This post is somewhat inspired by a recent post in this same community called “Is anyone else having trouble giving up Reddit due to content?”
I imagine “Reddit” will be a common answer. (And it’s one of my answers.)
Another of my answers is “Hasbro.” First Wizards of the Coast (a Hasbro subsidiary) tried to revoke an irrevokable license and screw over basically all 3rd-party publishers of D&D content, then they sent literal mercinaries to threaten one of their customers over an order mixup that wasn’t even the customer’s fault. D&D: Honor Among Thieves and the latest Transformers look really good, but those are within the scope of my boycott, so I won’t be seeing those any time soon.
Third, Microsoft. (Apple too, but then I’ve never bought any Apple devices in my life, so it hardly qualifies as a boycott.) Just because of their penchant for using devices I own against me in every way they can imagine. And for really predatory business practices.
One boycott that I’ve ended was a boycott of Nintendo. I was pissed that they started marketing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (though it didn’t have a name at the time) before the WiiU came out, prompting me to be an early adopter of the WiiU, and then when they actually released BotW, they dual-released it on WiiU and Switch. I slightly eased my boycott when the unpatchable Fusee Gilee vulnerability for the first batch of Switches was discovered. I wanted to get one of the ones I could hack and run homebrew on before they came out with a model that lacked the vulnerability.
Nestle. Boycotting for years.
It made me sad that a ice cream I liked was part of nestle.
I’ll miss hot pockets, good to know about Chameleon Cold Brew now though
Quick FYI to Europeans who want to boycott Nestlé: Häagen-Dazs is not owned by Nestlé in Europe.
For ice cream, try Tillamook if it’s in your grocery store! More affordable than Ben and Jerry’s and more cream than what’s legally mandated!
Made me really sad when I learned Sweet Earth is Nestlé because they have a really good Seitan (wheat gluten) Bacon that is super tasty and difficult to replicate. But I like not supporting scum more than I like vegan bacon substitutes so 🤷
Chick-Fil-A for their support for organizations that are anti-LGBT. Apparently these donations have stopped but I’m stubborn.
I honestly don’t get their popularity. Not because of politics but I can honestly get a better chicken sandwich 5 min drive away.
it tastes good and it’s convenient - not all places have a wide variety of restaurants
The company never apologized for any of it, so why should any of us forgive them? Dan Cathy made a big speech defending the contributions of company profits to anti-lgbtq groups, including groups supporting conversion therapy, and proclaimed that gay people are an affront to God.
I don’t just not eat here, I actively judge the people that do. I’m not sorry. It’s not hard to avoid eating greasy chicken from a restaurant that has become a cultural monument to desperaging people for the way they were born.
I’m boycotting everything from Nestlé, which can get difficult since that evil octopus of a company has so many goddamn tentacles!
As for boycotts I’ve ended, I used to boycott the Lotus brand of toilet paper and paper towels because they were made by a Koch Industries subsidiary but then they sold the brand off to a socially and environmentally conscious Swedish company so I started buying them again.
Nothing. I’ve given up.
I am too small to make a difference, unable to convince others in my life to join, and the companies I want to boycott have grown so big that their brands are everywhere and it’s exhausting to try to keep track of them all. Plus, boycotts are pretty ineffective these days. Even in the most extreme cases, companies now know they only have to wait ~2-3 months before the masses stop caring and move on to something else.
Now I just live my life. I support causes I believe in, try to treat everyone I meet with kindness and respect, and do what I can to give myself and my family a happy, comfortable life. That’s all I can do, it may not be enough to save the world, but it’s enough to save me and those I love
Facebook. Never had an account. In the early days I was afraid id lose job opportunities because something I’d post or others post with me in it, like smoking a bong or maybe just drunken 2am rant.
Now I don’t like it cuz it converts sweet old people into Nazis. Among everything else.
Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, TikTok. Most people I work with think I’m totally out of touch with reality because I don’t use any of the big social media platforms and then they watch the same 12 ads and 3 videos on 5 different apps.
