How much does a creator's worldview influence whether you use their tech or consume their media?

Watching the drama around kagi unfold and it has me wondering how much you take into consideration a creator’s view on things like homophobia, sexism, racism, etc. when deciding to use a product. I think most of us have a bar somewhere (I would imagine very few on this website would ever consider registering on an altright platform), so where is that bar for you? What about art? Have you boycotted JKR or dropped your opinion about Picasso because they’re transphobic and misogynistic respectively? Is it about the general vibe of a product or piece of media, or are you more discerning? What goes into this decision and why?

t3rmit3, (edited )

Honestly, there is so much art and so many services and tools out there, that I try to avoid sending money towards ones made by shitty people.

I loved HP as a kid, but I’m not going to support JKR’s dullard takes on trans people. It’s clear she knows literally nothing beyond what her transphobic friend and their wine club “LGB Alliance” of straight white women tell her, but she still feels the need to parrot it online in front of millions of people. And guess what? There are other books about magic out there.

In terms of my judgement criteria, it’s not some fixed system, but my 2 main considerations are:

  • How much does a bad person benefit financially from the product?
  • How much are bad people responsible for the creation of the product?

Generally-speaking, if either of those can be answered with “A lot”, I avoid it.

So for instance, in the case of Hogwarts: Legacy, while JKR wasn’t responsible for making the product almost at all, she publicly indicated that she was making a lot of money from it, so I did not purchase it.

Ditto for AWS; once I was able to afford a cheap refurb server, I shut down my AWS accounts and been self-hosting everything.

Vodulas,

Very similar to how I view it. I will also add that if they have a platform and use it for terrible things, then that also comes into play.

off_brand_,

Certainly. There’s a big difference between me giving cash and uplifting someone who is actively harming people today, and supporting a dead man’s art.

Of course remember there’s nuance as well. It doesn’t cost me much to stop interacting with JKR’s output, but buying quality shoes that don’t in some way support sweatshop owners or fast fashion represents a significant time/money investment on my part.

And if there’s something important for my health than it goes right out. idk, maybe Dr. Scholl was there on Jan 6 and I was prescribed those Dr. Scholl’s foot goobers by a podiatrist, I’m not going to quibble too much.

Which ties in to the privilege of being socially conscious. It costs me nonzero money and energy that some might not have to do all of these things. I cannot blame or fault the person who works at Chick-fil-A paying rent, even if their work supports CFA.

Bitrot,
@Bitrot@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Strongly, generally, although I also try to see who they are today versus who they might have been. It also depends on what they are saying and less on what somebody tells me they believe. For example, if someone doesn’t understand or is uncomfortable with a trans person but at the same time believes everybody should have the rights and ability to live life as they choose (basic tolerance, essentially), I don’t consider that transphobic specifically. Some people would though.

I avoid altogether, look for alternatives, or do my best not to support them financially at least. So I avoid anything written by Lunduke, I don’t avoid all of JKR because I like the franchise, but I get anything secondhand.

luciole,
@luciole@beehaw.org avatar

A creator’s worldview influences me a whole lot on whether I’ll use their stuff or not. I don’t think we can afford the luxury of supporting jerks anymore. There’s just too much shit going on. Consuming is voting. That’s the rational part. The affective part is that when I learn that the creator’s a jerk, I just don’t feel like engaging with their stuff anymore. It’s basically a turn off for me.

The kagi controversy is unfortunate. I’ve been considering biting the bullet, but there’s no way I’m paying for a search engine I don’t feel good about. Also I very naively didn’t realize until now kagi was just aggregating Google, Yandex or whatever, stripping the advertisement rot and applying some extra magic. Won’t they get the rug pulled right from under them the second they reach any sort of relevance?

jarfil, (edited )

How much does a creator’s worldview influence whether you use their tech or consume their media?

Depending on what we call “worldview”… either 0%, or 100%.

In this particular case:

SearXNG

SearXNG is a free internet metasearch engine which aggregates results from more than 70 search services. Users are neither tracked nor profiled.

  • OpenSource
  • Free
  • Self-hostable
  • User configurable

Kagi

Kagi Inc. is a company […]

  • Closed
  • For profit
  • Not verifiable, not controllable
  • You pay for the privilege

Google, Bing, etc.

  • Closed
  • For profit
  • Not verifiable, not controllable
  • You don’t pay, you’re the product

How much does their respective owner’s worldview matter to me?

  • Being open and verifiable: 100%
  • Giving full control to the user: 100%
  • Wanting to sell my tracking data: 0%
  • Misrepresenting their intentions: 100%
  • Having an unrelated opinion about politics, religion, human rights, or other: 0%

As for art, my opinion of the art doesn’t change whether I think the artist is a great or a horrible person; doing otherwise would be either dishonest… or imply the art can’t stand on by itself (I call that kind of art “trash”, no matter the author).

raccoona_nongrata,
@raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org avatar

I definitely think people like Roman Polanski need their work to be eclipsed by their crimes. I won’t watch anything by Polanski, he deserves to be remembered primarily as a brutal rapist, his work should not be celebrated.

But Polanski is an extreme example. I’ll still watch and enjoy something like Firefly, for example. Although, learning that Whedon had been kind of a verbally abusive creep, and that Baldwin is kind of a right-wing shithead does kind dampen my enthusiasm for the show in a way I can’t help.

When I watch it I tend to get distracted sometimes by some of the elements that now come off as more obviously sexist than when I first watched it.

