ACAB: All Corporations Are Bastards. Corporations are not your friends. Brands aren’t your friends.
this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2025
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Asklemmy
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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.
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I'm not 100% sure, but I think HEB hasn't done anything yet to kowtow to the current admin's policies.
Yeah. That’s 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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Used computer store for keyboard, or Craigslist or Market place
Seems like Costco gets brought up?
Costco only does this shit as a union busting effort btw.
costco being anti union is news to me. especially since they are very loudly not dropping their dei program.
Literally every corporation that has ever existed—or ever will—is anti-union.
there's anti union as in "we think they're a nuisance but we are tolerating them" and anti union as in "we are going to do everything in our power, legally and otherwise to make sure a union does not form or actively work to break the union that is in existence now", companies like amazon and walmart and starbucks. if costco is anti union they are definitely not the second from what I've seen.
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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...?
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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
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 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?
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!
It really does.
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.
I'd go with buycott until something better appears tbh. I'm gonna see how it works for me. Too tired to keep snooping for today.
Yes this sounds right and it also makes sense.
i think i'm going to start using more than one at a time as a cross comparison and investigate the dissenter.
Not a bad idea but keep in mind you'll also potentially be adding yourself to lists. i assume i just ended up in a few databases i'd rather not be in by doing this snooping alone. Hard to tell the sheep from the wolves. I'm not an american though and my country isn't currently on "hardcore mode" political setting. Stay safe, friend.
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.
Sure. Mentioning them helped me remember i have to get my act together regarding who i give my money to, so even if they're evil now something good may have come from using and naming them. Thanks for the reminder. I needed it.
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