Meta
Chick-fil-a
Hobby Lobby
AT&T
Eden Foods
Twitter
Tesla
Apple
Johnson & Johnson
Any company that includes a bible verse on it's product.
NRA
Salvation Army
They had lead in baby power at one point. I also think they did some unethical stuff with baby formula in South America but I might be wrong. Someone correct me!
They are also accused of knowingly having asbestos in their baby powder. As to the baby formula, I know Nestle had a major scandal with that stuff, but I didn’t know about J&J doing similar.
Correct asbestos. Women use baby powder with talc to keep things dry down under, this can cause cancer. You cannot remove asbestos from talc 100%. Don't use or consume products with talc.
HP. This one is easy. Low hanging fruit. For me, I bought an expensive gaming laptop that arrived defective. I asked for a replacement, they denied and required I send it in for repairs. Waited a month for them to tell me there isn’t a problem. Asked for a refund instead of having it shipped back. They said that’s not how it works, they have to send it back first. So I get it, with the defect still, and call to get a refund. They initially deny a refund due to being outside the refund period and offer a “buy back” credit. I had to spend an hour explaining why that’s not happening and why they’re going to give me a refund or expect to see me in court. Keep in mind, I hadn’t used this laptop more than an hour or two and it’s been shipped around and forth for two months. I did get my refund at least, but the headache was insane and I refuse to even look at HP products.
Adobe: Already said by others. For me, it’s because they charge an insane amount of money for barely-functional software. I used Affinity products instead.
Google: They cancel their services so quickly, it’s more like they’ve blacklisted ME. I refuse to pay for anything they offer in the event it will be discontinued in a year or two. RIP Play Music.
Amazon: Prices increase, service quality decreases, value decreases exponentially. The product I paid for at $79/year was far more superior to whatever Prime costs today. Mostly third party cheap trash. Unfortunately, and most likely by design, there are just a few specific reasons I’m forced to give Amazon money every so often. But at the very least, I’m making the highest conscious effort to avoid them.
I’ll update this if I come up with more.
Edit 1: Netflix: They keep removing quality content and increasing prices. Anti-consumer shit. They are both the reason I stopped pirating and considered starting again.
I wish we could throw the Adobe executives into the sun. They have the worst anti-consumer business model ever for the most bloated, unusable software.
To this day, Adobe CS5 is probably the best all-encompassing software package they’ve ever released. CS6 added a few things, but was buggy AF. Then CC came out and it’s been in eternal-beta since. So many lost files and sometimes even OS-destroying updates.
Google Play Music still stands as the best commercial music app I’ve used, I miss it, and whatever marketing person got them to change the glorious branding of Play Music, Play Movies, and Play Store for YouTube music, Google TV and Play Store should be fired with extreme prejudice.
Chick-fil-A. Direct support to anti-LGBT+ groups. Then after they said they would stop, they were found to still be doing it. But don’t worry, they said they’d stop for real this time.
Payless Shoes. Awful experience checking out once. No reason to ever go back. They’re closed now, so nothing to worry about there.
Anti-consumer practices. The gaming and software industries are full of it.
Unity Technologies
Have shown that they have no problem screwing over their business partners. Even though they walked it back, they cannot be trusted to not try it again. You would have to be a fool to start a project in Unity now.
The most recent one: EA. I had disliked them and their practices for quite some time now, but there was a game on sale that I found interesting enough to purchase … it was like 2 Euro or whatever, so no big loss. AFTER the download they wanted me to sign an electronic agreement to basically harvest all of my data and requiring me to be permanently online in a singleplayer offline game at all times so they could monitor me, and if I didn’t agree I wouldn’t be able to play the game. No refund. I uninstalled it and will never purchase anything from them again - that was the last straw, the last ever chance I was willing to give them. And no there was no warning of any kind before the purchase - they deliberately waited until after they had my money to “ask” for that bullshit.
All of those shitty Big Tech companies including Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle and many others, all corporate Social Media platforms (including Reddit of course, fuck Spez), those shitty Hollywood media corporations, CDNs like Cloudflare or Akamai, Tesla and everything related to Elon Musk, Starbucks, basically all fast food chains, every Chinese or Russian company, every Israeli company, The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo, Nestle and many others. I also try to stay away from PayPal, banks and insurance companies as much as possible, they are criminals.
We shouldn’t just focus on shitty companies. Foundations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are basically tax-exempt billionaire investment funds in disguise. This is a great video about the lies of billionaire philanthropy: https://youtube.com/watch?v=OH4uh8cHuto
Sounds like you’re left with almost no modern conveniences or technology. I don’t mean this disparagingly, but I am curious how you live your life and ensure you are truly not using any of these companies or their subsidiaries, or even those shitlist companies if they are a white box supplier of someone else not on your list. Or even if a mom and pop shop down the street is using technologies, software, or appliances from one of these companies to run their local business…
Doesn’t seem possible in reality. Or at the very least seems like a full time job that would get really futile after a while.
As someone who attempts to do the same, you’re right, it’s not possible to completely avoid doing business with these companies. But, I still make an effort to avoid them, I won’t give up and start buying directly from Amazon’s site, just because I can’t avoid them 100%. Nothing is black and white, we all live in the gray zones.
Sounds like you’re left with almost no modern conveniences or technology.
