THE GREAT BOYCOTT - a megathread on companies to boycott and their alternatives.

submitted by Aureus - announcement from self.Activism

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[–]yellow_algebra_31 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

I never used many of these companies, and I've stopped using others since. These will be the hardest for me:

  • I can move my bank account to a local bank. That's probably the highest impact thing I can do.
  • Mastercard: fuck. How tf am I supposed to engage in commerce? Visa and mastercard? Do I just send checks by mail now?
  • I could move my email account to Protonmail (or a better alternative that doesn't give in to DDOSers). Google docs I'll need an alternative to. I guess I can just keep that stuff locally, I don't really use it for anything that really needs sharing. Maybe I already use alternative browsers but I'm not sure what's best. searx? duckduckgo? startpage? qwant? I'll need to download my email data. Youtube will be hard but I guess I gotta do it.
  • Twitter will be hard, I follow people there. Maybe I can learn how to make a tweet mirroring bot to the fediverse. No, that's probably not realistic. Fuck. Those tweets get me through the day and provide my news. This one I will need help with, comments appreciated.
  • Guess I gotta stop visiting reddit subs for good.
  • There are a lot of payment processor and fund transfer stuff on that list. We need some legit options to switch to.
  • Mozilla, yikes. Guess it's time to ditch firefox? Suggestions?
  • Microsoft?! Time to do that switch to Linux I've been putting off.
  • No more gardening supplies from Lowe's... or Home Depot...
  • No logitech purchases, I potentially needed some new hardware...
  • Intel?! and AMD? How tf am I supposed to do computing? I think we need a list of computer hardware and software suppliers that are legit.
  • FexEx?! Ebay?! Alternatives please?
  • Can commit to not using Discord again.
  • CVS, yikes.
  • Creative Commons?!
  • Burt's Bees? :'( I liked their stuff, but fortunately I already found another lip balm maker. This is something your local small business artisinal beauty products maker can do, btw.
  • I think I gotta get a new cell provider.
  • Amazon :(

We need a full legit whole supply line, guys. This is absurd. Don't ever fucking sell out ever under any fucking circumstance every fucking again, you guys here me? No letting somebody "buy" your company. This is one of the oldest tricks in the book and they've been doing it since the invention of agriculture.

This is a longer list than I thought it would be. I think I'll start with the banks, that seems like the highest-impact. Started doing this several years back but never made the transfer, ashamed now that I didn't. Time to go look up all that old info the Occupy people put together about banking.

Any helpful info about alternatives greatly appreciated.

[–]Aureus[S] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Thank you for going over these one-by-one.

My take is that there's different levels. Some companies are worse offenders than others. Some just made a virtue-signalling tweet, while others donated millions to shady organizations. Beyond this list, we need to draft a sort of hierarchy of companies, from the biggest offenders (most important to boycott) to the smallest offenders (least important to boycott).

Btw: If a service is important to your daily life, you don't have to boycott it. Your wellbeing, and the wellbeing of your family and extended community come first.

A decent rule of thumb is it's okay to use a service as long as you get more value out of it than it gets from you.

Twitter will be hard, I follow people there.

I would actually discourage people from boycotting sites like YouTube or Twitter if they can spread their message using it. One crafty technique would be to keep using YouTube/Twitter for videos and comments, but boycott their advertisers. Every time you use YouTube, Reddit, or Twitter, you are consuming their resources... if you're blocking their ads, you're actually doing more than a boycott would. Of course don't let online platforms take up too much of your time though.

Maybe I already use alternative browsers but I'm not sure what's best. searx? duckduckgo?

I've heard DuckDuckGo is good. At least don't use Google as a default search engine - that's an easy switch to make.

There are a lot of payment processor and fund transfer stuff on that list. We need some legit options to switch to.

While you should keep using services important to your daily life in the short-term, this is a good point. In the long-term we need to build alternatives to these.

Mozilla, yikes. Guess it's time to ditch firefox? Suggestions?

Brave is good. However, I'm not sure Mozilla works the same way as other products and services, since you don't pay for it. I would absolutely make sure to turn off all monitoring in the settings, and don't donate to the Mozilla Foundation.

There's also Waterfox, a fork of Firefox, but I've had issues using that. We need a tech team, lol.

Microsoft?! Time to do that switch to Linux I've been putting off.

I use an older version of Windows. IMO the new versions are just annoying to use, and there's supposedly a lot of tracking software on them anyway. But it would be good to start thinking about Linux distros.

No letting somebody "buy" your company. This is one of the oldest tricks in the book and they've been doing it since the invention of agriculture.

Absolutely. You see this with almost every company... the privately-owned ones are usually the most decent, especially if they're still run by their founders. The publicly-owned ones are awful.

[–]flugegeheimen 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

However, I'm not sure Mozilla works the same way as other products and services, since you don't pay for it.

The majority of Mozilla Corporation revenue is generated from global browser search partnerships, basically Google, Microsoft etc pay them to use a corresponding search as a default search provider in browser. When Firefox's usage will drop to 0%, I imagine Mozilla will be financially dead for good. So, it's a good idea to not touch Firefox.

[–]yellow_algebra_31 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

that does not bode well for open source browsers, is there an alternative that does not have this problem?

[–]danuker 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

This guy looked at everything browsers send and receive:

https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/browsers.html