What's your list of banned brands?
What's your list of banned brands?
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?
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.
Walmart and Sam’s Club.
You know you’re probably dealing with the baddies when the Criticism and Controversy section of your main article on Wikipedia grows to the point where it links to another Criticism of Walmart main article.
- 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]
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.
Nestle.
I mean, lots of them. But I have a personal vendetta against Amazon. I worked at two companies for a few months, which supplied to Amazon among others, and it was just ridiculous how similar and bad their experiences with Amazon were.
At both companies, whenever we had to stock a delivery to Amazon, we had to use these brand-new pallets, which looked like you could break a toothpick out of them and it'd be sanitary.
Why did we not use old pallets? Because even though Amazon demands all the products to be packaged individually (so they can send them out to customers directly), if even just a handful of the packages get damaged during transport, they will send the whole truck load back at your cost.
And the asshats would take our brand-new pallets, then send back old-ass pallets, which we were then forced to use for all our non-shit customers.
No one at these companies wanted to work with Amazon. It was just that a significant amount of orders came from there, because of people like you and me using Amazon. So, I decided to not do that.
This might be an unpopular opinion but I avoid Western Digital hard drives after their two recent issues:
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In 2020, they silently started selling SMR (shingled magnetic recording) drives as NAS drives, without labeling them as such, even though they're not appropriate for use in a NAS. They can get very slow and cause issues during RAID rebuilds. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/wd-fesses-up-some-red-hdds-use-slow-smr-tech
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In 2023, they started flagging drives with a warning just because they had been powered on for three years (26,280 hours), even if all the SMART data was fine. The "fix" was updating systems like Synology to totally ignore WD's alerting (WDDA) and only use SMART. I think the warnings are still present, but NAS software just ignores them now. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/06/clearly-predatory-western-digital-sparks-panic-anger-for-age-shaming-hdds/
Both were intentional changes to try and increase profits.
I'm using Seagate Exos drives, which are the same price or even cheaper than WD Red Pro drives, when on sale.
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Jimmy John's
The owner has been photographed with big game "trophies" of elephants and a leopard.
TW: deceased animals
This guy pisses me off so much. Hunting like this (where it's private land, the staff do all the work of finding you a prize, & they basically point you at the endangered animal when it's time to pull the trigger) is so obscene, grotesque, unnecessary, and self-fellating. Fuck this dude in particular.
Any brands that make devices that plug into mains power that aren't UL or ETL certified. I've seen way too many cases where people buy generic smart switches with no certification and they trip the circuit breaker or catch fire due to poor quality construction. Certification isn't perfect, but it's way better than products not being certified.
Nestle
Whatsapp is difficult for me to avoid, but I've been pulling it off for years now.
Honestly here in the NL it's almost as if people see it as some sort of government institution. We have neighborhood watches on there and they openly display the logo as a form of security measure. Honestly it's kinda creepy that that kinda stuff flows through their opaque servers and software.
I'd prefer an open and distributed protocol, with the largest node being government run. You can't avoid such large nodes, so it's better if they are run by a centralized democratic system. Aka @gmail.com, Lemmy.ml, mastadon.social (did I get that right?)
Literally all of them. Any big company is doing evil things, and I doubt there is an exception to that rule. Shop local, grocery shop at a co-op, eat local, prioritize products you know are actually made in your home country. Most importantly; just buy less. Repair the things you own, take care of them, borrow from friends. Never buy something "surprisingly cheap".
Nestle, Microsoft, Reddit, Roku, Meta, X, Google (as much as possible). I would boycott so many of them if it was possible, but I particularly avoid those because I especially hate them.
Sony, for all sort of reasons (the rootkit and other DRM, pushing proprietary formats like MemoryStick and ATRAC3, removing OtherOS (a.k.a. Linux) support from the Playstation, etc.).
Blizzard, because of Freecraft and BNetD (I was boycotting them long before they merged with Activision).
Ideally, I would boycott Nestle and the other abusive agri-conglomerates, but honestly probably a lot of their products slip through because (a) it's hard to tell what's made by who because of all the subsidiary brands, and (b) with all the consolidation, pretty much everything is made by some shitty megacorp these days. I mean yeah, if I eschewed normal chain stores entirely and tried to buy everything from local small businesses or something then I guess I could avoid them, but ain't nobody got time (or money!) for that.
