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.

  • @BilboBargains
    9•1 year ago

    I’ve been boycotting Apple for the past fifteen years. I tend to avoid any systems that are closed or proprietary by design. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to adhere to this principle due to the profit motives for this practice. Notable examples of late are electric car chargers. You would imagime that there are different electrons in your battery compared with other people’s but no, physics is truly universal. It’s the car makers that dream up these differences and create incompatible battery interfaces. Compare that with petroleum products, one can fill a tank anywhere and it works the same, as it should do.

    • @[email protected]English
      4•1 year ago

      Compare that with petroleum products, one can fill a tank anywhere and it works the same, as it should do.

      Unless you put gas in your diesel, or diesel in your gas vehicle.

      • @BilboBargains
        1•1 year ago

        We also used to have leaded four star and two star (here in the UK). Nowadays there’s higher octane unleaded fuel. These differences serve a purpose for engines with greater compression ratios. The point about lithium battery chargers is that they can easily use the same physical interface and detect the nature of a battery using standard methods. The same way you can charge any mobile phone from any USB port - except Apple.

        Battery powered hand tools are also brand specific, for no discernible reason. It’s wasteful and it will hopefully be banned.

        • @[email protected]English
          1•1 year ago

          Theres pretty much just 2 car plugs, though… Yes some tried to do their own plug, but eventually abandoned it in favor of an open standard that everyone uses… and then theres tesla, who keeps promising to open its super charger network and provide adapters/new plugs for the open standard.

          its not like the late 90s of cellphones where everyone used proprietary voltages and connectors because fuck you thats why.

          Technology Connections has several excellent videos on this subject.

          • @BilboBargains
            1•1 year ago

            Think about what you are saying. We have two types, that’s twice as many as we need. That means there are millions of problems that electric car users need to solve for no apparent reason or benefit.

            On the other hand, why is WiFi so great? Because it works everywhere. Why does it work everywhere? Because there is one standard.

            • @[email protected]English
              1•1 year ago

              You do realize there are a LOT Wifi standards, right?

              I mean, compared to WiFi, its genuinely amazing there are only two standards for electric car chargers. and the only reason 2 exists is because Tesla didnt want to share.

              • @BilboBargains
                1•1 year ago

                Sure, technology moves on and we create as we go. That evolution creates the backwards compatibility problem but it’s separate from the incompatible by design problem. These differences are cynically inserted at the interface of systems in order to assert control. I notice that HP are in hot water for operating in this space lately and have been at the vanguard of the project to make ink more expensive than gold. When farmers began their open rebellion against the closed systems of agricultural machinery makers, who also showed up in the court viewing gallery? The reigning champion of proprietary interfaces, Apple.