Apple. They make some decent stuff but it has repeatedly become more expensive to own and maintain because repair is nearly impossible. And because of the monopoly they are building it is guaranteed to get much worse.
Additionally everything they do has a ripple effect across the industry. The average flagship phone is now over $1000. The average phone doesn’t have a headphone jack or micro SD expansion, or replaceable battery, and are all impossible to repair. Computers impossible to upgrade. Extra ram and SSD capacity being prohibitively expensive (8gb of ddr5 is 40$, apple charges 200$, similar scheme with their proprietary SSD’s)
It’s apparent that with Apple’s continued success the rest of all of our electronics have continued to get worse and predatory to squeeze more money out of us.
We reap what we sow and if we sow a company that is hellbent on enshittifiying all of our everyday devices and gouge us for our money, we aren’t going to have any other companies left (or at least those that won’t participate in this practice)
I work in computer repair and I have witnessed first hand how hostile aAple is to the consumer. Serialized components that are impossible to replace, to perforated cables that tear more easily during disassembly. It is dumbfounding that a company with such little respect for their customers is so successful.
There are a lot of brands that aren’t AS anti repair as apple and have devices that are fairly simple to fix, like Nokia and IMO Sony. There is the fair phone that does market itself as repairable but they lost my trust by removing the headphone jack and selling their own wireless earbuds.
Here’s one nobody has mentioned yet. Hasbro. Owner of Wizards of the Coast which recently tried to massively fuck over D&D players and sent hired mercinaries (literally Pinkertons) after one of their Magic: The Gathering players for something that totally wasn’t the player’s fault.
They accidentally sent a notable player (dont remember if they were a content creator or something) an unreleased card. Pinkyboys showed up at his house and harassed him to return it.
So, D&D first. WotC back in 2001 realized something. There are a few books that they sell a ton of copies of and make a lot of money off of. (The Player’s Handbook, The Dungeon Master’s Guide, Monster Manual, etc.) And then there are a ton more books that take a lot of effort to make but that they don’t sell many copies of so they don’t really make much money on them, but they still have to be made in order to ensure that the more profitable books sell. (These are mostly the published adentures.)
They figured that it would be in their best interest to incentivize third parties to write a lot of these published adventures so that WotC itself could focus more on the core books. So they licensed a lot of their core content under a license (The “Open Gaming License version 1.0a” or “OGL 1.0a”) that allowed third parties to use it in their own modules and sell those modules. It created a vibrant ecosystem of publishers.
The OGL 1.0a was intended as a perpetual license. They promised third party publishers that the wording of the license didn’t allow WotC themselves – creators of the OGL 1.0a – to revoke the license. (This was on an official FAQ on WotC’s site.) So you’d be able to sell your module that included verbiage and elements from official D&D materials forever.
Well, in 2022, they changed their tune. They created an “OGL 1.1” (which was not “open” the way the 1.0a was) and started pressuring publishers they partnered with to accept the new license. It basically allowed them to rip off any third party content and include it in official WotC stuff without paying the third party publisher and also ban the publisher from using the material they wrote. It also put ridiculous restrictions on virtual tabletop software (software for playing D&D remotely.) Now, that’s not so catastrophic because they couldn’t revoke the OGL 1.0a and publishers were under no obligation to accept the OGL 1.1, right?
Well, they came up with a legal argument why the language of the OGL 1.0a that they’d been telling everyone couldn’t be revoked on existing works actually was something they could revoke. Basically, if they convinced a court they could do that, every third-party D&D module that relied on the OGL 1.0a would have to accept the OGL 1.1 terms that would let WotC rip off their work or stop sales immediately.
There was massive backlash from the community. D&D players were remarkably unified in their response. And the CEO of WotC was really tone deaf and dismissive and soured WotC’s relationship with the D&D community even further. Enough subscriptions to D&D Beyond (an online service owned by WotC) that shareholders started asking tough questions at shareholder meetings.
