What brands should we NOT boycott?
I get the boycotts for Target, Walmart, and Amazon for rolling back their DEI programs and bowing to Trump. What companies are treating employees fair or standing up for human decency? Seems like Costco gets brought up?
Most things I need I can get from my local grocery store which seems pretty non evil but where do you go if you need like a new keyboard?
Costco
It should be noted that they are actively trying to bust their workers union so maybe boycott them when your local asks you to.
Dr Bronners soap has specifically reaffirmed their DEI policies since Trump's reelection, and they have a 5-to-1 cap on the top-level exec's salaries compared to their lowest paid retirement-vested employees. They seem to walk the walk from what I've seen and read.
Holy shit. Imagine if more companies did the 5 to 1 cap thing.
Even at 20 to one it would drastically change some company payscales.
Needs to apply to "bonuses" so there's no loopholes though.
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?
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
Goods Unite Us is another similar app, showing which companies donate to political parties. It does have some paywall issues but it's better that nothing.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.goodsuniteus.goods
Clicking around, it seems like everything is on the boycott list. The reasons are also so bad. For example, Mars Inc is banned for working together with Israeli academic institutions to further foodtech innovations. Bullshit like this is why Republicans are able to link together antisemitism and reasonably critiquing the actions of Netanyahu.
Mars directly investing in Israeli startups and working with the university of genocide is a pretty good reason to boycott Mars
The app simply puts every company which invests money into Israel on the boycott list.
Open source orgs
NetBSD, Signal Foundation, other FOSS 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.
Dropout TV
Bandcamp, because it is the best place for independent music and there is nothing close to it.
Steam, because they started with non-horrible DRM (compared to other options) and now they are one of the companies that help Linux succeed for gaming (Steam Deck is just a Linux computer with controllers attached, and Proton is awesome for running Windows games on Linux).
Steam, because they started with non-horrible DRM (compared to other options)
Au contraire, Steam was LOATHED back in the day, they were the first to force you to install a store just to play a single game.
For other games, you needed to enter a CD key on install (which keygens helped with) and then you needed the CD itself in the drive (which cracks helped with). Steam started the trend of online DRM in games, which was then adopted by others who made even more draconian offerings (I think for Spore you could only get 3 hardware IDs registered?)
Ah good point, totally forgot the early times, I was too young back then I guess. Okay then the impact of Steam is kind of mixed then. From practical experience it is more up to the game developers to enforce or not enforce it and often in practice especially indie games are DRM free or it is easy to circumvent. Steam at least does not install some surveillance rootkit on your system. And I'd claim that it plays about the same role in the indie game ecosystem as Bandcamp plays for music and GitHub plays for open source software, at least that is my impression.
And contra Bandcamp is of course, they recently sold out i.e. got bought by some larger fish with totally different but music legal stuff related business and Bandcamp lost a lot of employees. But at least for now I don't see drastic enshittification ot Bandcamp yet.
I guess ultimately there is no perfect saint company, they are entities that must generate profit, and only sometimes it really means making customers happy, but more often than not it doesn't - that's just capitalism, how it works everywhere.
Bandcamp: Semi. Because it was owned by Epic.
Dunno how bad it's with Songtradr.
Patagonia is a good outdoors brand from the US
Gog
I don't really believe in ethical consumption, but Penzys spices are awesome! They're such troll too, I love it!
NAACP has a list of companies committed to DEI: https://naacp.org/campaigns/black-consumer-advisory
Apple Ben and Jerry's Costco Delta Airlines ELF Beauty
Tim Apple attended Trump’s coronation inauguration along with Altman, Bezos, Musk, Pichai, and Zuckerberg. https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-inauguration-ceo-guests-bezos-zuckerberg-musk-2025-1
Why was this downvoted? I just listed the companies on NAACP website so you didn’t have to open link.
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?
It's absolutely not, lol. Like, I have no problem demonizing the worst companies, but we should be less critical of the better options. Unless you want to create a grocery and retail store chain and distribution network out of nothing...?
I'm not sure if the exact details, but based on what you're saying, that's a union busting technique. You strike for recognition of the union and to bring the company back to the table to negotiate the contract. If a company is raising wages in response to a strike that's generally an attempt by the company to show that they will "take care of you" without the union contract. Anything the company does to "help" in response to worker action other than adding it as a concession in the contract is an attempt to avoid having a concession in the contract.
If there's a place that you just can't stomach to shop because of how they treat their employees then I highly recommend you do not shop there. I was avoiding Walmart before avoiding Walmart was cool.
