I refuse to use the Brave browser, and I was prepared to abandon Firefox, over then-CEO Brendan Eich’s $1000 donation in support of California’s proposition 8 (banning same-sex marriage). I will never forgive the supporters of that proposition. I will not knowingly support their businesses.

I’ve lost all respect for Scott Adams (of the Dilbert comic strip) and Kelsey Grammar (Frasier actor). Their continued support for Donald Trump is damning.

Honestly, there is so much art and so many services and tools out there, that I try to avoid sending money towards ones made by shitty people.

I loved HP as a kid, but I’m not going to support JKR’s dullard takes on trans people. It’s clear she knows literally nothing beyond what her transphobic friend and their wine club “LGB Alliance” of straight white women tell her, but she still feels the need to parrot it online in front of millions of people. And guess what? There are other books about magic out there.

In terms of my judgement criteria, it’s not some fixed system, but my 2 main considerations are:

• How much does a bad person benefit financially from the product?
• How much are bad people responsible for the creation of the product?

Generally-speaking, if either of those can be answered with “A lot”, I avoid it.

So for instance, in the case of Hogwarts: Legacy, while JKR wasn’t responsible for making the product almost at all, she publicly indicated that she was making a lot of money from it, so I did not purchase it.

Ditto for AWS; once I was able to afford a cheap refurb server, I shut down my AWS accounts and been self-hosting everything.

Quite a bit as I’ve always found it difficult to separate the artist from the art.

I’ve never read any of HP (it was “witchcraft” and “of the devil” when I was growing up in the bible belt lol), but all the unenlightened opinions from JKR really don’t inspire me to give her any of my money, so I doubt I’ll be reading it just to see what all the fuss was about.

Even shows/books that I used to like, once I learn the author / actor / whatever is kind of a trash person, it just ruins the experience for me.

As many have said there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, and you can’t know everything about everyone, so no matter what you’re going to end up supporting something unethical at some point.

That being said, all I can do is act on the information I have, and when I learn about some situation like this, I don’t have an easy answer or decision flow chart. But I do ask myself two questions.

How much will my support enable more of the behaviour I find abhorrent? And how much will the knowledge ruin my appreciation of the thing?

I cannot read Ender’s Game even though I always meant to since I found out about Orson Scott Card’s politics about ten years back. And while there’s (somehow) way, way worse people out there the knowledge, especially the holocaust denial, just ruins any enjoyment I could get from the books or movies, regardless of any separate-art-from-artist arguments.

But I am a huge Lovecraft fan, and he was also just the worst. But the guy’s dead, it doesn’t matter if I buy his books or not. And even then despite his popularity across Geekdom he’s a relatively niche author. His views aren’t going to reach a lot of people.

I think this works out differently if the creator is someone current and powerful or influential. If we can blunt the impact of a popular creator spreading toxic views that prevents a lot more bad than than the same frome someone dead or niche. Even if that’s only lack of support, that’s still more.

I guess what I’m saying it is has less to do with the details of the bad views or actions, and more about much my support helps enable those. The less I contribute by watching or buying or clicking, the less I’m concerned about it. Unless it just personally bothers me.

I don’t know if that’s the right answer but it’s the one I’ve got right now

I think it’s a little silly for anyone to grandstand on self-important moralistic consumption, because you can’t be a consumer of most things in the US without contributing to evil labor practices on some level.

Nearly everyone owns a computer or cell phone, and those are all produced with parts sourced unethically on some level or labor that is impoverished in a more remote or regressive part of the world.

And some artists are so incredibly good it’s impossible to ignore the quality even with their questionable morals, like Michael Jackson or Salvador Dali for example.

Everyone should make an effort to be mindful of their consumption, in my opinion, but I will always roll my eyes at people who are preachy about it. As some have mentioned, the secondary market is a great thing for trying to manage the problematic side of things, and even better, you’re upcycling when you by used.

I am a very “death of the artist” kind of guy, but I won’t give my money to people will will use it for evil. So while I’m perfectly happy to, say, buy a Roman Polanski movie secondhand, I’m not going to purchase a new copy.

