--- title: TIME 100: How Ben Rattray's Change.org Goes Viral | TIME description: Since his selection as one of the 100 most influential people of 2012 in the TIME 100, Ben Rattray's Change.org has given a powerful voice to people all over the world through viral petitions. canonical: https://time.com/video/OQLk10vA/ og:title: TIME 100: How Ben Rattray's Change.org Goes Viral og:description: Since his selection as one of the 100 most influential people of 2012 in the TIME 100, Ben Rattray's Change.org has given a powerful voice to people all over the world through viral petitions. og:url: https://time.com/video/OQLk10vA/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/OQLk10vA/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: TIME 100: How Ben Rattray's Change.org Goes Viral twitter:description: Since his selection as one of the 100 most influential people of 2012 in the TIME 100, Ben Rattray's Change.org has given a powerful voice to people all over the world through viral petitions. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/OQLk10vA/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # TIME 100: How Ben Rattray's Change.org Goes Viral > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: TIME 100: How Ben Rattray's Change.org Goes Viral [Watch (HLS stream): TIME 100: How Ben Rattray's Change.org Goes Viral](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/OQLk10vA.m3u8) (3:54)  _Published 2013-10-30. Since his selection as one of the 100 most influential people of 2012 in the TIME 100, Ben Rattray's Change.org has given a powerful voice to people all over the world through viral petitions._ --- Jul 27, 2023 3:53 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [TIME 100 Most Influential Companies: NBA](/video/hhATwhjS/) ### TIME 100 Most Influential Companies: NBA [Selecting the TIME 100](/video/68sZTZEK/) ### Selecting the TIME 100 [The TIME 100: Who's Most Influential?](/video/U0pu3XKb/) ### The TIME 100: Who's Most Influential? --- ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] When I was a kid I wanted to be nothing more than an investment banker. I wanted to walk on Wall Street, double- breasted suit. Really proud of that. And it wasn't until my younger brother actually came out unexpectedly as gay when I was a senior in college. That it really had a profound impact of my own self image. He said a thing that was difficult for him as a young closeted gay American, wasn't people that were explicitly anti- gay, it was the people that refused to stand up and to speak out against them. People like me, his own brother. And it really shifted my mindset about how I could actually serve the world and what I could offer others. Change. org is the world's biggest petition platform. It enables anyone to start and join campaigns around the issues they care about. Almost 50 million users around the world that are taking action every day to make a difference in their community. When it's a case that elected officials have to respond. I was selected for the Time 100 in 2012. The reason in the immediate sense was the Trayvon Martin case. Trayvon Martin's parents had started a petition on the site when no one was paying attention to the issue that more than 2 million people, and sparked a national conversation. And it was in response to that, there was an explosion of additional campaigns around the country, around issues large and small. And at that point, we were just 10 million users. So we're now 50 million users people around the world making a difference every day. So it's been quite a shift, in just over a year. That graph in the back the RPM graph. I think one of the most under appreciated disruptions of, of civic participation and organizing, has been not just the, the mass mobilization of people in real- time, though powerful. It's actually that the personal stories that are at the root of a lot of these campaigns. It was Trayvon Martin's parents personal story and struggle, that in many ways resonated with so many people. And it's that that is the core, I think, of why many of these campaigns online will go viral. The first viral campaign that took off on Changed. org more than two years ago was actually out of the most unexpected of places, it was in South Africa. We wake up one day and see on the site there's a petition from a woman in South Africa and she tells this story, about how just before, that a friend of hers had been just raped by a man who was trying to turn her straight. It's this awful thing called corrective rape in South Africa, it happens more than a dozen times a day in Capetown alone. And in response to this, her friend starts a petition, asks the government to, for the first time, take action on the issue. And she has no personal network, no reason to think there'd be anything that would change because of an online petition. And the next week she gets 170, 000 people from a 150 countries. After weeks of campaigning and embarrassing the government, the Parliament for the first time in history, recognizes the issue. Passes a national task force to investigate and to stop the incidence of corrective rape. We wake up every day not to try to advance the things we care about, or issues we're passionate about, but to elevate the voices of others. The most exciting thing we're seeing right now is not just the disruption in power that's happening here in, in the United States but actually really around the world. In places that have nascent democracies but don't really have a sense of people power. Where citizens don't feel like they have a real voice in government, where corruption runs rampant. And it's in those countries, no more than 18 now that we have staff. We're seeing incredible, systemic, and I think historic change. And that's one of the things I think we're most proud of, is building a model in the United States. Just showing what's possible for everyday people to make a difference. I want you to all take a moment and realize that, in this moment where we are, and appreciate it and. Then seeing this sort of explode around the world and empower people, and hundreds of millions to make difference in a way that was just not possible before. One, two. [ INAUDIBLE ]. 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