However...
Boycotts only really work when organized, towards an end goal. What was Walmart doing before, what is it doing now, what do we want it to do, and who's coordinating? That's how you change corporate policy through boycott.
If certain DEI policies are important enough to you to boycott when a company removes them then that's fine. I guess it's also worth asking what it is about any given program that makes it good enough for not, which companies should or shouldn't have it, why, and all that.
King Arthur Flour!
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. That’s my local grocery store. It sounds like they treat their employees well and do a lot in the community. And tortillas.
They've made some small donations towards the current administration during elections, but they also give a decent amount back to their communities too.
Costco
The only one that comes directly to mind is Valve.
Besides that I'm not going to follow this narrative too much of finding "the good ones".
Newman's Own. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newman's_Own
Used computer store for keyboard, or Craigslist or Market place
I'm not sure if it's still true, but I seem to recall SC Johnson having profits as the lowest of their corporate objectives with higher ones being things like improving people's lives and bringing value to the world.
Granted, it's all just text, and times change, but I'd be curious to know if there's any truth to it, especially today.
You mean the fuckers who gave kids cancer with talcom powder and have done everything in their power to not pay damages?
Yeah. Fuck. That.
I'd say Steam.
Only as long as Gabe Newell runs it. After that it will enshittify like any other company that needs to make profits.
Private equity is salivating over the idea of running his carefully built brand into the groundmaximizing value extraction from steam.
The current meta here is that things like brand loyalty and reputation are not really worth preserving, and are only as good as whatever short-term gains you can squeeze out of them.
Let's hope musket doesn't buy it.
This Steam?
If its publicly traded, you can bet it sucks.
If it's not publicly traded it can actually be worse, too. Like the other poster said, you need some kind of actual strategy to make a boycott worthwhile.
It could, didn't say it couldn't, my point is that when its publicly traded it's guaranteed to be bad since the company now serves stockholders.
Penzey's spices.
Tillamook cheese
Dang if I didn’t read something about the cow treatment at the milk farms they source from. Was sad to hear.
But then you have to eat Tillamook cheese... I has no idea cheese could be so bland before I moved to the NW USA. And orange, for some reason.
Gamestop?
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.
That's an uneducated take. The amount of goods and services required by a population as a whole isn't affected by boycotts. What one company loses others will replace since they have a profit motive to do so. This requires them to hire additional labour which can easily come from what labour boycotted companies lay off.
That's assuming a boycott has such a large impact as to require a workforce adjustment which is basically a fantasy scenario in most cases.
Stop convincing people into more apathy than is already plaguing us.
IMO the uneducated take would be to think passages from an Econ101 book reflected the IRL hardships of changing jobs, possibly relocating, being out of work during the transition, willingness to take a pay cut out of desperation, etc. The word "sophomore" comes from the Greek term meaning "wise idiot" - closely related to the Dunning Kruger effect. Also "apathy" doesn't mean recognizing ineffective, self-serving virtue-signalling for what it is.
edit: wow, people REALLY hate thinking the laziest possible "action" hits the wrong targets. To repeat: boycotts hurt employees more than investors and CEOs. The important thing is to bury this piece of truth deep in the ground and keep feeling the righteous glow of "doing something" even if it's ultimately self-defeating.
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.
One way to fight the corporations is to stop worshipping at the altar of blind consumerism, and embrace the concept of "Reuse, Repair, Recycle."
Stop buying stuff you dont need. Keep using what you have, sell/buy used items, repair things, and if it cant be fixed or repurposed, then recycle it.
Repairing things is a big one. Often repairs are remarkably easy. My wife has been ready to replace numerous appliances over the years, and I figured it was worth taking a shot at fixing it, if I can save a few hundred bucks, and successfully extended the life by years.
Very satisfying, and it forces your wife to rethink her conclusion that you are an incompetent dolt.
Voting for lesser evil just slows down the evil, it doesn't reverse it. It's still going in the wrong direction.
-Abolitionist Charles Sumner, encouraging a third party vote in the 1848 election
LLCs are specifically unincorporated associations, i.e not corporations.
That's just absolutely not how it works even if you take it at face value. Both evils can be greater than the one rn, that has absolutely no bearing on which one is "lesser" among them.
Stop letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Yup. Everyone has to buy something. The point is to direct people to do that at places that are LES evil rather than giving in and saying "nothing matters I guess I'll just do whatever." Defeatism is collaboration.
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.