The title may sound weird. I initially wrote it as “fuck over the billionaires”. But it is not only billionaires, but also multi-millionaires and people who think themselves hierarchically superior.
So:
- Are you doing something to fuck over “the powerful”? If so, what?
I’ve concluded that with personal boycotts, perfect is the enemy of good. Time was I’d decide to boycott someone like Nestle but then fall off the wagon when I had a Smarties craving and then just sort of stop doing the rest of it.
So now I take the approach of trying to look for an alternative, but if I can’t find it then I won’t beat myself up about it, I’ll keep trying tomorrow. It’s not great but it’s better than what I was doing before.
That said, it wasn’t at all difficult to cut all the US grocery brands out of my shopping when Trump started his tariff bullshit, cause it’s all hyper-processed artificially coloured crap to begin with.
Myself, I am becoming as much “anti-consumption” as possible. I am removing myself from capitalism, as much as possible.
I still have to eat, of course, so I buy food. But I don’t buy food from corporations. As an example, I don’t buy anything from Nestle, nor from any big corporations. Gadgets and tech, I will be avoiding as much as possible, and if I do find myself needing to buy, I will do so but not from the usual corporations.
Social networks: only lemmy and mastodon sometimes. Fuck reddit and instagram and facebook. Don’t have an account there and never will. I don’t go there anymore.
I try to keep a “solarpunk” attitude. I do things for the good of the environment. I do/will-be-doing things such as composting, reducing the use of plastic, avoiding cars.
I am also trying to get people on board with my view of things, but I haven’t been much successful. I think principled people are very rare. People just don’t care.
I don’t buy any US brands as I get the Aldi version instead.
I’m loving those around me and feeling empathy for everyone on the planet even harder. They can throw me in a concentration camp or kill me, but they can’t make me not love.
They don’t care about that.
But I do. And spending time doing that takes away from any time they’d rather have me panicking and spiraling.
Fair enough. Keep going, friend.
Thank you, you too 💜
I’m here, for starters.
I’ve been systematically removing as many parts of myself from the corporate internet over the course of years. So far I’ve managed to drop:
- GMail
- Netflix
- Windows
- Prime
- HBO
I still have some stragglers, like YouTube, that I doubt will go anytime soon, but for the most part, I don’t have to deal with:
- Dark patterns
- Advertisements
- Anti-features (updates that remove functionality)
- FOMO
- Advertisements again
- Advertisements a third time
Really, I just do not like being advertised to, and outside YouTube sponsorships, which can be skipped, I can go whole days without ever coming across an ad on the internet, and even that feels high.
On top of all this, I’ve massively reduced my data collection footprint, meaning there’s far less info available to said advertisers and data collectors that they can use to manipulate me.
I also regularly try to provide some of this to my friends to also help cut them away from the propaganda machine.
Giving up those socials is a great start, and often times the start is the hardest part. I don’t see Instagram though. Hopefully you have quit them and just forgot to mention, if not, consider this the universe sending you a message motivating you to delete it!
Of all the “content provider websites”, youtube is certainly the hardest part to “cut”. However, the signal to noise ratio of youtube is so low (small signal, large noise) that I pretty much don’t use it anymore. Even good channels are, more and more, going for clickbait and shitty tactics, and AI content. I didn’t really actively cut youtube, but I did so passively. It just became worse and worse that I don’t feel drawn to it as often. And, of course, when I do use youtube, ads are blocked with ublock and SponsorBlock.
In a similar boat in regards to cutting out invasive, rapidly-enshittifying corporate tech providers but I agree that YouTube still has some good content worth it. Good news is that with the use of Invidious servers on desktop and SmartTube / NewPipe on Android TV or mobile you can pretty much have your cake and eat it too.
P.S. if you’re looking for a less shitty / ad bloated way of watching Yt videos on Nvidia Shield Pro or similar Android TV I recently switched from NewPipe to SmartTube and it’s much better since it integrates Sponsorblock and the UI is actually designed for a TV.
Never in my life have I given 2 week’s notice. If they can fire me without warning I can quit whenever the fuck I feel like it.
I decided to move away from big american tech companies. When I started, the hardest part was finding an alternative to Google Maps.
I decided to be the change I want to see and have been contributing to OpenStreetMap nearly every day for 5 years as I update my local community.
Hey! That is great!
What sort of apps/software do you use to update OpenStreetMap? I would also love to do something like that. Can you do a brief explanation on how you do it, please?
There are lots of apps, desktop software, and websites. I prefer to use the default editor on openstreetmap.org called iD. Zoom in to your neighbourhood and click ‘Edit’ and it will open.
wiki.openstreetmap.org includes best practices and documentation for how to map each real world thing.
In iD, you can click on something in the map, on the left side it will tell you what type of feature it is. There will be a little ‘i’ symbol that you can click for more details and documentation that links to that specific type of thing on wiki.openstreetmap.org
community.openstreetmap.org is the place to ask questions and get help from others.
For actually using the map for finding places and getting directions, I like CoMaps best.
To add to this, Street Complete and Every Door are great for getting started. They ask straightforward questions like what’s the house number of this building, or does this bus stop have seating. If you can’t answer a question you don’t have to, you can just go back and answer a different question instead :)
Oh, both of those (street complete and every door) are great! I have just answered a few questions. This is a really easy way to improve OSM. We should probably do a “You Should Know” somewhere. I don’t think these apps are well known.
How long until the changes are accepted, do you have any idea? I already published them (by logging in my OSM account).
I’m not sure how long they take off the top of my head, but I think it’s quite quick. A lot of the apps only update once a month though, so it can feel like longer
Any change is updated immediately. End users (apps) may only update every month or so, that’s up to them.
Working on Lemmy, instead of selling my soul to a company.
Thanks for creating all this for us!
Vote with your wallet.
Does not dying of cancer out of spite count?
Arguably counts the most. God speed warrior.
I repair hardware where possible , buy second hand tech. Sail the seas. Running a tor relay. Only buy out of necessity
Stopping buying things new.
Not workin and not having kids to force them into wage servitude, now into the climate hellhole we’re creating.
I cycle and don’t own a car. I will not be registered or licensed to move around under my own power. Do as much bike maintenance myself as I can.
I even brew my own mead
I haven’t bought anything from Amazon, Costco, Wal-Mart, big box stores for at least 5 years now. I will also never be getting anything from places like Temu.
As well, I try to make almost all my food, shopping, etc choices to benefit something small, or someone local, that needs my money more than things that further drive the Machine in the end.
Costco is one of the rare good guys though.
I’m doing what I can, as small an impact as it has. I’ve become much more aware of what I buy, use, and consume. I’ve begun to repair things instead of just buying new replacements, I don’t buy American whenever possible, and I don’t use any AI at all. I’ve completely cut out Google, Microsoft, Apple, Meta, Amazon, Reddit, any streaming service and any social media except the Fediverse, and of course nothing from Musk.
However, the biggest impact I’ve been able to make has been getting a couple people to re-think what they consume from fascist-enabling big tech companies. Small wins.
