Gog
this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2025
81 points (100.0% liked)
Asklemmy
1463 readers
103 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy π
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- 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.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
If there's a place that you just can't stomach to shop because of how they treat their employees then I highly recommend you do not shop there. I was avoiding Walmart before avoiding Walmart was cool.
However...
Boycotts only really work when organized, towards an end goal. What was Walmart doing before, what is it doing now, what do we want it to do, and who's coordinating? That's how you change corporate policy through boycott.
If certain DEI policies are important enough to you to boycott when a company removes them then that's fine. I guess it's also worth asking what it is about any given program that makes it good enough for not, which companies should or shouldn't have it, why, and all that.
Bandcamp, because it is the best place for independent music and there is nothing close to it.
Steam, because they started with non-horrible DRM (compared to other options) and now they are one of the companies that help Linux succeed for gaming (Steam Deck is just a Linux computer with controllers attached, and Proton is awesome for running Windows games on Linux).
Steam, because they started with non-horrible DRM (compared to other options)
Au contraire, Steam was LOATHED back in the day, they were the first to force you to install a store just to play a single game.
For other games, you needed to enter a CD key on install (which keygens helped with) and then you needed the CD itself in the drive (which cracks helped with). Steam started the trend of online DRM in games, which was then adopted by others who made even more draconian offerings (I think for Spore you could only get 3 hardware IDs registered?)
I'd say Steam.
Only as long as Gabe Newell runs it. After that it will enshittify like any other company that needs to make profits.
Let's hope musket doesn't buy it.
Private equity is salivating over the idea of ~~running his carefully built brand into the ground~~maximizing value extraction from steam.
The current meta here is that things like brand loyalty and reputation are not really worth preserving, and are only as good as whatever short-term gains you can squeeze out of them.
Supposedly gaben has threatened to release code in a death switch that would make every steam user able to play their games without phoning home.
I know that I would never buy another game if steam went down the toilet. Piracy was fun when I was a kid, and I bet it could be fun again.
King Arthur Flour!
Dr Bronners soap has specifically reaffirmed their DEI policies since Trump's reelection, and they have a 5-to-1 cap on the top-level exec's salaries compared to their lowest paid retirement-vested employees. They seem to walk the walk from what I've seen and read.
I don't really believe in ethical consumption, but Penzys spices are awesome! They're such troll too, I love it!
NetBSD, Signal Foundation, other FOSS orgs
ACAB: All Corporations Are Bastards. Corporations are not your friends. Brands arenβt your friends.
Stop letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Yup. Everyone has to buy something. The point is to direct people to do that at places that are LES evil rather than giving in and saying "nothing matters I guess I'll just do whatever." Defeatism is collaboration.
I used to not vote because all politicians are evil. Someone pointed out that if everyone picks the lesser of two evils then things are going to get less evil. Iβve voted every opportunity since.
Corporations are just legal structure organizing people together to do something. The soup kitchen, local artisan, person cutting hair out of their house, they all set up an LLC to operate under. They didnβt instantly become evil.
But if I need to buy a blender, plywood, or underwear (my shopping list this weekend), Iβm going to have to buy it from a corporation. If I could buy it from a less evil corp then hopefully I make things less evil.
One way to fight the corporations is to stop worshipping at the altar of blind consumerism, and embrace the concept of "Reuse, Repair, Recycle."
Stop buying stuff you dont need. Keep using what you have, sell/buy used items, repair things, and if it cant be fixed or repurposed, then recycle it.
Repairing things is a big one. Often repairs are remarkably easy. My wife has been ready to replace numerous appliances over the years, and I figured it was worth taking a shot at fixing it, if I can save a few hundred bucks, and successfully extended the life by years.
Very satisfying, and it forces your wife to rethink her conclusion that you are an incompetent dolt.
Sorry. My underwear is beyond repair
I hear some people enjoy that particular fashion statement.
lol. Intimates are poorly constructed, but we also ask a lot of them. In all seriousness though, I have repaired undies and bras and gotten another 6 months to a year out of them.
pointed out that if everyone picks the lesser of two evils then things are going to get less evil
That's just absolutely not how it works even if you take it at face value. Both evils can be greater than the one rn, that has absolutely no bearing on which one is "lesser" among them.
Repeal of Citizens United and change that.
All Corporations Are Bastards, in a four hundred year unbroken chain going all the way back to the English East India Company and Dutch East India Company, and even before those.
I get that, but anarchy doesnβt manufacture shower tiles and I need to buy some.
Iβm not saying we should boycott every corporation. Iβm saying itβs a foolβs errand because there is no ethical consumption under capitalism.
And we shouldnβt let the perfect be the enemy of the good. A poke with a stick isnβt good but itβs sure as shit better then a pistol whipping.
We're not trying to boycott EVERY corporations. We're voting with our wallets for the lesser evil the same way we vote at the ballots for the lesser evil.
