Sinclair group in the US, bought up basically every local news station and began inserting propaganda into scripts as stories. Highly insidious because the older population generally trusted their local news anchors more than the national outlets.
GEO group, one of the largest private prison corporations that also manages ice detention facilities and many mental institutions, not sure I need to say much more.
Sinclair is literally why I don’t have a local news station anymore, and also part of why after 10 years of working in local television news and being promoted to higher and higher positions I was finally like “fuck this, I’m out” and started working at a fucking Subway.
Similar to GEO, there’s a long list of companies providing phone service to jails and prisons and their entire existence is based off of extorting the living shit out of vulnerable people to be able to contact their families. The massive Securus hack also showed a high likelihood of these types of companies enabling violations of Attorney-Client privilege.
Ah yes, the Sinclair “This is extremely dangerous to our democracy” foreshadowing
The Sinclair monopoly is an invisible part of why Trump is in office. Local news doesn’t really exist anymore.
I’m now boycotting GEO Group. Henceforth, I will only do IRL heist missions in places where there’s a public prison option.
I think we’d compile a shorter list if we tried to name wholesome, respectable companies.
Nah, we have loads of great companies here in the UK.
Didn’t the UK develop the first large evil corporation?
It sure did!
among more brutality around the world, yes
riot games settles for 100 million dollars after sexually harassing its own employees.
Male employees (developers, I think) engaged in drunken “panty raids” where they would crowd into a woman’s cubicle and take things from her while she worked.
Riot games chose to pay these women to go away, rather than fix the problem.
They make League of Legends and Teamfight Tactics. I will never spend another dollar on their products.
I met a guy who really wanted to work at riot games and found no issue with their culture. And the longer I spent talking to him, the more I realize… Ah, you’re an edge lord. Of course you would like the company.
They’re also 100% Chinese owned. It’s the major turnoff for me with their Path of Exile titles.
I want to add to this their absolutely egregious forced kernel-level anti-cheat. It demands full privileged access to a user’s machine, and unlike some competing systems, it doesn’t want to go away when the game is no longer being played.
The assurance this won’t be used or exploited for ultra-malicious purposes across the globe by a corporation owned ultimately by the CCP is…
“Just trust me, bro.”
lesser known
Goodwill specifically hires disabled people under the guise of “giving them work experience”, but it’s really because they can get away with paying them less.
Chick-Fil-A supports conversion therapy.
Similarly, Salvation Army is a whackadoo pseudochristian religious cult masquerading publicly as a thrift store. They’re only about one degree removed from the Mormon church in terms of sequestering, abuse (sexual and otherwise), and manipulation of their members and those in their care. And of course also vehemently espouse the entire conservative fuckhead smorgasboard of homophobic, transphobic, sexist, anti-union views. They claim to do “good works” and superficially may even occasionally accomplish this, but it’s always couched in their hateful religious bullshit which really rather undermines the point.
Yes, Chick-Fil-A is also a famously fundamentalist wingnut organization. Being for conversation therapy is only the start of it.
As is Hobby Lobby – The nation’s only retail chain whose owners were busted for attempting to illegally smuggle stolen religious artifacts from the middle East for display in their personal bible museum!
Just to be clear, Goodwill is notorious for this, but any company can do this. The law allows the disabled to be paid less because they cannot complete the same job as fast. Essentially saying that getting the job done faster means you deserve to live more. It’s insanity that takes advantage of the weakest and most desperate in society under the guise of helping them. Because they cannot get as much work done to their mental or physical disabilities they deserve to be underpaid even though they worked a 40 hour week? It’s a fucking joke and a slap in the face to anyone disabled, but it’s the law. Once again, tons of companies abuse this, Goodwill is just well known for abusing it more than others.
Sometime around the mid 2010s, I worked at one of Goodwill’s busiest locations in the country. So busy we got calls almost every day complaining about the giant fucking traffic snake of donors blocking streets as they all lined up in their suburban safety bubbles to dump their literal garbage into our blue bins.
Absolute shitbox of a store. Run down, dirty, and always a mess. Especially the shoes and toys section. I already hated retail customers but that really sealed the deal. Just a bunch of broke ass motherfucking customers making broke ass workers days even harder. Two of my full-time coworkers were homeless. Those were just the ones I knew about because I worked by their side every day. Despite our poverty wages and grinding hours, I worked with some genuinely good people who cared about each other. It felt like we were all clinging to each other as we drowned in the rising tide that lifts all boats. None of us had so much as a life raft to rest in. Treading water while we gasped between waves of desperation.
Brian, I know you’ll never see this but I hope you’re still alive and got the help you needed. Daniel, you are far too intelligent and capable to waste your life there. I hope you got out.
