this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2024
2 points (100.0% liked)

Asklemmy

49216 readers
970 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_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
 

What brands do you avoid at all cost? I don't keep up with the news all that much, and many of the reasons to avoid something don't make it there anyway. So I'm asking here to make a big list of things to avoid. It could be anything from bad security practices to really frustrating packaging. Working as a cashier myself, I definitely know there are plenty of brands I avoid purely on the basis that their product is a pain to stock.

On the flip side, what's the alternative? If you avoid Pepsi, for example, what do you turn to instead?

top 10 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I avoid anything from iSSrael, Russia or China as much as I can, also anything related to Elon Musk

[–] m3t00@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

at&t, comcast, tobacco co's

[–] ClassifiedPancake@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)
  • Nestle (not easy because the branding is not always obvious, but once you have it memorized it’s no problem)
  • Tesla (easy because the cars are shit anyways)
  • Müller (Luxembourg dairy product company that has close ties to the German fascist party AfD. Relatively easy but they do have some subbrands that are not obvious) [EDIT: more info]
[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Samsung. For a bunch of reasons, but I think the main starter of it was when I learnt this story.

Amazon. I don't think I need to explain why on this site.

Obviously both of these are near impossible to avoid completely. Samsung makes the internals of far more products than they put their name on, and AWS runs a big percentage of the web. But I avoid their store, Prime, and Audible.

[–] SethranKada@lemmy.ca 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Completely agree on both points. I actually use a Samsung phone, and it's been nothing but a privacy nightmare. I'm planning to switch as soon as I've saved up enough to afford it.

Yeah, Amazon is a mess. I personally avoid anything even tangentially related to them. I've noticed that they tend to be lower quality with worse privacy than the alternatives, and their only benefit is price. Even then, Audible is a ripoff on a massive scale.

[–] EuroNutellaMan@lemmy.world 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If I may ask, what are you switching to? cause in terms of privacy (without sacrificing usability and other important factors) the phone market looks like a hot pile of garbage. Well I guess FairPhones exist and they're about as good as you can get but still runs android.

[–] SethranKada@lemmy.ca 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Not entirely sure yet. I do know that whatever I get, I'll be installing Linux on it instead of android. I might try out one of those de-googled android copies, but I'm not sure.

I've got my eye on the rugged survival phone market though. They seem to have different priorities than everyone else, and it seems to really improve the quality of the phones. I haven't yet found anything that exactly matches my personal requirements though, and most of them are unpopular enough that Linux support is unlikely to ever happen.

Overall, I'll probobly have to settle for something less than optimal.

[–] EuroNutellaMan@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

Ok so this still sacrifices usability for me

[–] i_stole_ur_taco@lemmy.ca 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I gave up trying to maintain a principled list of companies because globalization and supply chains make it too hard to really find a single asshole.

Your chocolate was picked by slaves. Your clothes were almost certainly made by exploited workers. Does that toy have a lithium ion battery? You’re not going to like how many of the raw materials were extracted. The name of the company on the sticker of the shit you bought is just a small piece of the rot.

[–] Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 11 months ago

The saying "there's no ethical consumption under capitalism" is pretty true for most of us right now. The oligopoly we have going on makes it extremely difficult to consistently do the right thing. The only real way forward is to regulate the shit out of these products. If only we had another Upton Sinclair to scare the general populace into giving enough of a shit to demand unilateral action.