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?
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?
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.
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’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.
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.
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.
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.