If the extent of your participation in politics is choosing between evils, and not trying to actually achieve good, then you're accepting evil as eternal and unchangeable. It is much more important to focus on organizing, and thus working towards good.
Costco
Open source orgs
i use the nothanks app on my phone to scan the bar codes and it tells me if it's okay to buy or if i should boycott, along w why
Clicking around, it seems like everything is on the boycott list. The reasons are also so bad. For example, Mars Inc is banned for working together with Israeli academic institutions to further foodtech innovations. Bullshit like this is why Republicans are able to link together antisemitism and reasonably critiquing the actions of Netanyahu.
I found the thing you mentioned a good idea so I googled the app to find out how they decided who should or should not be boycotted. I landed their homepage and it said they offered digital marketing solutions.
I'd love to use something like that if community driven but sounds like an important conflict of interest.
that's good to know that they're doing the same thing as adblock plus did.
there are other apps that do the same thing and i'll be trying them now; thanks for the heads up.
edit: maybe this one?
Buycott seems promising cause campaigns and boycott lists are user-driven (which, you know.. could also be faked I guess) and haven't found anything fishy in their policies yet, but still snooping around on them. Gonna look into their ownership now.
Edit:
So umm... apparently Buycott was founded by a random 20 something year old LA dev (Ivan Pardo), a 2008 CS guy from Colgate University who basically coded it on his own. Boycott's social media has been inactive since 2016.
Their business model is they sell access to their barcode API, which basically means they sell the pics of the barcodes and the product descriptions people add voluntarily to companies to do what they want. Not great but you know... better than digital marketing services.
Buycott is related to solidarity tech, which Ivan Pardo also founded, and is a CRM who claims to be "helping unions & grassroots organizations build people-powered movements that transform society...." which could be legit. They're not free and they're not cheap and they claim to cater to unions, advocacy orgs and non profits... but idk. Am I full paranoid delusional or does this sound like a honeytrap kinda thing? Like if I was an evil right wing politician this is exactly the kind of company I'd want to have leverage over to be able to sabotage opposition. And we don't know who Pardo's partners are. Only that he's founder.
Oh, also, solidarity tech openly claims they give their customer info to Google analytics in their terms, which, you know... Kinda concerning when your "I'll handle your grass roots movement" software sees no reason to not freely give your information to the most blatant and thinly veiled CIA front in contemporary history.
In their webpage they say they are "Trusted by Progressive Campaigns and Causes" and name a full total of 5 clients: Debt Collective, UAW, Pilipino Workers Central and CWA. As a non american I don't know what these things are...
idk I don't trust them. But I'm also running out of options at this point. Might as well use something. They seem like the best so far.
based solely on what you've found (and not doing my own homework): it seems like they're going the adblock plus route where they're good to use until they get a critical enough mass of users to start selling their data and the we'll have to switch to the ublock origin like alternative.
Yes this sounds right and it also makes sense.
i think i'm going to start using more than one at a time as a cross comparison and investigate the dissenter.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
I checked out boycat.io
Searched a bunch of "everyone knows they're bad" companies and the info they provided seemed accurate, reasonable and well sourced.
However, their business model seems kinda fishy. first of all they sell "I'm a nice company" certifications, which in itself s a conflict of interest, but especially if you can't find who the owners of boycat are anywhere on the site or the internet, their whois information is private and if you look at their privacy policy, they allow themselves the right to track "usage data" (i.e. what you scanned) and "location data" which they later allow themselves to "share" with "service providers", which are "companies providing hosting, data analysis, marketing, customer service, and technical support.".... so umm... Yeah. Basically same conflict of interest as the other company, but less explicit.
And again,. not once do they say who owns them, how they started or is behind them nor do they provide an explanation on why they don't talk about themselves... Cause I could understand well intending devs trying to keep private to stop companies from threatening them, but tell the community this is why you don't share your info. Their contact us doesn't work either.
I would really like to see something community driven but i guess big companies could infiltrate something like that easily. I'll look into other solutions and let you know if i find anything promising.
ps: 90% of their news were about Israel-palestine, which, you know.. OK, good and important but ummm.. I'd also like to know about other stuff.
Money ruins literally everything.
i wish i could say the same thing; but i dont have enough money to know. lol
You're not a billionaire. You just became 50% more attractive to normal people!
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
Is there a way to add brands i want to avoid that aren't on their list? I live in Aotearoa so I'm not sure if the list will have everything included
nothanks does
Used computer store for keyboard, or Craigslist or Market place
I'm not 100% sure, but I think HEB hasn't done anything yet to kowtow to the current admin's policies.
Yeah. Thatβs my local grocery store. It sounds like they treat their employees well and do a lot in the community. And tortillas.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Tillamook cheese
But then you have to eat Tillamook cheese... I has no idea cheese could be so bland before I moved to the NW USA. And orange, for some reason.
view more: next βΊ