As much as I resent it being the way of things, money is power under capitalism. Where possible, I try not to cede mine to people looking to do nefarious things or disseminate shitty ideals. While I don’t have much personally and Kant was a pretentious douche canoe, I’m still idealistically partial to the universal maxim.

Yeah, no ethical consumption under capitalism or whatever but we can try not to prop up people who are brazenly making the world shittier. Thinking our actions don’t matter is how we get complacency.

A lot. Also, thanks for the heads-up on Kagi. Anybody have recommendations for a privacy-respecting search engine that isn’t run by chuds? Paid is fine as long as it doesn’t suck.

Kagi is hard because it is so very much better than any alternative I have tried. I don’t like the guy’s views but it would substantially impact something I do for work and pleasure dozens of times every day to give it up, so I’m really struggling with that.

First off, the kagi news is a bummer. I’ve really liked it and picked up a subscription mostly because of some buzz I saw around here, but seeing this news is a shame and setting up some red flags in my mind.

But to answer your question, I think I personally have a couple ways I approach this…

1. If the evidence someone is transphobic, racist, etc…is from a long time ago (eg someone is digging up ancient tweets to prove someone is some sort of “-ist” today), I tend to give them more grace because people should be allowed to change. I know I didn’t have great views on some of this stuff when I was younger and it’s easy to forget these celebrities/people in power are fallible human beings. I’ll take their response to unearthing these views as a sign of whether or not they’re worth supporting going forward. If they’re regretful and seem like they’re trying to do better, I’m good. The kagi creator seems to not pass this standard for me.

2. If it’s something I want to use/consume and it could impact more than just the individual. JK Rowling is a good example of this. I’d struggle to want to buy any of her books again because I see a clearer line of sight from my purchase to her pocket. But something like Hogwarts Legacy, which I knew I would enjoy and my wife would love, and is made by many people with a passion for her world, I’m OK with it. The line to Rowling is a lot blurrier and impacts people who don’t have a say in what project(s) they work on.

It’s also easier to ignore or skip smaller scale things like an indie game from a deplorable developer vs. the next Marvel/HP/insert your beloved franchise game from someone equally deplorable. None of this is ever perfect and time and attention are finite resources for all of us. If Harry Potter is how you need to unwind because it’s your favorite thing, more power to you. It’s not my job nor anyone else’s to police the things you like or make you feel bad for liking them.

We should all do our best to try and support good people in a system that incentivizes bad people and give ourselves some grace when we (seemingly inevitably these days) find out those people were actually scum.

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Its tricky, because how much do I really know about people’s views who I’ve never met? Especially more famous people who might just be crafting a public image. They might be hiding aspects of thier views that are bad publicity, or just being controversial to drum up attention.

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Certainly. There’s a big difference between me giving cash and uplifting someone who is actively harming people today, and supporting a dead man’s art.

Of course remember there’s nuance as well. It doesn’t cost me much to stop interacting with JKR’s output, but buying quality shoes that don’t in some way support sweatshop owners or fast fashion represents a significant time/money investment on my part.

And if there’s something important for my health than it goes right out. idk, maybe Dr. Scholl was there on Jan 6 and I was prescribed those Dr. Scholl’s foot goobers by a podiatrist, I’m not going to quibble too much.

Which ties in to the privilege of being socially conscious. It costs me nonzero money and energy that some might not have to do all of these things. I cannot blame or fault the person who works at Chick-fil-A paying rent, even if their work supports CFA.

A creator’s worldview influences me a whole lot on whether I’ll use their stuff or not. I don’t think we can afford the luxury of supporting jerks anymore. There’s just too much shit going on. Consuming is voting. That’s the rational part. The affective part is that when I learn that the creator’s a jerk, I just don’t feel like engaging with their stuff anymore. It’s basically a turn off for me.

The kagi controversy is unfortunate. I’ve been considering biting the bullet, but there’s no way I’m paying for a search engine I don’t feel good about. Also I very naively didn’t realize until now kagi was just aggregating Google, Yandex or whatever, stripping the advertisement rot and applying some extra magic. Won’t they get the rug pulled right from under them the second they reach any sort of relevance?