To think boycotters only see one side of the story and are ill-informed?

[Username2018]

I’ve worked for a couple of companies who are regularly boycotted. I have been massively impressed with their commitment to R&D and education, and corporate social responsibility generally, despite the public thinking they are Satan.

They don’t get everything right, there have been mistakes, they are not perfect, but these were due to employee error, not because of a corporate strategy. And what these companies ‘give back’ directly and indirectly is largely not known by joe public.

AIBU to think most boycotters don’t weigh up the good and the bad and just go along with the propaganda they see from not necessarily reliable sources??

The Nazis did a great deal to improve the living conditions of many Germans who were living in crippling poverty. Does that mean the rest of their actions should never have been challenged?

Is this another nestle thread ?

Yes kitkat did spring to mind !
More details OP as it’s waaay too ambiguous for debate.

Boycotting is meaningless unless (1) it is the choice of the individual, not of the government, the council, the union, or the employer, even if the employer is one of those, and (2) it involves the boycotter in some sacrifice of money or amenity.

And don't be the office bore on the subject. If your colleagues buy produce from a company or a country that you choose to boycott, that's their business.

How patronising are you, OP

I can boycott any company I want, for good reasons or ridiculous reasons

I boycott companies that have pissed me off for some random reason. And I also boycott Nestle and Danone because of their practice around infant feeding.

I don't need your blessing.

If you work for Nestle and are stating the above, I'd suggest that you, OP, are the ill-informed one. For a myriad of reasons, particularly the way they think water is not a human right, and the damage they've caused to breastfeeding particularly in countries in the global south where representatives went into hospitals dressed as nurses to push formula.

Someone's in trouble because of the Kitkat threads..

I don't do boycotts because I don't think they work. However, YABU and patronising. Anyway, isn't it OK for people to have a line in the sand, which won't be negated by R&D or wee projects.

Nestle wasn’t just a few employees going rogue. So if that’s what you’re talking about you ABU.

Consumers aren't required to weigh up the good and bad and subtleties and nuance though.

If a company breaches what someone regards as a red line, I don't think it matters what other good things the company does in other areas.

If a company breaches what someone regards as a red line, I don't think it matters what other good things the company does in other areas.

This is exactly my position.

How easily accessible is the “other side information”?

I boycott nestle, soda stream and clothing shops that don’t treat warehouse staff well. Is there information put out regularly that says that these companies are actually now ethical?

One of my colleagues at a large UK pharma company heard the story from a security guard of a time when they caught an animal rights activist coming in over the fence, after he ran back to pick up his asthma inhaler. I always liked that one.

Having worked in pharma and banking, I would say that most activists suffer from an "evil genius" delusion - they seem to believe that every bad thing that happens (e.g. the failure to cure cancer or whatever) is something that the companies could change if they wanted to. Like the people who say "it's not in the interests of big pharma to find cures, that'll put them out of business". Sell the truth is, they do, and it is. There's about half as many scientists working in pharma now in the UK as there was 20 years ago. It's all little projects for rare illnesses and sod all profit these days, with companies sitting there funding basic research and hoping for a breakthrough.

Pannikin

I was so shocked by the formula issue.

1. Go into hospital dressed in lab coats
2. Tell new (largely uneducated) Mother’s that formula is better than breastfeeding.
3. Sell loads of formula.
4. Mother stops breastfeeding and milk dries up .
5. They can no longer afford formula and baby goes hungry.
6. The water supply is unreliable and baby dies of dysentery.

So to boycott a company that had a policy they knew would result in the death of babies for the sake of profit, and have issued no apology is ‘naive’.

Surely the naïveté is in being their apologist.

Oh DFOD. YABVVVVVU.

*mothers

Skinnyboneylittlepony what I find so shocking is that’s they’re STILL breaking WHO guidelines all over the place and they still don’t give a shit.

People can boycott who they like, that’s fine, but I’m not convinced it’s an educated decision in lots of cases. It’s all too easy to jump on a bandwagon.

Companies with 100,000s of employees are not always going to get it right, and mistakes and damage happens at times but they can and do have a positive impact in lots of other ways, and this is not acknowledged.

By all means boycott. But do it because you know the full facts and can make a decision based on a balanced view, rather than a media-warped image of something.

If you work for nestle then yabu.

I boycott companies that have annoyed me. So Hermes and Dyson at the moment.

YABU

These company's work very hard to conceal the facts. The fact we know they did wrong in the first place is because they couldn't cover it up.

A coffee shop where I live asked a breastfeeding mother to leave once. The general manager who did it was let go within a month. That's dealing with it positively.

To the company that pushed formula over breast, they are responsible for deaths. An apology won't cut the mustard on this one.

I’m not convinced it’s an educated decision in lots of cases

And I'm not sure your moral compass is pointing in the right direction.

Username2018 so which companies do you specifically mean? There are some like you know, NESTLE, where I think the evidence is pretty unequivocal and has been going on for decades and isn’t just you know one or two employees doing something they shouldn’t. Then maybe there are some companies where the situation is more nuanced. It would help if you have an example.

Unless you are willing to go into company specifics and explain what good these companies are doing then YABU.

The media does present biased pictures related to many many things. Yes, people should do their research and consider all sides, however, boycott's are usually related to something that individuals feel strongly about and something that cannot be mitigated regardless of what the other side to the story is. They are entitled to hold that opinion.

Depends on the company and reasons. Personally I think some people are purely against science and attacks on say ‘big pharma’ are usually unjustified. If you’re talking the likes of nestle then you are deluded. It’s not one or two employees going rogue. They were evil then and they are just as bad now becasue they are STILL marketing formula unethically around the globe. My issue with formula companies is that they are completely anti science, they don’t provide proper scientific research or evidence to back up their claims whilst pretending (lying) that they do, add different ingredients in different countries, make up completely unnecessary products, I could go on. Is there some kind of take over of MN by nestle trolls recently?