What I’m saying is, in society, the corporations often do something that you just hate.
Ranging from anti consumer practices, data tracking, all the way to supporting a political candidate you dislike or even in extreme cases, going full nazi. So theres a wide spectrum of “evil” that corporations do, where along that line do you say “nope, I’m out” and boycott? I mean, we can’t boycott for every minor transgression, or every thing its CEO says, because there are only like a few companies out there, so if you are too restrictive in drawing that line, you would be essentially cutting yourself off of the capitalist society, and have to grow food by yourself. So when do you boycott?
This is probably a hot take in many circles, but I do not boycott companies.
The purpose of a business is to make money. I do not fault a business for doing something in pursuit of maximizing their money any more than I fault a goat for eating a tin can or a stove for burning my dinner.
I fault our government for not protecting the human rights of the people that business harmed, and I fault the individuals who work in that business for knowingly helping to cause human misery.
The sole exception to this is companies like meta, who have intentionally worked with foreign actors to subvert our democracy. That is treason, and by extension they have made their company an instrument of a foreign power. That entity should be forcibly dissolved and the people in power should be prosecuted under the relevant statutes.
I’ll boycott companies.
Something being technically legal doesn’t necessarily make it moral or OK and whilst I absolutely agree that laws and regulations should be in place to prevent horrible behaviour, it’s not reasonable to expect this in every case.
I’ll absolutely make a decision to withdraw my custom if I don’t agree that a company is acting appropriately, it’s the only power you have as a consumer and the only thing companies care about is getting your money.
Oh legality absolutely does not equate morality, although we obviously work to correlate them as much as possible.
I will admit, much of my reasoning here is driven by the fact that I live in suburban America, and if I expect to buy literally anything, I buy it from or using a company that does something horrific. It isn’t reasonable to boycott based on even something as simple as “don’t kill people”, because…well I don’t have an alternative.