You are right, I forgot one exception. I do use a Google Phone because these have the best support for alternative operating systems. I replaced the Stock Android which is filled with Google spyware with GrapheneOS, an entirely open-source version of Android which makes many privacy and security improvements and gets rid of any Google services. Watch this video to learn more about it: piped.smnz.de/watch?v=yTeAFoQnQPo
On my laptops/computers, I exclusively use Linux. I refuse to touch any bloated, ad- and spyware-infested Windows computer. Yes, even at work. As a DevSecOps and Senior Linux engineer, I am free to choose whatever operating system I want. Free and open-source software is the way to go.
I use Firefox (LibreWolf, a better version of Firefox to be percise) with DuckDuckGo as my search engine, I watch YouTube videos through Piped, I use Signal as my messenger, I use Proton for Email, I self-host Nextcloud for my files, contacts, calenders, etc.
For entertainment, I simply pirate the content which gives me much more freedom compared to shitty streaming services like Netflix. That way, I also don’t have to give these shitty corporations any money. I use the open-source Jellyfin media server to consume content from my media library. I do the same thing using Navidrome for my music.
Regarding Social Media, Lemmy is probably the only thing I use. I don’t need Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or TikTok.
And the list goes on and on. I could write an entire book about avoiding proprietary software and shitty corporations.
ensure you are truly not using any of these companies or their subsidiaries
I do everything in my control to avoid it. I can’t 100% guarantee it, but that’s also not my goal. Not giving them my money or my data is enough for me.
Or even if a mom and pop shop down the street is using technologies, software, or appliances from one of these companies to run their local business…
I heard the other day that Hobby Lobby doesn’t use barcodes, which is really inconvenient for the staff and the customers. I’m presuming it’s for some religious reason like “mark of the beast” or something.
Apple. Vendor lock-in and anti-competitive practice. I’d boycott Google too but at the time of writing I can’t dump the mail for example.
Tesla, until they sign an agreement with the Unions in Sweden. I’m voting right, I’m not a member of an union, but if you want to do business here you follow our culture and norms.
I can show/help you how to self host for about $6/month + $10-15/year, if you’re interested. Could be cheaper if you’re willing to bet on a less reliable cloud provider.
If you’re looking for an alternative to Gmail, may I suggest Port87, which will also organize your email automatically. I created it because of how terrible my experience with Gmail was.
In 2013 the APA merged autism and aspergers into the bucket of Autism Spectrum Disorder which many now refer to as just autism. Autism is a spectrum disorder where on one side you have “highly functional” people who are mostly indistinguishable from neurotypical folk and on the other end you have people who cannot speak, cannot function on their own, are dependent on their family or the state their entire lives, and can often have other serious health issues.
Autism speaks was founded in 2005 and merged with groups started in the 90s. So the “Autism” in the name is not really referring to modern ASD as a whole and its focus has always been primarily on the latter group. As a result the group has advocated for things meant to support individuals on the higher severity side of the spectrum, which includes a focus more on family as spokespeople, and supporting research to prevent the worst parts of autism (a “cure”). The “cure” bit is the main issue as in the past that was literally in the mission statement and mentioned in marketing constantly.
The “Autistic community” you encounter online inherently lacks those who can’t speak or write. Autism represents an aspect of themselves they each have different feelings about but it’s very often a core piece of their identity. As a result Autism Speak’s approach is offensive because it takes an objectively more negative view of their identity (a “cure” can border into eugenics in that light) and includes a focus on other people besides the autistic individual. In my opinion, the community is unfortunately highly neglectful of those who literally can’t have a voice in the conversation but that’s a whole different matter.
They're not so much "autism speaks" as "we speak FOR the autistic because the autistic can't be trusted to speak for themselves." A more honest name would be "International Karens Inconvenienced by Autistic Children."
PayPal acts as a bank without having to follow any banking laws. You have 10k in your PayPal account and PayPal decides its theirs? No recourse for you.
Just search paypal took my money and you can read all the horror stories.
I only have PayPal linked to a credit card, so I can always pit that ruthless company against them, I guess. But it does sour me on them if that’s how they treat their merchants
Preinstalls is the only way I’ve paid Microsoft recently, and that was for two gaming PCs for my kids. Before that it was when I bought a laptop with preinstalled OS in 2009.
Only time i paid them directly was for the win98 upgrade license, which was objectively worth it since I could use my Win3.1 floppies as an upgrade starting point.
Now I’m a linux user. I only have windows on my work laptop.
I still deal with every company people here are listing. I even really like some of them despite the owners views etc. (if you make a good chicken sandwich and beat your wife, I’m still gonna eat that sandwich while hoping you go to jail).
I have not seen anyone mentioning Reddit yet though, and that kinda shocks me. I know it’s not the same as giving them a dollar but they’ve received no eyeballs, add revenue or obviously content from me since the exodus.
I also eat at Chick-fil-A occasionally, but it’s mainly because there are so few places I actually like the food. I do feel bad each time because I know the profit from my meal is going to fund some pretty awful lobbyists. It’s not just giving money to a bigot, it’s giving money to a bigot who is very active in politics.
It’s increasingly hard to avoid that though. It seems like every single owner of each company in the fortune 500 is actively trying to drag us back into feudalism.
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