A few times I had to visit the allegedly original Goodwill store. You might think if there’s one store corporate cares about enough to put a bit of polish on, it would be that one. But no. It looked like the most dystopian shopping experience imaginable. Crumbling architecture, merchandise strewn all over as if the customers were in a fight for their lives, and just like my store, workers who looked ragged, tired, and barely holding it together inside. And there worked at least one young woman with Down Syndrome who I reckon was making about a third of my not-even-close-to-livable wage of $10/hr. I was starting to suspect this Goodwill place isn’t in the business of good will. Then I visited the Training and Education Center which also serves as their corporate HQ in Seattle.
It was modern. Spacious. Clean. Safe. Nobody looked poor or unhappy. Any illusions I might have held about Goodwill were entirely shattered beyond any doubt.
I’ll never shop or donate there again and I’ll take every opportunity to tell anyone who will listen why they should stop patronizing the most for-profit nonprofit I’ve ever worked for.
Fuck you, Goodwill. Fuck you forever.
Where would you recommend donating instead?
Depending on your feelings about the Catholic Church, you might look into donating to the Society of St Vincent de Paul.
Where I grew up there were also some smaller independent thrift stores run by neighborhood religious organizations or other nonprofits on their own steam. You might check for any in your area.
I understand the viewpoint, but the alternative is that disabled people get hired way less or not at all. A real solution would be to reduce our dependence on capitalism or something, but that’s not likely.
God I (as a disabled woman) am SO sick of seeing this take every time this conversation happens, like it’s chill and okay to give us less rights.
I think their main point was that under capitalism, people will only ever be viewed for their economic utility - exploitation of affected groups is inherent to that reduction in a human’s rights and their contributions beyond menial labour.
So the take isnt defending the status quo, it’s saying how the best case scenario in an inherently soulless and uncaring system is to be paid cents on the dollar, and that more intervention to secure better pay, respect, and working rights, by definition, will always move further and further away from “capitalism” in it’s purest, most discriminatory forms.
True, both options under capitalism are pretty bad.
The one sole benefit to the disabled is being able to work for Goodwill for a few hours a week will be unlikely to go over their income limits so their SSI and so they can stay on SSI and still work at least a little to supplement their obscenely meager disability income. SSDI recipients fare far better and are literally allowed to have income as long as it isn’t worked. Meaning a rich SSDI recipient can stop working but still make a boatload of money off of investment income.
What are the acronyms?
SSI = Supplemental Security Income
SSDI = Social Security Disability Insurance
I was under the knowledge that goodwill pays less so that those who do work there don’t lose their benefits, which require you to basically make nearly 0 income. Has this changed?
The lower minimum wage for disabled people isn’t limited to those on benefits.
Anduril, Palmer Luckey’s foray into military hardware and an ever-present surveillance state. Some of the first hardware they rolled out were surveillance towers for the US border patrol.
So Mark Zuckerberg officially isn’t the only giant pile of shit connected to Oculus, the original owner is a fucking pile of shit, too.
Trader Joe’s is also thought of by many people as “progressive” and a “good company.” Go learn about the conditions in their warehouses and you’ll find out that’s not true at all. I had a friend who worked TJ’s warehouse in Lacey, WA and all he had was fucking horror stories and how the warehouse was owned and run by MAGA fucks.
EDIT: Found the article my friend was excited about coming out that didn’t seem to get any MSM traction.
Inside ‘Teflon Joe’s’: Why your favorite grocery store is not what you think
How Trader Joe’s remains a beloved brand despite record product recalls, safety violations, worker misconduct complaints, and an environmental record that belies its reputation.
So yeah fuck Trader Joe’s.
Oh yeah and the CEO of Protonmail revealed himself to be a Trump supporter.
So fuck Protonmail.
The Brave browser CEO recently went on an hinged rant on that orange site about “lefties,” “glowies,” and George Soros. He also has a long history of being anti-gay, which is why he lost his job at Firefox, and Brave itself has a shady history with stuff like injecting affiliate codes into URLs.
So fuck Brave.
Anduril, Palmer Luckey’s foray into military hardware and an ever-present surveillance state. Some of the first hardware they rolled out were surveillance towers for the US border patrol.
Same vibe as Palantir by Peter Thiel, big data analytics platform used by many defense/security organizations. Far right pseudo-libertarians love abusing Tolkien’s lore, sadly.
Let’s keep that surveillance state alive because nothing screams democracy like never trusting anyone!
Stopped shopping at Trader Joe’s after their anti union shenanigans. Shame because we love their food
I have found a small amount of Trader Joe’s food labelled under different brand names at WinCo. Same companies producing the food, just boxed and bagged with a different name.
To be clear, WinCo also has it’s own issues.
That’s a shame about Brave, does anyone have an reccomendations for another browser that reduces digital fingerprinting in a similar way?
Red Bull, they are nazis and spread fake news about conspiracy theories on their own TV network in Austria. Source
Damn we need open source redbull
There are several RedBull typr generic syrups you can buy as a bag-in-box
Are there really? I have a soda stream but all the syrups I’ve seen were like diet versions of stuff. Do you have an example you can link to?
I go to Penny, a discount, for that. Varying names, same shit, way more cheap.
Don’t tell the BuyEurope movement
They know it already.
