Technology

68306 readers

4348 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related news or articles.
Be excellent to each other!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

1277

YouTube removes 'gender identity' from hate speech policy (www.usermag.co)

submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

364 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 21 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

Boycotts are performative stunts that feel good but don’t have impact on companies and even gets more attention ON those companies.

No they aren't? People just haven't actually been pissed off enough to actually wield the weapon of "ok, fine, now I will not buy ANYTHING from you".

Boycotts most definitely work, Tesla's stock is plummeting, and one of the major reasons is an aggressive and enthusiastic boycott of buying Telsas (also they suck).

This isn't to say in any given situation a boycott is the best strategy to use, or that your organizing energy isn't better spent elsewhere, but don't dismiss boycotts when we are seeing one of the most effective high profile ones in recent memeory be VERY successful.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

Strikes do a lot more damage to companies. I think a lot of people mix the two ideas up.

The last most successful boycotts were mostly ones you never heard of, and at least one you rather not hear of. We managed to get tuna companies to pretend to harm fewer dolphins in 1988. Before that is was things like the 1965 Delano Grape Strike and the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott. The most recent boycott that actually got a company to change its marketing and outreach was the Bud Lite/Dylan Mulvaney boycott by the anti-trans right.

If you think you can get enough people as worked up about an issue as the chuds were about a single commercial featuring someone they were scared of, then by all means let's fire up all the engines and get boycotting. Otherwise, I would encourage people who work at these tech companies to start talking about unions and making change from the inside. But none of that does as much damage to a company as getting politicians installed who are already taking bribes from other companies. Yes this is a dark perspective, you're welcome to disagree but in my nearly five decades on Earth this is just what I've seen over and over.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

I don't want to take away from the general thrust of your point, I just don't think we have actually seen boycotts that people were actually fired up en masse to enforce.

I think up until right this very moment the general center of mass of society has been largely ok with most of what capitalism is, I think that is going to continue to drastically change, and we will see a lot more wildcat boycotts of companies that significantly hurt them.

That being said I agree that overly focusing on that as a strategy isn't necessarily wise, but boycotts are definitely a weapon that can absolutely blow up the bridges of corporate 'Murica.