This post is somewhat inspired by a recent post in this same community called “Is anyone else having trouble giving up Reddit due to content?”

I imagine “Reddit” will be a common answer. (And it’s one of my answers.)

Another of my answers is “Hasbro.” First Wizards of the Coast (a Hasbro subsidiary) tried to revoke an irrevokable license and screw over basically all 3rd-party publishers of D&D content, then they sent literal mercinaries to threaten one of their customers over an order mixup that wasn’t even the customer’s fault. D&D: Honor Among Thieves and the latest Transformers look really good, but those are within the scope of my boycott, so I won’t be seeing those any time soon.

Third, Microsoft. (Apple too, but then I’ve never bought any Apple devices in my life, so it hardly qualifies as a boycott.) Just because of their penchant for using devices I own against me in every way they can imagine. And for really predatory business practices.

One boycott that I’ve ended was a boycott of Nintendo. I was pissed that they started marketing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (though it didn’t have a name at the time) before the WiiU came out, prompting me to be an early adopter of the WiiU, and then when they actually released BotW, they dual-released it on WiiU and Switch. I slightly eased my boycott when the unpatchable Fusee Gilee vulnerability for the first batch of Switches was discovered. I wanted to get one of the ones I could hack and run homebrew on before they came out with a model that lacked the vulnerability.

  • @mwknight
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    121 year ago

    Back around the start of the millennium Napster became a thing and suddenly every song was fair game. I cannot stress how cool it was to be able to find a song and hear it on demand.

    I did however feel some guilt about taking songs for free from my favorite bands at the time. So I came up with some ethical standards I could live with. One of them being “If I downloaded more than 3 songs off a single album, I should buy that album.” After that I took stock off my mp3 collection and began purchasing CD’s to back fill what I’d downloaded.

    The first band I started purchasing albums from was Metallica, and then they sued Napster.

    I haven’t spent a dime on them or listened to their music since. At first it was a conscious decision, but then after a year or so I realized I just didn’t care about their music much anymore so it was easy after that.

    • @chudified
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      31 year ago

      Same here. I had a bunch of their CDs and downloaded a few Metallica songs. Then I got kicked off of Napster after they sued, and haven’t been able to listen to Metallica since then. I’m not boycotting them, and they’re within their right to sue, but the whole incident just soured their songs in my mind.