this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025
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[–] MudMan@fedia.io 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

To be clear, I agree that you don't have to be into politics. Not caring enough is fine. Social media expressions of opinion are always black and white. AI is the end of the world, Nintendo's piracy stance is a war crime, Windows is the antichrist... You're allowed to be bummed out by any of those and not do anything about it because you're not bummed out enough. That's a refreshing degree of online moderation, if anything.

What I take issue with is confusing those sorts of market results with actual political action. A brand can decide something unpopular isn't worth pursuing for PR reasons, but they can also decide it IS worth it. To my knowledge the people I shared Netflix accounts with that were impacted by the location checks are still impacted by those. Your EA and Uber examples were barely impactful at all until regulators got into the mix, and regulators got into the mix hard about those issues. I invite you to go look up how both of them played out, because, man, is there a difference between how fast the companies reacted once there was someone in a public position going "hey, maybe we need to take a look at this".

Mistaking how a brand manages its public perception for effective political actions is dangerous. Letting corporations appease you through those means only serves to set up a bad precedent when those brands decide the time has come to squeeze and go hard on monetization. You need public institutions that are strong and vigilant enough to put some bite behind that public displeasure.

Can a boycott work? Sure. As a coordinated political action, the consumer-side equivalent of a strike. This takes just as much work and coordination as any other political activity.

But spending your money based on the outrage that reaches you through social media is not a functional way to generate change. It's just you being part of the mass of consumers brand manage with their messaging tools. You're a rounding error in a stat, part of the manipulation of the market that is built into every corporate action. When you do that you're a focus group data point, not a political actor.

[–] Dyskolos@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Can a boycott work? Sure. As a coordinated political action, the consumer-side equivalent of a strike. This takes just as much work and coordination as any other political activity.

I guess we might slightly miss each others point. It really really should not take "as much work" if only people would just not be dumb consumers only. If at least 20-30% would actually only buy shit when it's not shit, even excluding your point with "not caring ENOUGH", it would be enough in each case. But we won't.

Microsoft is the Antichrist, but I need office!

I hate Apple's isolation, but look at this sleek design!

I hate not owning games anymore, but steam has SPÖ many!

Netflix is the worst, but everyone saw this show hence I need to too!

etc. It just hurts to see the obvious and most simple solution to be so rarely effective. And I'm surely not the epitome of intelligence and knowledge.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 1 points 1 day ago

We won't indeed. And that's why the neoliberal fantasy where the market self-regulates is bullshit.

We won't because our set of incentives isn't infinitely fluid to the point where every negative, hostile or illegitimate action is unprofitable. And we shouldn't have to, because there already is a mechanism to account for that fact, and it's the law.

We're not meant to judge our spending money in fungible commodities and entertainment based on political stances and larger considerations about long term convenience. We're not meant to weigh whether Nintendo has a right to disable our device remotely as part of the choice to play a cute racing game.

That's not the sphere where those choices belong. We've been told it is by neoliberal capitalists who don't want a government to tell them what they can and cannot do, so they keep insisting that they can be as crappy as they want because if they do something the public won't like they will "vote with their wallet" and the market will settle in the optimal spot of profit vs service. And if it doesn't a competitor will give people what they want and they'll buy that instead.

But that's a lie. It never worked that way, and it doesn't work anywhere close to that way in a global online oligarchy. You're meant to be able to buy whatever the hell you fancy because there is supposed to be a state regulating things to be safe, fair and protected when you engage in small commercial exchanges.

Because you need Office, Microsoft doesn't get to be the Antichrist. Because Netflix has the show everybody wants to watch it doesn't get to be the worst. The idea is those companies are supposed to be held to the level of being-the-worst-Antichrist we all deem minimally acceptable. Market forces can play within that space, and no further.

So you want Netlfix to not be the worst? Get a legislator to enforce it and watch Stranger Things to your heart's content. Because whether you like Stranger Things isn't supposed to be connected in any way to how Netflix conducts its business or how abusive it can be in the process of doing so.