Nemo,

I am a very “death of the artist” kind of guy, but I won’t give my money to people will will use it for evil. So while I’m perfectly happy to, say, buy a Roman Polanski movie secondhand, I’m not going to purchase a new copy.

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

The only thing that’s changed about artists and people in power is that we now know a lot more about their beliefs and personal lives than we used to. One thing that hasn’t changed is that everybody has skeletons in their closet and is the hero in their own story.

As such, and given that I don’t seek out salacious details about people I’ll never meet, so long as their irrelevant-to-the-content/product personal views don’t filter into what they produce, I tend to be unaware of anything else about them.

There are of course exceptions, with Musk being at the top of the list. But as I’m not in an income bracket that would let me avail myself of any of his products, it’s still largely irrelevant.

And the further back you go in someone’s history to find dirt, the more likely they’ve changed. I’d hate to be judged now by some of my early columns in college when I was in my edgy atheist libertarian raver phase, so I’m inclined to give others a pass on adolescent musings.

With more recent stuff, as people let more of their personality into their crafted public personas, it’s not all that difficult to deduce whether their worldview is going to be offensive. But commerce overall is not about whether I’d enjoy grabbing a beer with someone so much as whether their product fulfills a need.

Bitrot, (edited )
@Bitrot@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

I hate the history thing. People still go after Brendan Eich for donating $1000 to the Yes on Prop 8 campaign in 2008. Prop 8 passed with 52.24% of the vote, over 7-million California voters probably including many that people still like (thanks secret ballot). It was thrown out by courts, nothing to do with people being moral.

That’s not to say he’s a good guy I agree with, he’s said and done other things much more recently that I don’t agree with, like his stance on COVID, but Prop 8 is always the number one thing people mention.

Edit: even later on in this thread. People should boycott anything made in California if that one donation is such a painful thing.

natecox,
@natecox@programming.dev avatar

Kagi is hard because it is so very much better than any alternative I have tried. I don’t like the guy’s views but it would substantially impact something I do for work and pleasure dozens of times every day to give it up, so I’m really struggling with that.

Ethereal87, (edited )
@Ethereal87@beehaw.org avatar

First off, the kagi news is a bummer. I’ve really liked it and picked up a subscription mostly because of some buzz I saw around here, but seeing this news is a shame and setting up some red flags in my mind.

But to answer your question, I think I personally have a couple ways I approach this…

  1. If the evidence someone is transphobic, racist, etc…is from a long time ago (eg someone is digging up ancient tweets to prove someone is some sort of “-ist” today), I tend to give them more grace because people should be allowed to change. I know I didn’t have great views on some of this stuff when I was younger and it’s easy to forget these celebrities/people in power are fallible human beings. I’ll take their response to unearthing these views as a sign of whether or not they’re worth supporting going forward. If they’re regretful and seem like they’re trying to do better, I’m good. The kagi creator seems to not pass this standard for me.
  2. If it’s something I want to use/consume and it could impact more than just the individual. JK Rowling is a good example of this. I’d struggle to want to buy any of her books again because I see a clearer line of sight from my purchase to her pocket. But something like Hogwarts Legacy, which I knew I would enjoy and my wife would love, and is made by many people with a passion for her world, I’m OK with it. The line to Rowling is a lot blurrier and impacts people who don’t have a say in what project(s) they work on.

It’s also easier to ignore or skip smaller scale things like an indie game from a deplorable developer vs. the next Marvel/HP/insert your beloved franchise game from someone equally deplorable. None of this is ever perfect and time and attention are finite resources for all of us. If Harry Potter is how you need to unwind because it’s your favorite thing, more power to you. It’s not my job nor anyone else’s to police the things you like or make you feel bad for liking them.

We should all do our best to try and support good people in a system that incentivizes bad people and give ourselves some grace when we (seemingly inevitably these days) find out those people were actually scum.

Gaywallet,
@Gaywallet@beehaw.org avatar

I think there’s something to be said about timeframe even for individuals who held deplorable views. Purchasing art from a dead artist doesn’t go to supporting their life or spreading their shitty viewpoint - instead it will go to a company which holds the rights or an estate which benefits the family. Unless we happen to know the company/estate is deplorable in some way or another, we shouldn’t judge them based on the connection with the original artist - after all we don’t get to choose our parents and may not hold the same views they do.

Ethereal87,
@Ethereal87@beehaw.org avatar

100%. And going down that path you can start to enter into the whole “OK, so all companies are bad or do bad things, but I also need to be a functioning member of society.”

I can hate what Shell/Marathon/BP are doing to the environment but I also need to make sure my car gets me to work. Google or Apple can enact terrible policies I disagree with but generally speaking I have to deal with them to have a cell phone. Easier when we’re discussing a piece of artwork (not a core need in life) but it’s where my comment about a system that incentivizes “bad people” really came from.

So I think my moral philosophy is actually closest to show The Good Place now that I see it written out!

charonn0,
@charonn0@startrek.website avatar

I refuse to use the Brave browser, and I was prepared to abandon Firefox, over then-CEO Brendan Eich’s $1000 donation in support of California’s proposition 8 (banning same-sex marriage). I will never forgive the supporters of that proposition. I will not knowingly support their businesses.

I’ve lost all respect for Scott Adams (of the Dilbert comic strip) and Kelsey Grammar (Frasier actor). Their continued support for Donald Trump is damning.

Intelligence_Gap,

What did Brave do to you?

charonn0,
@charonn0@startrek.website avatar

My problem is with Brendan Eich.

renard_roux,

Brave has done a lot of other bad shit, even if you ignore their shithead CEO.

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