I don't really believe in ethical consumption, but Penzys spices are awesome! They're such troll too, I love it!
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Since employees end up suffering more from boycotts than executives or investors do, I don't think you should boycott anything. If you really need the delusion of being an avenging angel of justice without misdirecting it at people who are no richer than you, maybe go vandalize a CEO's car.
NetBSD, Signal Foundation, other FOSS orgs
Dropout TV
Costco
ACAB: All Corporations Are Bastards. Corporations are not your friends. Brands aren’t your friends.
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. I’ve 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 didn’t instantly become evil.
But if I need to buy a blender, plywood, or underwear (my shopping list this weekend), I’m 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.
Voting for lesser evil just slows down the evil, it doesn't reverse it. It's still going in the wrong direction.
LLCs are specifically unincorporated associations, i.e not corporations.
Thank you. This sent me on a rabbit hole of differences between LLC and Corporations. LLC being a pass through protects the owners a little bit but passes through all the tax and some of the liability (hence Limited Liability). I remember reading something about how banks got significantly more risky with investments and predatorily with their practices when they started moving from partnerships to corporate structures.
Maybe we should get rid of corporations and force all companies into a partnership or LLC structure. Less to hide behind.
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 doesn’t manufacture shower tiles and I need to buy some.
I’m not saying we should boycott every corporation. I’m saying it’s a fool’s errand because there is no ethical consumption under capitalism.
Open source orgs
Patagonia is a good outdoors brand from the US
You can always go for smaller/niche companies. System76 and Wooting come to mind for keyboards.
You have to do research and pay a premium. But you're way more likely supporting a business that cares about its employees.
In general consume less. And when you do need to make bigger purchases, do your research.
Wooting is Dutch?
Yep, Dutch with manufacturing in Taiwan. So not super relevant to this thread.
System 76 is US based including keyboard manufacturing. They're a small company that gives a lot back to the open source community.
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.
Money ruins literally everything.
i wish i could say the same thing; but i dont have enough money to know. lol
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.
I'm not 100% sure, but I think HEB hasn't done anything yet to kowtow to the current admin's policies.
I miss HEB. family owned and private. Thus why they get away with treating their employees so well, paying them well, and supporting their communities all while also being the largest private employer in the state of Texas. That company is a great example of how a company can both grow to a large size and not be evil. If they ever go public you know all of its charm will instantly get cut in the name of shareholder value.
Seems like Costco gets brought up?
Costco only does this shit as a union busting effort btw.
I mean… is that union busting? I thought I read the union threatened to strike. Costco raised wages to advert a strike. Isn’t that just unions working as intended?
NAACP has a list of companies committed to DEI: https://naacp.org/campaigns/black-consumer-advisory
Apple and Ben and Jerry's right at the top lmfao
Ben & Jerry’s is actually cool though, no? Although they’re a capitalistic enterprise in the full sense, they had the spine to put a stand against Gaza genocide
they were on the BDS list for a while, but I don't see them anymore, maybe they changed
They pulled out of the illegal settlements and maybe the greater occupation some years ago and reactionaries were furious.
you do love to see it
Used computer store for keyboard, or Craigslist or Market place