Open ended boycotts don’t work. People MIGHT boycott until they see nothing changing and give up and companies are under no incentive to change anything because it won’t make a difference. It is just a storm to be weathered.
Whereas a boycott with an actionable end state gives the company something to change if they don’t want to try to outlast the outrage, as it were.
Its why the traditional protest call and response is “What do we want?” “X!” “When do we want it?” “Now!”. It immediately makes it clear what will make the angry people go away.
For the BDS boycotts? Microsoft is sort of “Break these major contracts in ways that will make every single potential business partner wary going forward”. The Disney boycott, from what I can gather, is basically “tell gal gadot et all to fuck off”. Which… agreed. But you can also just look at the ongoing lawsuits from the last time they fired a chud for why there will be no public statement and the best we can hope for is to silently stop hiring zionists.
Which is my problem. Most of the BDS boycotts are effectively “burn down your entire company and then we’ll give you money again”. Which… yeah. I still try to support them to some degree (most of what I have settled on is “I’ll grab what I want later so that I don’t contribute to the big numbers on launch”) but there is no end and it is just going to fade away as more and more people decide they want their shiny.
Surely the actionable end state for Microsoft is to cease their AI support in Palestine? Of course they won’t so functionally this doesn’t really matter, but I agree that it makes sense to have a stated goal even if it’s just for the purposes of explaining the boycott to other people.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Open ended boycotts don’t work. People MIGHT boycott until they see nothing changing and give up and companies are under no incentive to change anything because it won’t make a difference. It is just a storm to be weathered.
Whereas a boycott with an actionable end state gives the company something to change if they don’t want to try to outlast the outrage, as it were.
Its why the traditional protest call and response is “What do we want?” “X!” “When do we want it?” “Now!”. It immediately makes it clear what will make the angry people go away.
For the BDS boycotts? Microsoft is sort of “Break these major contracts in ways that will make every single potential business partner wary going forward”. The Disney boycott, from what I can gather, is basically “tell gal gadot et all to fuck off”. Which… agreed. But you can also just look at the ongoing lawsuits from the last time they fired a chud for why there will be no public statement and the best we can hope for is to silently stop hiring zionists.
Which is my problem. Most of the BDS boycotts are effectively “burn down your entire company and then we’ll give you money again”. Which… yeah. I still try to support them to some degree (most of what I have settled on is “I’ll grab what I want later so that I don’t contribute to the big numbers on launch”) but there is no end and it is just going to fade away as more and more people decide they want their shiny.
echodot@feddit.uk 19 hours ago
Surely the actionable end state for Microsoft is to cease their AI support in Palestine? Of course they won’t so functionally this doesn’t really matter, but I agree that it makes sense to have a stated goal even if it’s just for the purposes of explaining the boycott to other people.