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What are you boycotting right now and why? Are there any Boycotts you've ended?

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.

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  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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

  • If I can help it, I try to support local businesses over Walmart, Target, Amazon, or any other near monopolistic retail chain.

    Chick-fil-A, and Hobby Lobby. Owners have been vehemently antiqueer and antichoice, and have funded such organizations and politicians through their business.

    Activision/Blizzard and Ubisoft. Both have been accused of large scale sexual misconduct, and neither company has completely dealt with the issue.

    Twitter and Reddit. It's not just that I hate the direction both sites are heading, but I want to fully back and support the open source alternatives that have grown during the migrations of both sites. Besides, Musk has made it to where I can't even lurk on Twitter if I wanted to.

    JonTron. He's living proof that as long as you're funny, people will forgive and forget anything. (Look up his history with racism and antivax for those in the latter camp, cause I'm tired of answering the "what he do" question)

    The Harry Potter franchise. This one hurt the most because I had just starting to get into the Harry Potter series as the pandemic hit, and I was halfway through Prisoner of Azkaban when Rowling started her campaign against trans people. I Also used respect Rowling a lot because she's a master at world building, and I had gotten into reading Harry Potter cause I wanted to take inspiration from it for my own work.

    Ruroni Kenshin, and Nobuhiro Watsuki's other works. I can get why people would forgive JonTron and Rowling to an extent, but defending Nobuhiro's pedophilia is a bridge way tf too far for me.

  • Reddit obviously. Pretty much any corpo controlled social media in general though. Deleted my FB account about 5-6 years ago and never looked back. Deleted my barely used Twitter account after muskrat took over.

    Blizzard. Haven't played a Blizzard game since 2012 ish. I was deployed and would play WoW in my downtime until a major update came out and completely broke me, blizzard was no help in the multiple tickets that I submitted. Tried every fix I could find on the internet at the time. I asked them if they could send me an install disc, I'd even pay for it. Hard no from blizzard. It was clear they didn't care about a long time player like me. That was it for them. Now over the years we have seen all of the scandals and games rampant with microtransactions. I'll never play another one of their games unless I pirate the shit out of it.

    I'm becoming increasingly intolerant to all of the tech price increases so I've been ramping up my self hosting capabilities. I just need time which is a hard commodity to come by for me anymore. This is really the only thing preventing me from cancelling Netflix right now because Netflix is easy for my kid to access across devices.

    I have wanted to cancel Amazon for months now, but that's a battle I've lost to the wife. She gets everything on there. I've tried the argument that we can just order stuff when we have a cart over $25 for the free shipping. I've mentioned about how many late shipments we've got over the last few months. 2 day shipping has become a straight lie at this point. We don't watch Amazon prime video at all.

  • Microsoft, Apple, anything Nestle, Meat products that don't tell you where the animal was raised and claim it's origin is domestic (too often bs). Pet food from the big global players.

    Semi-boycotting digital stores like Epic Games and Ubisoft. I already have Steam and GOG and I don't wan't any more bloatware or their launchers on my system. Plus others don't seem to give a shit about Linux players.

  • My longest ongoing boycott is Nestle. I've probably bought a Nestle product by accident at some point or another, but if I see the logo or know it's a sub brand it's a no go. My newest boycott is LTT/LMG (Linus Media Group).

    I left Reddit but I'm not sure if I would qualify that as boycotting. I don't browse there but I still use the search terms for niche information like I did in the past. Reading this thread I see a lot of boycotts that I agree with, but I wouldn't qualify as my own since I'm not doing anything out of the ordinary. Take Hobby Lobby, I've never had cause to go there so I've never gone there. If I had cause to go there, I would find an alternative but it's not like I'm actively going out of my way like I do to ignore Nestle products.

    I still get Chick-fil-A occasionally, it's one thing I feel guilty about. Not often mind you, like once every few months, but growing up I had fun memories there with people I won't be able to make new memories with, so I find it comforting.

  • Ubisoft, EA, Epic Games, Blizzard / Activision,, etc.. All of these companies mistreat their workers. From racism and sexism to sexual harassment and unbearable crunch. Fuck these companies. (I also boycott other companies, but I havent seen these mentioned yet.)

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