It’s funny, I never thought of myself as boycotting these… But I guess I am. I hate all of these, and I think they are bad for both individuals, and society.
I used to boycott ATI before AMD bought them, because the driver support on Linux was so bad. I got a laptop with a GPU they didn’t support until almost a couple years later, and then as soon as it worked, they dropped support because it was too old.
Now they have the open source driver and better GPU support than Nvidia.
To be fair, ATI windows drivers were dogshit as well.
The gas station down on the corner. When I first moved here, I went there all the time because it was convenient. Gas, bread, soda, you name it, I would swing through there and pick it up. I stopped every single work morning and got coffee on the way to work. I started bringing my own insulated cup, so they charged me less. Then it was bought by a new owner, and he wanted to charge me more. Okay, it was still cheaper than if I used their cup and more convenient than making it at home - they provide the coffee, sweetener, creamer, and there’s no clean up on my part. One day I went in with a new cup that was the same capacity as the old cup. A different shape, but it held the same number of ounces. The owner said, “that cup’s bigger, I charge you more.” I tried to argue, but he didn’t budge, and he charged me the same amount as a large coffee in their cup. Now, I’m not stupid, I’ve worked in retail before, I know the largest cost to a cup of coffee is the cup, but I paid it, walked out the door, and never set foot in there again. That’s been eleven years ago, and I don’t plan to go back. I hope the few cents he greedily wanted over coffee was worth all the other lost sales.
This is the level of pettiness I aspire to
BP. For their incrediblely bad environment and safety record
Nestle for their baby formula shenanigans
Goya and at&t for their trump support
Nestle for monopolization of water reserves all over the world. Nestle for using child labor for their chocolate.
Thanks for boycotting Nestle, i’m really grateful to anyone else who does so.
BP Executive: “Sure we massively wounded the planet with our criminal negligence - but doesn’t everyone love baseball? How about we get two more strikes?”
I don’t buy Nestle products.
Reddit - API fiasco, antagonistic, and predictable
Facebook - it’s crap
Instagram - popularity contest
WhatsApp - unnecessary
Snapchat - unnecessary
TikTok - Chinese spyware
Microsoft - bloat and privacy
Adobe - expensive and slow
Twitter/X - crap
Elon Musk news - annoying
Oil change places - rip off & untrustworthy
Tire places except for Costco - rip off
Toyota dealerships - shady and deceptive
Apple - expensive and limiting
Netflix - crap
Hulu - crap
Wendy’s - crap
KFC - crap
Bottled water - expensive and wasteful
Sodas - terrible for health
Papa Johns - treats employees like shit, crap politics, expensive
Panda Express - generic, local places are better
Pollo Tropical - generic, local places are better
Checking & savings banks - credit unions are much better for their customers
American cars - crap
BMW - for dickheads and too expensive
HOAs - waste of money, too controlling
Autism Speaks - more harmful than good
Susan G Komen - selfish litigators
Better Help - pays their clinicians shit, so you’re getting bottom of the barrel therapy
I try to boycott as much of Nestle as possible and Tencent
EA, since 2013 when they fucked up sim city.
Blizzard. After the Blitzchung incident I uninstalled every one of their games and haven’t played anything Blizzard since.
Once the merger is complete with Microsoft I’ll probably start playing them again.
Good old ethical Microsoft.
I am appreciative of the irony.
Although my rationale is that Microsoft is less likely to sell out western democracy.
Except they are selling out, their ad revenue, telemetry, cloud services, development and support, all dominated by outsourcing at any cost on the race to the bottom
I won’t defend Microsoft but aside from open source software, which software company is NOT engaged in those practices?
Open source is the business model. Majority of systems and soon enough applications agnostic of platform.
99% of my media consumpion (movies, tv series, books…) is, how do I put it, “free of charge”… so techincally I boycott anything that is not my local movie theater/library