So, finally, WotC hired a slick PR firm to smooth things out. And, honestly, I have to admit they did good. They ended up leaving the OGL 1.0a in place (unrevoked it, sorta). But also, WotC had already said “actually, we can revoke it” and nobody trusted the OGL 1.0a any more. So WotC also dual-licensing the same OGL-1.0a-licensed content also under a Creative Commons license that is (more certain to be) unrevokable and is more open than the OGL 1.0a. The upcoming version of D&D will be OGL 1.1 only, but players and third party publishers are pretty unified on the idea of refusing to migrate to the new version and the current version is safer from the evil clutches of WotC than it was before this whole fiasco went down.
Now, the consensus among the D&D players is that WotC isn’t the bad guys so much as Hasbro, WotC’s parent company. When WotC backpeddeled and did the dual licensing thing, I decided to end my boycott of Hasbro. (I was actually DM’ing a D&D campaign at the time.) I looked forward to buying more D&D books. To seeing the latest Transformers movie and the D&D movie. Stuff like that.
And then, very shortly after that all went down, there was the other fiasco started by WotC.
I’m a little less familiar with this one, but some player of Magic: The Gathering purchased packs of MTG cards from a small reseller and the reseller fucked up. The reseller, not knowing the difference, gave the customer packs of a not yet released but similarly-named line of cards that weren’t supposed to be available to customers at all yet.
The customer made an unboxing video of these not-yet-officially-released cards and stuck it on YouTube. And that’s when shit hit the fan. WotC could have DM’d the customer on YouTube and asked if the customer could take down the video and exchange the cards for the ones he’d actually purchased, but instead they sent the actual, literal Pinkertons (a private security/mercinary company known for union busting and lots of illegal quasi-military/quasi-police actions against innocent people) to go harass the customer’s neighbors and intimidate (like while sporting assault rifles and body armor and camo – on the customer’s front porch) and bully the customer.
Now, my understanding is that the customer did nothing legally wrong. The fuck up was the reseller’s. The customer was under no legal obligation to return the cards or take down the video or otherwise cooperate in any way. The customer also said in later videos about the whole situation and the visit he got from the Pinkertons that they would totally have fully cooperated if they’d have just contacted him and asked.
As soon as I heard about WotC sending the Pinkertons after a customer, I recommitted to boycotting Hasbro and I intend never to end that boycott. I really didn’t expect something far worse to follow right on the heels of the OGL 1.1 fiasco.
Glad it was informative! Back when the D&D situation was all happening in realtime, I was so addicted to any and all news about it. I watched all there was to see about it on YouTube constantly. (And there was a lot.)
I’ve never played Magic, but especially given how soon after the D&D debacle it went down, it felt like a continuation of the same story. So I watched a lot about that as well.
Apple, because their phones are shit, and they made their phones with child labour. Red bull because they haven’t withdrawn their products and business from Russia like McDonald’s did. Volkswagen, because they fucking lied on all of their vehicles with the emissions test. Blizzard, because they rape and sexually abused all of their female workers. Shell gas station from an oil spill they refuse to clean up. Riot Games due to them not completing my refund. KFC because I got sick from their food twice. Sam’s club, because they thought my membership was expired even though it was not, and I clearly payed their stupid membership fees the day of, to shop in their warehouse they wouldn’t let me shop, so I issued a charge back from my credit card company and never went back. Prism kites, more specifically the synapse models, fuckin main left cord just snaps in the middle without me being in a full headwind. Shite product, and company. Ford, because their engine mount placements for the escort were terrible, and I shouldn’t have to remove part of the subframe to get it off, just terrible engineering. Now I drive a Toyota, and I’m happy
yeah I’m an adult and I feel exploited every time I go to work. All I want is money for food and basic survival and In order to get those pittance paychecks I have to jump through all their bullshit hoops and pretend like I actually want to be there every day. Although I make it clear to plenty of people that There are a million other places I’d rather be.
I’ve never been to Cracker Barrel because when I was younger they fired all their gay employees, were taken to court over it, fought and won.
