this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
165 points (90.6% liked)

Asklemmy

42502 readers
1432 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Nestle? Spectrum? Some random company nobody knows about?

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 211 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (7 children)

Bayer. They knowingly sold HIV infected blood to Latin America after the blood was rejected in Europe. This still blows my mind. Some corporate waste of oxygen actually decided to do this. It wasn't an accident. That guy needs to get stabbed with ~~thousands~~ ten fucking thousand ~~of~~ AIDS needles.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/may/23/aids.suzannegoldenberg

[–] andy_wijaya_med 36 points 11 months ago

The fuck man

[–] Viking_Hippie 28 points 11 months ago (1 children)

They also bought Monsanto and, if anything, ramped up the evil from THAT murderous shitshow!

Why am I suddenly thinking about Norm Macdonald and Hitler? 😉

[–] [email protected] 26 points 11 months ago (2 children)

And the Essure permanent birth control device, causing persistent pain, bleeding and other health problems to thousands of women. Withdrawn from the US market before the Netflix documentary released

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/jul/25/the-bleeding-edge-netflix-documentary-medical-devices

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Did a little bit of digging on that one, before being bought by Bayer, the Cutter biological division was responsible for another pharmaceutical disaster. They accidentally (?) sold 120 000 doses of polio vaccines containing the live polio virus.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago

They also acquired and still run the business previously done by Monsanto known for things like agent orange and eliminating corn biodiversity. Their legal department is also infamous for bankrupting small farmers.

[–] jrs100000 9 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (4 children)

Also inventing heroin and marketing it as cough medicine.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

Lots of drugs started out as medicine. And heroin is a great medicine, still used in this sense today.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

Jesus. Straight to the top

[–] JoeClu 117 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Dutch East India Company - The original corporate raiders.

MASS ATROCITIES!

[–] [email protected] 45 points 11 months ago (1 children)

They are the Bug Bad Evil in my pirate themed DnD campaign. Or a proxy of them at least. What better justification for becoming a pirate than them? To quote a real pirate captain from the 1700, "They rob the poor under cover of law, we plunder the rich under the cover of our own courage."

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago

That's a 10/10 quote

[–] Antiques 15 points 11 months ago (2 children)

And no. 2 is The British East India Company

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

came here to say this. though if American slave traders had actually been a unified corporation I'd be pointing at them.

[–] [email protected] 75 points 11 months ago

Ok so Nestle for child murder, Bayer for AIDs blood, Union Carbide for Bhopal disaster and its parent Dow Chemical for Agent Orange (Monsanto too).

IBM for helping the Nazis with concentration camps and Degesch for Zyclon B. United Fruit Company and Dutch & British East India Companies for colonization, also everyone that was shipping rubber out of the Belgian Congo.

Everyone who makes landmines, cluster bombs, etc.

I think when this question is asked in 100 years Palantir is going to feature.

[–] jocanib 65 points 11 months ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

This is the answer, hands down.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] small44 57 points 11 months ago (1 children)

United Fruit Company because they manipulated several countries in Central America and helped the CIA overthrowing the democratically elected government in Guatemala

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago

20th century East India Company.

[–] [email protected] 55 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)
[–] [email protected] 52 points 11 months ago (1 children)

So many to choose from...

DuPont Chemical?

Wells Fargo?

Wal-Mart?

Coca-Cola?

My pick would be Bank of America for their illegal foreclosure practices which have ruined many families' lives, and especially for their role in the subprime mortgage crisis which destabilized the entire global economy and which we are still trying to recover from. Everyone on the entire planet was impacted by the Great Recession.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=RXmnBbUjsPs

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 42 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Chiquita bananas. They literally stole entire south/central American countries and used death squads and the CIA to enslave the workers and kill them when they asked for such unreasonable demands like being paid in actual currency

[–] Idefinitelydonotknow 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Banana Republic is a term coined for all the countries where this company operated.

[–] JGrffn 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

As someone who lives in a banana republic that now has banana republic stores in its malls, this is a perplexing and sort of insulting end result, and I don't understand how the name of the store ever took off

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 38 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Nestlé is responsible for misleading African mothers into thinking formula is better than their own breast milk. They lied to expectant mothers just to sell formula.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 24 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Google

They made private data the „new gold“ which it is today long before social media started exploiting it. Changing their motto /code of conduct „Don’t be evil“ into „Do the right thing“ (for our shareholders) didn’t benefit their reputation either…

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Changing their motto /code of conduct „Don’t be evil“ into „Do the right thing“ (for our shareholders) didn’t benefit their reputation either…

It's still in their code of conduct, though.

[–] Viking_Hippie 9 points 11 months ago

Only as a joke.

[–] dobeltip 24 points 11 months ago (1 children)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I'm sure there are worse, and it's not one company, but the companies that provide malware to dictatorships are pretty bad, and western countries are sheltering them/not doing much about them.

Examples:

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That's the problem, really. Numerous companies do unspeakable evil, which makes it very difficult to name and shame any one of them.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Right. Corporations aren't the problem, they're just a symptom of the real problem. Even though they're evil, they're just a product of their environment. The "good" corporations aren't profitable and go out of business.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Saudi Aramco or ExxonMobil

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (6 children)

Dave's Electronics at 4th & Elm

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I can't believe you even put Spectrum in the same tier as Nestle lol.

[–] MrSlicer 9 points 11 months ago

One let babies starve for profit, the other has shitty internet service /customer service. Seems equal /s.

[–] Countmacula 11 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Johnson&Johnson

swindled does a few episodes about them. It’s FUCKING INFURIATING the shit they got away with.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago

I'm guessing it would some of the big companies of colonial times, like the British East or Dutch India Companies.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago

Hard to pick a favorite from the long list.

load more comments
view more: next ›