Nandini Jammi, one half of pressure group Sleeping Giants, which has targeted Breitbart, Facebook, and others, leaves over disagreements with Matt Rivitz
Megha Rajagopalan / BuzzFeed News : Tweets: @beccalew , @buzzfeednews , @shannoncoulter , @carnage4life , @scottlucas , @arb , and @kerrymflynn Tweets: Becca Lewis / @beccalew : I wish I could say that the male ego on display here is an anomaly in these spaces, but unfortunately, this all felt so familiar. Grateful to @nandoodles for sharing her story - I'm already excited for her new projects. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ... @buzzfeednews : Nandini Jammi is leaving Sleeping Giants, an influential activist organization she helped build with Matt Rivitz, over a dispute about titles, credit, and equality https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ... Shannon Coulter / @shannoncoulter : Y'know how Sleeping Giants claims it fights sexism & racism? Turns out Matt Rivitz systematically failed to give credit to his hard working WOC co-founder @nandoodles for years and shut her out of opportunities associated w/ the work. Walk > talk. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ... https://twitter.com/... Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : It's wild to step back and realize that for all of its influence, Sleeping Giants was basically an artists' portfolio for a pair of marketers and has now split up because one of them wasn't getting enough clout to put on their LinkedIn. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ... Scott Lucas / @scottlucas : .@slpng_giants is one of the most important activist groups of the Trump presidency. Today, one of its leaders, @nandoodles. is leaving following a dispute over credits and titles. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ... via @meghara Amy B / @arb : a tale as old as time: two ad copywriters falling out over who gets recognition at cannes https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ... @kerrymflynn : “Sleeping Giant's decentralized structure... allowed it to move quickly and win impressive victories. But the conflict over the public face of the group would never be resolved...” https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ...
Context & Ripple Effects
Two years ago, the Washington Post framed social media pressure on advertisers as a tactic that is here to stay precisely because it works — and Sleeping Giants was the proof case, having moved brands off Breitbart and taken on Facebook itself. The group's power rested on looking like a distributed moral movement rather than a personal brand.
That framing is what makes this exit costly: Nandini Jammi, who built the group alongside Matt Rivitz, is leaving over disputes about titles, credit, and equal access to opportunities — accusations echoed by researchers like [[e:becca-lewis|Becca Lewis]], whose response noted how familiar the dynamic felt.
First-order effects
- Rivitz is now the sole remaining public face of a campaign whose effectiveness depends on perceived legitimacy, while Jammi takes her profile and audience to new projects she has already teased publicly.
- The internal dispute hands advertisers and platforms like Facebook an easy way to discount future Sleeping Giants pressure: the group's own house appears not in order.
Second-order effects
- Other ad-hoc activist campaigns will face sharper questions about who actually runs them and who gets credited — the same reckoning Basecamp staff described after an internal list sparked a wider reckoning about how such groups treat people.
- Volunteer-run movements lose recruiting leverage when organizers see the pattern: two Google employees who helped organize walkouts later said they were demoted or sidelined, a comparison circulating widely in the replies to Jammi's story.
Third-order effects
- If leaderless-looking movements keep concentrating credit in one founder while the work is distributed, expect volunteers to demand formal governance, named roles, and credit norms before contributing — informality becoming a liability rather than a shield.
- The longer arc points toward activist pressure campaigns professionalizing into structured organizations with accountability inside, mirroring the corporate structures they target.
The trend: Grassroots advertiser-pressure campaigns are colliding with founder-credit disputes, forcing the same governance questions on activists that they impose on platforms.