The political positioning of major brands and products has become a point of widespread discussion over the past year, with boycotts attempting to target the sales of Bud Light for example gaining notoriety.
In a seeming attempt to draw on the successes of these types of protest, a video appeared online that showed what was described by one commentator as an "'anti-woke' app."
The Claim
A tweet by political commentator Ron Filipkowski, who describes himself as a former Republican, posted on July 17, 2023, claimed that an "anti-woke" mobile app was available that could rate the relative "wokeness" of groceries.
The tweet included an ad for the app in which an actor can be seen walking along the aisle of a supermarket, scanning goods with their phone which in turn displayed a numerical rating.
In the ad, the actor said: "Next on my list are tampons, let's see what rating Tampax has. So they have a very low rating." As the actor looked at the tampons, a picture of trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney in front of some Tampax boxes appeared at the top of the screen.
Filipkowski's tweet read: "There is now a right-wing 'anti-woke' app where you can apparently check brands in the store to see their wokeness rating."
The Facts
The idea that an app could be used to determine the relative political or social policies endorsed by a grocer's owner seems at first to be a kind of satire.
It's initially unclear if the ad promoting the app is meant to parody or support the type of conservative activism that has led to boycotts of products like Bud Light and brands like Target.
Nonetheless, the app, called Veebs, is real and claims to be able to rate products based on the political and cultural values of their manufacturers. (According to the website, it is available on the App Store and Google Play.) However, there's a little more to consider here.
First, as was pointed out by Community Notes, Twitter's crowdsourced fact-checking system, the app comes with a number of "Value Packs" that, according to the app's website, help people "to buy products from the stores and brands whose values align with their own personal values."
This means that it may not be a singularly "anti-wokeness" app as Ron Filipkowski's tweet suggests.
In fact, the term "wokeness" does not appear on the website or in the ad on Twitter.
In the context of recent grocery and retail boycotts among conservative consumers, it's arguable that one might think the video's purpose is related to conservative concerns.
Supporting that impression, when a pack of Tampaxis scanned in the video ad shared on Twitter, photos of Dylan Mulvaney appear. Earlier this year, Mulvaney was wrongly claimed by conservative commentators to have been hired by Tampax to promote its products, a fact check by Snopes found.
The app also supports a range of conservative causes including the broadly defined "Conservative" and the more specifically nationalistic "America First."
There is no information on its website about how ratings for each of Veebs' "Value Packs" are determined. There are no rating methodologies, no computer science and no background on the people who have launched it.
While there are details of the company available, listed as VBS Corp LLC, searching for this entity doesn't reveal any useful information about Veebs' ability to confidently determine the political or cultural guideposts behind a product's organization. According to Buzzfile, which provides freely available company information, VBS Corp LLC was founded in 2021 and employs three people.
Given the subjectivity of what a conservative or liberal viewpoint is, it's unclear how reliable Veebs' categorizations are.
The app's creator appears to note this, stating its ratings are based on a mixture of "objective and subjective data sources," citing public records, brand values, company statements as well as feedback.
The disclaimer page reads: "The App's features, V Scores, Ratings, or Replacement Suggestions are not advice of any kind. They are opinions of VBS Corp."
Nonetheless, the app claims to provide consumer ratings for products based on their manufacturer's adherence to a range of political persuasions. Whether, or how, it works is another matter entirely. Newsweek has not yet tested the app.
Newsweek has contacted Veebs via its website for comment.
The Ruling
Needs Context.
Neither the ad attached to the tweet nor Veebs' website uses the word "wokeness," instead describing the app as helping shoppers determine which political philosophies goods and grocery producers most closely adhere to.
It is unclear how it achieves this, with no methodology, developer backgrounds, or other information available via its website to determine reliability.
FACT CHECK BY Newsweek's Fact Check team
Read more about our ratings.
