The Ethical & Financial Transparency AR Protest App

8 min readMar 4, 2025

By Michael Feuerstein and Chat GPT.

This app does not exist, it is entirely fictional, but entertain the idea of such for a moment, the ability to protest with your wallet when you shop. Only buying in real-time from businesses or manufacturers that meet your standard of ethics and morality, all tailored to the individual user's beliefs, inturn protesting in a way never done before. A powerful tool to bring about accountability and informed decision-making in both personal and societal contexts. By using real-time data and AR, this app could create a completely new way for people to “vote with their wallet” and take a stand in their everyday purchases. But consider the possibility to protest peacefully and meaningfully during hard times.

The Ethical & Financial Transparency AR Application

Potential Social Impact:

Empowerment of Consumers: In today’s world, people often want to make ethical purchasing decisions but lack the transparency or information to do so effectively. This app would put power directly into consumers’ hands.
Increased Corporate Accountability: Businesses that face financial loss or a change in consumer behavior might be more inclined to adopt fairer, more ethical practices, knowing that their actions are constantly being scrutinized.
Strengthened Movements and Activism: The app could help connect like-minded individuals, fostering stronger social movements by providing easy access to activism-related events and information.
Education and Awareness: Beyond simply providing data, the app could educate users about the ethical, social, and political implications of their purchases, helping to build a more socially conscious consumer base.

Ethical & Financial Transparency AR Application

Executive Summary

The Ethical & Financial Transparency AR Application is an innovative platform designed to revolutionize the way users interact with businesses, political donations, and activism. Leveraging real-time data, augmented reality (AR) overlays, heat maps, and secure activism coordination tools, the app empowers users with actionable insights about the ethical and financial behaviors of corporations, local businesses, and organizations. Additionally, the app will provide hate group notifications, alerting users when they enter areas associated with organizations classified as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and similar watchdog organizations. This tool is designed for consumers, activists, and researchers who want to make informed decisions and drive social change.

Transparency & Accountability:

Provide real-time access to corporate, political, and ethical financial records.
Integrate with Federal Election Commission (FEC) data, state campaign finance databases, and corporate transparency reports to highlight political donations and business affiliations.
Include SPLC and Anti-Defamation League (ADL) data to notify users when entering areas with known hate group activity.

Ethical Consumerism & User Engagement:

Implement a gamified scoring system where users track their spending based on ethical preferences.
Offer a personalized dashboard that aligns with individual values and provides ethical business recommendations.

Augmented Reality & GPS Integration:

Enable AR-powered overlays to visualize ethical scores, labor practices, and financial data on businesses and products.
Utilize heat maps and GPS integration to provide geolocation-based insights on corporate influence, activism hotspots, and hate group presence.

Grassroots Activism, Hate Group Awareness & Secure Protest Coordination:

Provide encrypted tools for anonymous protest planning and event coordination.
Implement a community-driven voting system to prioritize activist events based on location and interest.
Deliver real-time alerts when users enter areas known for hate group activity, with sourced information from SPLC, ADL, and other watchdog organizations.
The ethical consumerism market is expected to grow significantly as more consumers prioritize transparency and sustainability (Forbes, 2024).
Augmented reality (AR) adoption in mobile applications is projected to reach $97.76 billion by 2028 (Statista, 2023).
The demand for political and financial transparency has increased, evident from the popularity of initiatives like OpenSecrets and FollowTheMoney.org.
Hate crime awareness and activism are rising, increasing the demand for tools that track extremist groups (SPLC, 2024).

Target Audience

Conscious Consumers — Individuals who make purchasing decisions based on ethical sourcing, political donations, and corporate responsibility.
Activists & Advocacy Groups — Organizations and grassroots movements seeking financial accountability and hate group awareness tools.
Journalists & Researchers — Reporters and analysts who require real-time transparency and extremism data.
Politically Engaged Individuals — Users interested in tracking political donations and hate group influence from local businesses and organizations.

Core Features

1. AR-Powered Transparency & GPS Overlay

Users scan businesses or products to see real-time overlays of political donations, ethical ratings, and sustainability scores.
Live data sourced from FEC, state campaign finance databases, SPLC, ADL, corporate reports, and ethical watchdog organizations.
Heat maps overlaid on Google Maps highlight areas of corporate influence, protest activity, and known hate group locations.

2. Ethical Consumer Score & Gamification

Users receive a personalized ethical consumer score based on their spending habits.
Leaderboards, badges, and rewards incentivize users to make ethical purchases.
AI-powered recommendations suggest businesses and products aligned with user values.

3. Protest Planning, Hate Group Alerts & Activism Coordination

Anonymous event creation allows users to organize protests without compromising security.
A community voting system prioritizes events based on urgency and relevance.
Geofenced notifications alert users to activism opportunities and hate group presence in their vicinity.