Samsung; just a lot of general very anti-consumer behaviour.
LG; a "do not sell my data" option on a TV that's turned off as standard? No, thanks.
ASUS; has become pretty unreliable in my experience and their RMA shenanigans haven't helped.
Apple; overpriced and anti-consumer, I wouldn't mind getting a MacBook as a gift or something, though...
HP; cheap garbage that's obsolete the moment you buy it and becomes e-waste after the warranty has expired. Their business line is marginally better but there are far better options out there.
Huawei; see above.
Nestlé; do I really have to explain? They're pretty much the worst company to ever exist.
Spotify; endless price-hikes to enable the CEO to buy more soccer teams and firearm manufacturer shares, pay artists almost nothing per stream, disabled their car thing after two years, lied about Spotify Hi-Fi....
Ugh god... Tech brands, off the top of my head:
- Asus (Scammers)
- Lenovo (Fuck lenovobios, bad hardware quality past 2010 or so)
- Sager (Scammed me by selling a laptop with too high power draw that resulted in crashes)
- Microsoft (Mega spyware corp, bad software, worst OS on the planet)
- Apple (Likely spyware corp, Bad locked down devices, anti right to repair, overpriced)
- Google (Biggest Baddest spyware company, monopoly on many platforms)
- Nvidia (Extremely hostile to open source, will likely never work on OpenBSD unless Nvidia seriously changes their stance; even then there's so much bad faith at this point I wouldn't trust them)
- Meta/Facebook (Mega spyware corp, zuck is a lizard)
- Tesla (Loudest most-punchable most-hatable fascist at the helm, employees caught spying on users through interior cams, proprietary software ecosystem that won't work on my phone)
- All major phone manufacturers (Android sucks, iOS sucks harder)
- Pine64 (Charging circuit is software controlled for some insane reason, supports Manjaro)
- All major smart TVs (spyware, always-on microphones, locked down OS with ad-ridden clients)
Okay companies:
- Valve (Still hosts a shitty DRM platform, but it's the best one; only listing because the Steam Deck is awesome)
- Framework (Pro user repair, good hardware, no complaints; look forward to RISC-V board)
- Apple
- Meta (but actually it effectively avoids me, I not much avoid it)
- Nazi states (the new axis powers) affiliated brands when I can, especially for the tech companies.
If you avoid Pepsi, for example, what do you turn to instead?
Tea, probably.
Not really answering the question but I've completely stopped buying anything that requires USB micro B. I can't fucking stand that connector. USB C costs a negligible amount more and I've yet to have a single port or cable fail irreparably after using it for the best part of a decade.
An actual answer to the question? I'm done with Microsoft and Nvidia. I'd love to add Google to the list but I'm still largely entrenched in their ecosystem.
Amazon: I avoid them because of worker abuse and union busting. While prime shipping is convenient, planning around not having it comes pretty naturally. Just plan as if it’s not an option at all. This does require good internet search skills to find sites that sell what you’re looking for, but I can’t express how worth it the work is to get better quality products.
Starbucks: I avoid them because of union busting. I make most of my coffee and tea at home, it’s cheaper and better anyway. Otherwise, I go to a local cafe. My area has a lot of them, but even if yours doesn’t, try asking around.
Honestly.. Google Play.. someone re-gifted my son a $20 Google Play card a few years ago, and I tried to buy something for him and realised the card was about 2weeks out of date, and after about 10 back and forwards with support, they wouldn’t honour it.. a trillion dollar company. I get it, but their cold indifference just seemed mean
Apple
EA got my account stolen with 1200+ hours of playtime via fraudulent support tickets. That's why, I am not touching anything EA's involved with ever when they absolutely suck at account security.
Crowdstrike
MicrosoftMany store-brand foods because they're made with half garbage.
HP - their printers and subscription models pissed me off so much that I want nothing to do with them.
Apple - 'nuff said
KwikFit fucked me over once 15 years ago and I'm never going back.
Apple is BS for losers.
Someone driving a Tesla I can't help but think of them sucking off Musk whilst being ass fucked.
