Boycotts work because boycotts are collective . That's his point. If you get enough of society together to boycott X, or to call their government out on Y, or even vote Z, then together the difference will matter. What doesn't matter is a bunch of people buying an item, while you are making your own private 'boycott'. Personally, I 'boycott' youtube. Guess what? They don't care. They have enough eyeballs that they don't miss me at all.
P.S. I was happy that Paramount+ asks "why?" you cancel your subscription because I got to explain it was due to the 60 minutes settlement and firing Colbert... but I doubt they care that 1 person stopped giving them money over that.
sundray@lemmus.org 3 weeks ago
Well, it’s Cory Doctorow doing the saying.
But in my own opinion, boycotts work for products and services that you pay for; personally refusing to use services that rely on money from other business, less so. The #DeleteFacebook movement has existed since at least 2017. Twitter loudly hemorrhaged users after the Musk buyout. “DeGoogle” has been a thing since 2006. Small business, progressives, and others have been advocating boycotting Amazon for over a decade… and yet they all still exist, they are all still bad actors, and show no signs of getting any better.
The people who have left those services are better off, and that’s good – better than good! But these corporate ogres haven’t stopped destroying society because of it. They haven’t even slowed down.
To look at it another way: ALL of these corpos fear government regulation, especially in labor and fair business practices: You know that’s true because they ALL spend billions fighting it tooth and nail.