4. Real-Time Notifications & Alerts

Users receive proximity-based alerts when near businesses with controversial affiliations or ethical concerns.
Hate group warnings notify users when entering areas with known extremist group activity.
Live protest safety updates and encrypted messaging ensure user security.

5. Heat Map Technology & GPS Integration

Color-coded heat maps visualize regions with high business donations, protest activity, hate group influence, and ethical hotspots.
Toggle layers allow users to explore different financial and activism data in real time.
Historical tracking of business donations and hate group movements provides long-term transparency.

6. Data Sources & Verification

Federal Election Commission (FEC) — Political donations at a federal level.
State Campaign Finance Databases — Local political donation records.
Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) & Anti-Defamation League (ADL) — Hate group locations and extremist organization tracking.
Corporate Transparency Reports — Ethical sourcing, labor practices, and environmental records.
Crowdsourced Verification — Community-driven data contributions to ensure accuracy.

Implementation Roadmap

Phase 1 (6 months): Core app development, AR integration, ethical consumerism scoring system.
Phase 2 (9–12 months): Activism coordination tools, anonymous protest planning features, hate group alert system, heat map visualization.
Phase 3 (12–18 months): AI-driven insights, historical trend mapping, business partnerships.

Transparency in business and politics is no longer a luxury — it is a necessity. The Ethical & Financial Transparency AR Application provides real-time insights into corporate and political affiliations, empowering consumers and activists with knowledge. By combining augmented reality, financial data tracking, hate group alerts, heat maps, and activism tools, this application reshapes how users engage with their world.

How It Works:

Real-Time Business Transparency — Users scan a store, and AR overlays display past political donations, ethical concerns, and alternative businesses.
Heat Map Transparency — Color-coded heat maps highlight financial donation trends, protest activity, Political Party voting records for the town/community, as far and up to public information of arrest records and hate group clusters awareness when driving or entering an area.
Hate Group Awareness — Users receive real-time alerts when entering areas associated with extremist organizations, individuals listed in the neighborhood, or specific candidates/parties.
Anonymous Activism & Protest Coordination — Encrypted tools allow users to organize, vote on, and join activist events based on proximity.

By merging financial transparency, activism, and hate group awareness into one AR-powered platform, this application empowers users to make impactful decisions daily.

Monetization & Sustainability:

Develop revenue through premium subscriptions, that reward users for shopping and sourcing things locally, ethical business partnerships, and advertising models for verified businesses.
Establish crowdsourced data contribution rewards to ensure up-to-date and accurate information and expansion of source.

Consider this for a moment, that, this app could bring a new wave of financial activism — where every purchase becomes a conscious decision to support or protest a company’s practices. It would blend technology, consumerism, and activism in a seamless, data-driven way. What are your thoughts on how such an app could evolve in the future?

The Ethical & Financial Transparency AR Application represents a groundbreaking intersection of technology, consumerism, and activism, offering a powerful new tool for individuals to exercise their values and make a real-world impact with their purchasing decisions. By leveraging augmented reality, real-time data, and geolocation tools, the app not only promotes financial transparency but also empowers consumers to hold businesses accountable in ways never before seen.

In the future, this app could evolve into a cornerstone of ethical consumerism, fundamentally changing how we approach shopping and social movements. As data accuracy and the app’s ecosystem expand, it could develop into a comprehensive platform where businesses, regardless of size, would be incentivized to adopt transparent, ethical practices in order to attract a conscientious customer base. This could result in widespread shifts in corporate behavior, with companies increasingly aligning their practices with consumer values in response to the growing demand for accountability.

Moreover, as this platform gains traction, it could integrate deeper AI-driven insights, helping users refine their purchasing decisions with even more precision, offering predictive analytics based on personal values, location, and social trends. Future iterations could include partnerships with environmental groups, further enhancing sustainability practices, or add features that allow users to share or broadcast their ethical decisions, encouraging a greater collective awareness.

The app’s potential for peaceful protest and coordination, coupled with the ability to warn of hate group presence and encourage local activism, would create a unique blend of personal empowerment and community-driven social change. Imagine a society where each purchase — whether at a coffee shop or a big-box retailer — becomes a statement of your ethics and a force for greater societal change.

This platform could also evolve to incorporate more personalized features, like a “cultural impact score,” based on how a user’s choices affect societal issues such as racial equity, environmental sustainability, and labor rights. Additionally, it could open up space for more grassroots movements by enabling small businesses to join the network, strengthening local economies while encouraging ethical practices.

In essence, the app could become a global movement that turns every transaction into a meaningful expression of personal beliefs, providing consumers with the power to protest peacefully through their wallets. It’s a compelling vision for a future where every dollar spent not only has a personal impact but also contributes to the larger goal of social responsibility, transparency, and ethical accountability.

The future of the possibility of such a platform could be transformative, acting as a catalyst for a new wave of financial activism and reshaping how we view the relationship between commerce, ethics, and activism.