What brands do you avoid at all cost? I don’t keep up with the news all that much, and many of the reasons to avoid something don’t make it there anyway. So I’m asking here to make a big list of things to avoid. It could be anything from bad security practices to really frustrating packaging. Working as a cashier myself, I definitely know there are plenty of brands I avoid purely on the basis that their product is a pain to stock.

On the flip side, what’s the alternative? If you avoid Pepsi, for example, what do you turn to instead?

  • ClassifiedPancake@discuss.tchncs.de
    1·
    4 months ago
    • Nestle (not easy because the branding is not always obvious, but once you have it memorized it’s no problem)
    • Tesla (easy because the cars are shit anyways)
    • Müller (Luxembourg dairy product company that has close ties to the German fascist party AfD. Relatively easy but they do have some subbrands that are not obvious) [EDIT: more info]
  • i_stole_ur_taco@lemmy.ca
    0·
    4 months ago

    I gave up trying to maintain a principled list of companies because globalization and supply chains make it too hard to really find a single asshole.

    Your chocolate was picked by slaves. Your clothes were almost certainly made by exploited workers. Does that toy have a lithium ion battery? You’re not going to like how many of the raw materials were extracted. The name of the company on the sticker of the shit you bought is just a small piece of the rot.

    • Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      1·
      4 months ago

      The saying “there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism” is pretty true for most of us right now. The oligopoly we have going on makes it extremely difficult to consistently do the right thing. The only real way forward is to regulate the shit out of these products. If only we had another Upton Sinclair to scare the general populace into giving enough of a shit to demand unilateral action.

  • Zagorath@aussie.zone
    0·
    4 months ago

    Samsung. For a bunch of reasons, but I think the main starter of it was when I learnt this story.

    Amazon. I don’t think I need to explain why on this site.

    Obviously both of these are near impossible to avoid completely. Samsung makes the internals of far more products than they put their name on, and AWS runs a big percentage of the web. But I avoid their store, Prime, and Audible.

    • SethranKada@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      Completely agree on both points. I actually use a Samsung phone, and it’s been nothing but a privacy nightmare. I’m planning to switch as soon as I’ve saved up enough to afford it.

      Yeah, Amazon is a mess. I personally avoid anything even tangentially related to them. I’ve noticed that they tend to be lower quality with worse privacy than the alternatives, and their only benefit is price. Even then, Audible is a ripoff on a massive scale.

      • EuroNutellaMan@lemmy.world
        0·
        2 months ago

        If I may ask, what are you switching to? cause in terms of privacy (without sacrificing usability and other important factors) the phone market looks like a hot pile of garbage. Well I guess FairPhones exist and they’re about as good as you can get but still runs android.

        • SethranKada@lemmy.caOPEnglish
          0·
          2 months ago

          Not entirely sure yet. I do know that whatever I get, I’ll be installing Linux on it instead of android. I might try out one of those de-googled android copies, but I’m not sure.

          I’ve got my eye on the rugged survival phone market though. They seem to have different priorities than everyone else, and it seems to really improve the quality of the phones. I haven’t yet found anything that exactly matches my personal requirements though, and most of them are unpopular enough that Linux support is unlikely to ever happen.

          Overall, I’ll probobly have to settle for something less than optimal.