I get the boycotts for Target, Walmart, and Amazon for rolling back their DEI programs and bowing to Trump. What companies are treating employees fair or standing up for human decency? Seems like Costco gets brought up?
Most things I need I can get from my local grocery store which seems pretty non evil but where do you go if you need like a new keyboard?
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?)
Ah good point, totally forgot the early times, I was too young back then I guess. Okay then the impact of Steam is kind of mixed then. From practical experience it is more up to the game developers to enforce or not enforce it and often in practice especially indie games are DRM free or it is easy to circumvent. Steam at least does not install some surveillance rootkit on your system. And I’d claim that it plays about the same role in the indie game ecosystem as Bandcamp plays for music and GitHub plays for open source software, at least that is my impression.
And contra Bandcamp is of course, they recently sold out i.e. got bought by some larger fish with totally different but music legal stuff related business and Bandcamp lost a lot of employees. But at least for now I don’t see drastic enshittification ot Bandcamp yet.
I guess ultimately there is no perfect saint company, they are entities that must generate profit, and only sometimes it really means making customers happy, but more often than not it doesn’t - that’s just capitalism, how it works everywhere.
Bandcamp: Semi. Because it was owned by Epic.
Dunno how bad it’s with Songtradr.
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.
Holy shit. Imagine if more companies did the 5 to 1 cap thing.
Even at 20 to one it would drastically change some company payscales.
Needs to apply to “bonuses” so there’s no loopholes though.
Gog
Costco
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.
Costco
It should be noted that they are actively trying to bust their workers union so maybe boycott them when your local asks you to.
Newman’s Own. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newman’s_Own
King Arthur Flour!
I don’t really believe in ethical consumption, but Penzys spices are awesome! They’re such troll too, I love it!
I’m not sure if it’s still true, but I seem to recall SC Johnson having profits as the lowest of their corporate objectives with higher ones being things like improving people’s lives and bringing value to the world.
Granted, it’s all just text, and times change, but I’d be curious to know if there’s any truth to it, especially today.
You mean the fuckers who gave kids cancer with talcom powder and have done everything in their power to not pay damages?
Yeah. Fuck. That.
Nope. That’s Johnson & Johnson. Different company.
Bruh if my company was named SC Johnson after what Johnson and Johnson has been up to I’d change my company name to avoid what dumb asses like me just assumed.
I believe you mean Johnson & Johnson, which is a different company.
No idea about the morals of SC Johnson, I hadn’t heard of them till now, but have used a product or 2.
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.
Private equity is salivating over the idea of
running his carefully built brand into the groundmaximizing 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.
Let’s hope musket doesn’t buy it.
This Steam?
Penzey’s spices.
NetBSD, Signal Foundation, other FOSS 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
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.
I’d go with buycott until something better appears tbh. I’m gonna see how it works for me. Too tired to keep snooping for today.
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.
Not a bad idea but keep in mind you’ll also potentially be adding yourself to lists. i assume i just ended up in a few databases i’d rather not be in by doing this snooping alone. Hard to tell the sheep from the wolves. I’m not an american though and my country isn’t currently on “hardcore mode” political setting. Stay safe, friend.
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!
It really does.
Sure. Mentioning them helped me remember i have to get my act together regarding who i give my money to, so even if they’re evil now something good may have come from using and naming them. Thanks for the reminder. I needed it.
Goods Unite Us is another similar app, showing which companies donate to political parties. It does have some paywall issues but it’s better that nothing.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.goodsuniteus.goods
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
I second this app. Really saved me a few times at the grocer.
agreed, but only for now.
if you read further on in this post, it’ll appear that their ultimate goal is to give brands the opportunity to clean any ghoulish reputation w money.
… can there not be one single good intention ever?! ffffffff
Stay TF out of other countries you parasites.
Every US intervention leads to miseryAre you seriously following me from a Nigerian article where I was shocked the US didn’t fuck their government up?
Boy, you are fucking SAD.
I’m not following you, I can smell you tho
Borat: “yOu’rE iNsAnE” Also Borat: “I can smell you tho”
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.
Mars directly investing in Israeli startups and working with the university of genocide is a pretty good reason to boycott Mars
The app simply puts every company which invests money into Israel on the boycott list.
Open source orgs
