this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2025
1254 points (99.6% liked)

World News

41572 readers
4684 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 3 points 12 hours ago (4 children)

I'm trying to think, apart from technology, what do I buy from American brands?

  • American food doesn't really come here except fast food franchises which I don't frequent anyway.
  • Nobody has an American car.
  • My car's electric anyway, so no American oil companies fueling it.
  • Clothes are probably all from Asia anyway.
  • I don't subscribe to any streaming services.
  • I'll order 5 or 6 things from Amazon a year. So that's easy to stop.

Sure there might be the odd brand that is unknowingly American, but I'm left asking "What does America export?" because I can't think of much in my life.

[–] Markuso213@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 hours ago

This sounds great. But if you didn't buy anything in the first place there's also zero effect of boycotting. Then the movement can of course succeed quite easily, but at no net gain.

I feel like you tried to dodge the elephant in the room: the tech. The hardest part to get rid of is the technology, and in particularly the tech stack. Social media, servers, windows, outlook... The dependency is real at all levels, and I've yet to hear of any company trying to escape. This is also where I believe the boycott will fail at an consumer level, people will keep using META, stream from Netflix, order from Amazon etc. Since people are still using these, so will our companies and politicians.

[–] Daemonia@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

There's Chips from companies like intel and Software like Windows from Microsoft and Mac from Apple. Then there's digital infrastructure like Amazon and social media, or even credit cards can come from the US.

It's also not just buying software that supports the US but using it can too, because they can use their data for advertising and other goals. So you should move to open source alternatives for software that Europe doesn't have any good alternative for (eg. Linux instead of Windows) or find a European alternative.

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 2 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

I already use Linux though. Don't even drive and my bike is British. Most of the stuff we buy is German as we shop at Aldi.

[–] Lifter@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

A lot of supermarket food brands are American. You might be surprised if you start looking. Both my deodorant and toothpaste is from Unilever, for instance.

[–] Daemonia@lemmy.world 3 points 4 hours ago

Unilever is English/Dutch so I don't think they're a concern.

[–] Chee_Koala@lemmy.world 3 points 6 hours ago

Unilever is UK based and was UK/Dutch before that. Does it being a multinational make it American enough for you?

[–] boonhet@lemm.ee 1 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

American cars are niche, but somewhat popular where I live. There's 3 companies specializing in selling and servicing American cars here in Estonia that I can think of right away, but probably more in total. But the new American car sales aren't very good because they're all so massive and expensive, the only target audience is people who like to show off AND have a lot of cash (or a lot of them are company cars tbh, you can register a big ass pick-up truck as an N1 cargo van and spend less tax if you use it for personal purposes, compared to using an M1 passenger car for personal purposes. Somehow. I don't remember the specifics).

I'd absolutely be buying myself a GMC Yukon Denali or maybe a Lincoln Navigator if 1) I was living in America with the wide ass roads and big parking spots, and everyone else driving big trucks too, 2) It had a V8 diesel available instead of the V8 petrol engine and 3) I had way too much money to spend.