I don't really believe in ethical consumption, but Penzys spices are awesome! They're such troll too, I love it!
this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2025
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Asklemmy
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Costco
Patagonia is a good outdoors brand from the US
ACAB: All Corporations Are Bastards. Corporations are not your friends. Brands arenβt 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. 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.
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.
Open source orgs
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.
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.
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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!
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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.
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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.
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.
Yeah. Thatβs my local grocery store. It sounds like they treat their employees well and do a lot in the community. And tortillas.
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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 & Jerryβs is actually cool though, no? Although theyβre 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
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Used computer store for keyboard, or Craigslist or Market place
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