Nestle
HP
Apple
Tesla
There are more but those are the first that came to mind that I don't have to go dig up a list.
There's a bunch I know when I see them, but not many I can think of right on the spot. Apple, Liquid Death, and Celestial Seasonings are a few I can think of though. Apple for a million reasons; LD because I just find their whole campaign insanely obnoxious and everywhere I look and I hate that people are paying ridiculous prices for plane ass water in a can; Celestial Seasonings because it's straight up an actual cult.
Epic Games until they continue developing UT4. Motherfuckers.
Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Starbucks.
Sony
I avoid Nemix RAM, because the first time I bought a bunch of sticks from them, they had an 18% failure rate. I paid to ship the bad sticks back, and they sent me more bad sticks. Nemix said they worked fine, so I sent them the Memtest screenshot with all the errors. They didn’t want to pay shipping to replace them again, so I just returned them and got some Micron RAM, and it’s been working perfectly.
Apple & Meta. I try to boycott Amazon in lieu of other online sellers but I don't always succeed. All non-union Starbucks. The latter is the one that has impacted my life the most because I used to spend my days studying at Starbucks. I Struggle to focus and concentrate on formal work of any kind while at home. We do have two unionized locations in town. They usually don't have any sitting room left, though because they are so close to the university campus.
Late to the apparent party but Phillip Morris . They own a shitton of food and pot licences.
Adidas. McDonald's. Starbucks.
Coca-Cola, Apple, Samsung, HP.
My alternatives are none (water & coffee only), Android (OnePlus specifically for phones), LG/Toshiba for consumer electronics, Brother for printers and Dell or Lenovo for laptops.
Edit: Oh yeah and Tesla, not only because of Musk, I simply don't want to drive a tablet on wheels. I'm going for low-tech cars only. Some barebones Kia, Hyundai or Dacia.
Tesla, Red Bull, Believe Music, Microsoft, Samsung, so many more I can’t think of right now
I try to avoid all the brands that still work in russia because I don't want to fund the terrorist state
Bad dragon, my tiny rose petal still gets sore on rainy days
Tesla
Walmart, Amazon, Blizzard, EA, Apple, McDonalds, Then some of the mega brands when I can avoid them like Unilever, General Mills, etc
Beech-Nut baby food. They have a history of bad faith actions including multiple citations, years apart and after litigation no less, for "selling artificially flavored sugar water as apple juice."
Hyundai . i will never buy another one again. ever.
seats are hard as rocks. they break down way to fast. the rear view mirror is set way to low in the window creating a safety hazard for looking forward. it needs to be set much higher on the window. (so i have to look up a little to see the mirror... so f'ing what?!) get the damned thing higher so it doesn't block my view when i try to look front and right of the car.
that's just a few of my annoyances with that car. i'm done with that company.
I'm a big privacy and FOSS advocate so my list is kinda long, but the main ones are:
-> Google (I use GrapheneOS)
-> TikTok
-> Tesla (too much data collection)
-> Microsoft (self explanatory, however for some things I need to keep an w10 LTSC VM configured)
-> Adobe (same reasons as Michaelsoft)
-> OpenAI (same reasons as Michaelsoft, but I do use it inside a vm in no-account mode for some work related things)
-> Uber (oh man that app is digital herpes)
-> Spotify
-> Facebook/Meta
-> Dropbox
-> Whatsapp
Samsung. & Vodafone. For NZrs: Fisher & Pykel.
F&P quality is shit and the first two have awful customer service. Samsung also, while they do innovate, lack quality and don't stick by their products.
Also: HP and Apple. Shitty lock-in tactics
I try and not support many corporate brands, and buy local produce and meats.
It's easier to avoid problem companies by not buying any of the millions of cheap snack foods that are basically just repackaged corn syrup and starches.
at&t, comcast, tobacco co's
Mostly anything USA since I was 12-15 years old. Israeli too since many years ago.
Coca cola, apple, google, Intel CPUs
Most of them.
Gillette. Due to their toxic masculinity ad. Why are they talking about that stuff? I went to them for shaving stuff, not for a talk about toxic masculinity or whatever. The good thing about the ad. It got me into safety razors. They're way better then cartridge razors. So thank you, Gillette. For making me stop using cheap plastic razors.
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