported one billion monthly active users, Google's Gmail is the most popular free email.  It is supported by ad revenue and the sale of extra features, storage, and applications, which includes displaying banner advertisements on its web pages.  There are plenty of free email services to choose from.  Yes, it is a pain to change your email address, but think of the hostile tech behemoth you are enriching if you don't.

For me, the most disappointing aspect of Google is its highly controlled hierarchal search results.  I tired of the same-o', same-o' outcome every time I would research a project.  When I switched to another search engine, a whole new world of information opened up to me.

Facebook judges and censors content, particularly politically conservative content, which is an abuse of power for political gain.  It also retargets, which, quite frankly, feels like stalking.  But the creepiest part of Facebook was its pushing possible friends.  Of all the millions of people on Facebook, I found it alarming that it managed to find people I knew of through only others but had never met or communicated with and put them on my list of possible friends.  Also, I didn't know to whom they were sending my name, and I don't like my name being thrown about the internet willy-nilly.  Their process to permanently delete my account required me to fill in a captcha, but it was never available, so I wrote a letter to Mr. Zuckerberg asking for it to be made available.  Think about it.  In our cut-and-paste world, wouldn't it mean more to hear from or receive a picture via email?  If you must, there are now alternatives to Facebook.

As a last note, it is important to read the policy agreement when using digital programs.  I was astonished to learn that Intuit reserves the right to periodically comb through your computer to see how you are using its products.  Although I have nothing to hide, I find our digital world too invasive and am ever more careful where I visit.

Please remember that everything you do matters and ultimately makes money for someone.  If we 73 million adult conservatives and our families are conscious of where we click and shop, and take time to be mindful to help companies we respect and invite into our lives, we certainly will be a formidable group not to be ignored and a better nation for it.

PS: Write to your elected officials and make them actually work for a living, buy things made in the USA, and support your local brick-and-mortar stores.  Our future depends on all of us making the right choices.