Thai know it already.
51% of the company, and it’s origin, is Thai anyway.
Is Monster still ok though?
Monster is coca cola afaik
So, based on Wikipedia, Cocola has ~15-20% stake in the company, but does not own them.
Which is to say that Coca Cola probably has the most say on anything that goes, but is not running the show.
You can dissolve a rat into Monster within a few weeks, do you really want to drink something like that?
Is that different from any other soda? They’re all pretty acidic.
College Board. Maker of the SAT
Fuck College Board with a rake. Seriously awful when college is already so expensive.
Menards. They have a history of dumping waste illegally and then daring the DNR to sue them. One example:
HSBC - how many times can a bank be caught laundering dirty money and still exist?
Indeed, amazing how KYC is pointless. I feel like the finance industry is very good at packaging things in very appealing terms … yet do exactly the opposite of what it claims.
KYC is not at all pointless. It allows existing monopolise to remain entrenched.
Yes, in fact while writing my comment that’s what I had in mind, namely how can it not only do the opposite of what it claims BUT making it harder for smaller players to contest the “winners” setting up the rules. Wonderful. /s
If you haven’t seen documentary The Corporation, you must watch it . Amongst other things It explains how there really cannot be any non shitty corporations - so you have to look really hard to find small business that meet your needs.
The concept of “shareholder value” from the Milton Friedman playbook coldly permits any behaviour that increase profits.
Side note, Milton Friedman wasn’t just an evil fuck, he was also in many ways kind of dumb as shit.
His “four ways of spending money” is a prime example.
He claims the fourth way (spending somebody else’s money on somebody else) is how the government works, and thus it’s wasteful, but what he fails to fucking account for is with how large most corporations are that the fourth way of spending money is effectively how corporations work, too. Some bean counter in accounting and some finance guys and a variety of middle managers are all spending somebody else’s money (the company’s money) on someone else (the whims of the CEO and the board).
He holds this example up as showing how government spending is always bad and inefficient and how corporate spending isn’t, but he’s a dumbfuck, they’re actually the same.
Chick-fill-A and Hobby Lobby are part of the same asshole Christian subspecies, do crazy shit like stealing/buying stolen artifacts, and being super anti-gay and anti-trans.
Oh and Chick-fil-A’s did is trash. I tried it before I learned the company sucked, not long after it first moved into Chicagoland. Not only is the chicken bland AF - including the “spicy” chicken - but they managed to somehow make waffle fries taste bleh. How the hell do you even fuck up waffle fries? I can’t understand how these assholes stay in business in the area with chicken that’s worse than what I can get at Burger King, much less any of a million small local places and chains.
Chick-fil-A is actually pretty good near me. I get them once a month or once every other month or so.
In terms of fast food, I’d definitely say there’s in the top 20% in terms of food quality.
Like the other comment said, I would love to know some morally appropriate companies, that way I can choose to use them. Boycotting is nice but if you lack the knowledge of where to shop then it’s a fruitless effort
Valid thing to want, but I get the feeling this thread is about alerting people to horrible companies they might not realize are horrible… like my comment about Trader Joe’s.
Disney decided to keep their dei policies so that’s something.
But they also cut a trans story to avoid controversy and probably other shit things I cant remember atm. So take what you will I guess
Isn’t that the same company which refused to pay a guy compensation for choking because he used a disney+ free trial and also completely ruined copyright law
Yeah. That’s one of the shitty things I forgot
Disney didn’t. Their shareholders did.
They don’t follow morality, they follow money. They go for whichever gets them more money and/or less criticism.
There are large companies, many of them in Germany, who are owned by foundations. Perhaps the best known is Bosch, which is almost entirely owned by a charitable foundation. Another very large one is ZF Friedrichshaven, owned by the Zeppelin Foundation. They don’t do any consumer products, but are one of the world’s largest players in the automotive industry.
From under-staffing, to threatening managers to do more with less, to refusing to allow resources for security. They treat people like shit, their customers like shit, and try to undercut their suppliers which leads to half ass quality goods.
Its worse than you would think…
Not the video I was looking for but it proves the point…
Last Week Tonight did a story about dollar stores:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p4QGOHahiVM
Yeah, they’re as bad as you’d expect.
Isn’t this the entire “dollar store” industry? My understanding was that these kinds of thing were the entire reason that business model was profitable. Or does this company do it worse than say dollar general or something does?
Herbalife
LuLaRoe is up there as well with the life-ruining debt. Then their clothes are so bad that they are literal pollution.
(post from the ceo, who is honestly one of the most evil people in the world)
Stickermule and uline
https://slate.com/business/2024/07/sticker-mule-ceos-pro-trump-maga-email-surprised-employees.html
After stickermule went full magat the owner started to dox people who left negative reviews or spoke out against them.
https://www.propublica.org/article/uline-uihlein-election-denial
A previously unreported boom in profits for the shipping supply giant Uline has provided the funds for a deeply conservative Midwestern family to bankroll anti-democracy causes around the country.