Chick fil a same sort of reason, stupid discrimination.
Have never been to Applebee’s because I don’t have to and why would I?
Bank of America because they once stacked withdrawals over deposits, said I was overdrawn by 0.60 for some immeasurably short period of time, and slapped a $35 overdraft fee on my account. I called, bitched until I got my $35 back, and closed the account. Hate them with a burning passion. Have had to deal with them at two jobs since and they seem still as bad.
Most of these make sense but the Applebee’s one isn’t really on your shitlist. From what you’ve said you just seem indifferent to it, much like you’d be indifferent to any other store you have no interest in.
Yeah boycott may be too strong a word, it’s more like they are at the bottom of my list in what I look for in a restaurant, and I live where there are other options. I do object to them but on grounds of being a chain, generally shitty to employees and not good or interesting food, I will not give them dollars but don’t hate them like I hate BOA or Cracker Barrel. They just seem like something that doesn’t need to exist.
First one that i know of is bandcamp. They let you download the files for use with your own player, they have many file extensions to choose from including MP3, FLAC, WAV, just to name a few that my normie ass recognizes. They also regularly lift their cut of purchases (usually on Fridays) so the artist will get all the money
Fast fashion isn’t even considered clothing for some peaple. XD Just put your jeans, your t-shirt and your sneakers and go to work, the modern slave outfit.
True. And while I try to, I’m not gonna stop watching twitch because amazon owns it. I won’t however donate through bits but only through direct donations.
Full boycott is difficult for a lot of shitty companies. But I limit it as mich as possible.
I try as much as I can but I find it hard to avoid any car manufacturer and Amazon. I’m trying my best to not go to Amazon and rather to Ebay or microcenter if I can though. As for fast fashion, I am planning to go thrifting or to goodwill.
Carl’s Jr. because of that awful sexualized man campaign. Awful ad campaigns also for Dove, Axe, Jimmy John’s and Jersey Mike’s. I’m sure there are others I’m not remembering at the moment.
Burger King and Chili’s because of cavalier attitudes towards food poisoning.
McD’s, Twitter, Susan G. Komen, commercialized fundraising of any kind, and Reddit for obvious reasons.
Lots of games I won’t play and apps I won’t download because of their ads.
Netflix for me because some of their good shows only lasts a season or two while the bad ones gets to 4 or more. Spotify because of how low they pay their artists.
I always find it interesting when people target Chick-fil-A… Like why them specifically and not all the others? Especially the other companies that go all rainbow in June and have spots in pride parades. www.dataforprogress.org/accountable-allies-pride
Usually how these things work is that it’s either employees donating and having to list their employer. Or the employer will match any donation to a non profit from any employee up to a certain amount.
So this could be 1 employee donating 3k and Microsoft matching it
Google, should be self explanatory, but for me specifically for pretty much making YouTube worse with every change they make since that’s the only service of them I still use. And I’m not going to also pay them to sell my data.
Epic Games, for continuously fucking over Linux players and Unreal fans (and well players in general but specifically those two groups).
This one was heartbreaking. I was a big Google fan from the moment I discovered them in 2002. They've done a fantastic job of pissing away all that goodwill in recent years.
I’m over it now, but for 5 years I was anti-public transit. After working a 12 hour OT shift I took the train home. Sherriff was on the train and started checking peoples tickets. I opened my bag dug around literally 30+ other tickets, found my day pass and turned it over.
But I didn’t get a day pass that day, I got a one way because of my OT plans was supposed to be an Uber home.
So I got fined $250 for it. The crazies would just get pushed off the train but normals would get fined I guess. Pissed me off so much I just stopped using the public transit for half a decade.
Because it’s not “real” work. You gotta get paid up front and put a limit on changes. You’re either good, or you’re not. Let the market sort it out, but don’t work for free.
The best thing you can do is bill by the hour, give a quote and get half of your quote up front. It works for pretty much anywhere customers suddenly disappear after the job is started.
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