Ask Lemmy

Slave labor = boycott. Child labor = boycott. MAGA = boycott.

There's a ton of privately owned mid sized companies that you've never heard of that heavily fund the GOP. The Unihleins that own Uline are a prime example. There's thousands of these multi millionaires out there running companies that make things you use everyday that you don't think of. The guy who owns the trucking company that delivers stuff to your grocery store. The contractor that builds the roads you drive on. The company that rebuilds the pumps that run your local water supply and on and on. There's so many of these people out there that you can't avoid them at all.

I'm going to start by saying fuck Nestlé, they're so fucked up, they don't believe water & access to water is a human right, they go to towns & give them like $5 to suck up & process, bottle all the water in a region. They don't want people to be able to have private wells; they think water should be entirely managed, controlled, and sold by corporations. For these reasons, no one should ever buy Nestlé water.

Moving on...yes, corporations do dumb things, and sometimes those corporations are so terribly big it would be silly to try & look up, boycott every little thing they do. But if Nestlé didn't sell a single bottle of water, and they wondered why, and they come to realize they're dumb AF, evil, and they mismanage everyone's water while producing plastic waste....they'd surely stop stealing everybody's water for bottling. If it isn't profitable, they wouldn't do it.

I want people to understand what a boycott entails. The main purpose of a boycott is to have a negative impact on their business, either because you just fucking hate them or they're actively engaging in behavior, choices you don't approve of.

In this way, people who have already bought a product & then "boycott" it is kind of silly. Boycott Tesla? You have a Tesla. Best you can do is either sell, or de-badge, or throw on a virtue signalling bumper sticker if you wish. But the money has already changed hands, they profited off you. They just won't in the future.

In the same way, if you like a boycott product (but "you gotta have it" and there are no substitutes), there are acceptable workarounds. 🙂 Buying it used doesn't give them money. eBay, Facebook Marketplace, thrift stores. Or just go without...if you can. Idk how many things we actually, truly need. Choosing to boycott is a personal test of your will, your depth of knowledge, and your creativity.

I quietly boycott things all the damn time, I just don't make a big show about it. I adopt a smaller, simpler life. I also don't go crazy checking every single label at a store, no big corporation is getting rich off of my $13 purchase. I tend to go without, or I buy things that are sooooo so so much better that I almost certainly know have no connection to any dumb shit. The internet is your friend, as are the many small family-owned businesses for your basic needs. 🙂

Small things like the CEO performing a nazi salute, and others not getting mad at that.

I haven’t touched Gillette since they decided to disparage their primary customer base, then doubled down on that insult. I’ve even gone so far as to divest myself of many P&G products, since a parent company is ultimately responsible for the bigoted and sexist attitudes used by subsidiaries.

if (product.evil >= product.quality + (product.quality - competition.quality)) {
  boycott(product);
}

Depends how easy it is to avoid using. When there are lots of choices it's easy to switch. Hard to boycott the website that handles half of all retail in the USA.

First of all there's no such thing as ethical consumption under capatilism, however for me being disabled with only food stamps I get little to no options to boycott anything

For me it's a graph where Y is the likelihood that I will boycott and X how easy/convenient it is to find a replacement inversely related to how terrible said company is.

So the worse a company, the harder I will work to find a replacement.

Where possible I have ceased purchasing anything from them.

I also try to purchase second hand tech and fix what I have for as long as it makes sense to keep using it.

I dont wear clothes with brands as I dont want to pay a ridiculous price to be a walking advertisement of sweatshop labor where the poor soul got paid fuck all to stick a logo onto some fabric that is sold for the equivalent of a months wages.

I activly call them out on some fake social media accounts just for this to use their ads against them.

There are also many sea excursions to be had. 🦜

I have greatly reduced my consumption, particularly of new products. I've blocked most major socials by DNS in hosts of my PC (lots of japanese businesses still use some as their only way of stating business hours and info and same with updated disaster info, so I don't block on my phone but don't use unless I must). I don't buy from companies who have a record of human rights positions and environmental policies that I disagree with whoever possible.

I stopped buying Nike after I heard that they responsored Michael Vick after he was found guilty of hosting a dog fighting ring and killing the dogs himself. Was years ago and still refuse

I've noticed that shitty customer service is where I usually draw the line. And I'm not talking someone rude or the like. But when something shitty happens (company level, not employee level) and I make a complaint or submit a bad review and they either remove my comment or block my account, or some other shit like that. That's when they're blacklisted.

If I had to boycott every company that was unethical or had a piece of shit CEO, I would literally starve to death and die. Every company is fundamentally evil. Better to just go about your day and not try to boycott every company that gets bad PR. You'll drive yourself crazy. And unless you live off the grid and grow 100% of your own food, just forget about it.

When people agree with me

I stopped eating grapes for a week when Microsoft discontinued Outlook Express.

Boycotting as it's often explained is one of those kinds of things I can only imagine myself doing as a last resort. One could say I have, for example, boycotted bananas since both of the major banana companies have a history of exploitation, but that wouldn't necessarily be my mindset if, say, a provider of a tech service had questionable views and someone asked if I was going to use the service (which, at the same time, does not mean I don't condemn the tech service provider).