Online petition

Due to the ease of signing the petitions, (users can write in their own name or manufacture a fake one), signatures alone rarely result in a change in the situation being protested.

[6] Shocked government ministers were unable to backtrack on the site's existence in the face of national news coverage of the phenomenon.

This petition may be a simple chain letter, requesting that its users forward them to a large number of people in order to meet a goal or to attain a falsely promised reward.

Other times the usage will contain a form to be printed and filled out, or a link to an offsite online petition which the recipient can sign.

Usually, the e-mail petition focuses on a specific cause that is meant to cause outrage or ire, centering on a timely political or cultural topic.

[9][10] It coincided with the large national People's Vote March on the same day, also protesting against the U.K. government's decision to leave the European Union following the Brexit referendum.

[13] With the rise of the World Wide Web as a platform for commerce, activism and discussion, an opportunity to garner attention for various social causes was perceived by various players, resulting in a more formalized structure for online petitions; one of the first web-based petition hosts, PetitionOnline, was founded in 1999, with others such as GoPetition (founded in 2000), thePetitionSite.com, iPetitions, and others being established in the years since.

In some cases petition sites have managed to reach agreement with state institutions about the implementation mechanism of widely supported initiatives.

Thus, platform ManaBalss.lv in Latvia has the authority to hand over to a national parliament any legally correct initiative which has been signed by more than 10,000 authenticated supporters.

[17] In the UK, the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009 requires all principal authorities to provide a facility for people to submit petitions electronically.

[26] Other groups are attempting to establish electronic petitioning as a way to streamline and make existing citizens' initiative processes more accessible.