It's impossible to "hold them to it" because it's so easy to get out of. People changing jobs because they want better lunch isn't comparable. That's a choice

It's impossible to "hold them to it" because it's so easy to get out of. People changing jobs because they want better lunch isn't comparable. That's a choice they make on their time, at their leisure and having weighed up many other competing factors. A pledge like this one in theory demands absolutism. Bad behaviour happens, you quit, regardless of how inconvenient or impractical it is for you at that time. In practice, because the pledge has had absolutely minimal thought put into it, the authors filled it with weasel words to get a big list of signers. If someone was wanting to quit their job for lots of other reasons perhaps they can use this to justify leaving and make themselves out to be super virtuous. But if they didn't actually want to quit their job then they'll just say that they objected internally and were ignored, but that satisfies the pledge. Or that they made some token change that "minimised" the data collected. Ethics is a deep, complex field of study. This is the opposite: a highly partisan and political document that exists only so people who don't like Trump can show that to the world, which I expect they were loudly doing anyway. It will only increase mistrust amongst conservatives, who will ask awkward questions like "Where were these tech guys when people were talking about databases on issues that matter to us, like gun control?". Why weren't they signing pledges in 2013 when Snowden revealed what the Obama administration was doing; why is this only a big deal now someone we like got into power? Pledges like this speak for everyone in tech. They shouldn't do that.