this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025
852 points (98.6% liked)

Games

48590 readers
592 users here now

Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.

Rules

1. Submissions have to be related to games

Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.

This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.

2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil

No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.

We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.

3. No excessive self-promotion

Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.

This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.

4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts

This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you're submitting before posting to see if it's already been posted.

We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.

5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW

Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.

No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.

6. No linking to piracy

Don't share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.

We don't want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.

Authorized Regular Threads

Related communities

PM a mod to add your own

Video games

Generic

Help and suggestions

By platform

By type

By games

Language specific

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] MudMan@fedia.io 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

To be clear, I agree that you don't have to be into politics. Not caring enough is fine. Social media expressions of opinion are always black and white. AI is the end of the world, Nintendo's piracy stance is a war crime, Windows is the antichrist... You're allowed to be bummed out by any of those and not do anything about it because you're not bummed out enough. That's a refreshing degree of online moderation, if anything.

What I take issue with is confusing those sorts of market results with actual political action. A brand can decide something unpopular isn't worth pursuing for PR reasons, but they can also decide it IS worth it. To my knowledge the people I shared Netflix accounts with that were impacted by the location checks are still impacted by those. Your EA and Uber examples were barely impactful at all until regulators got into the mix, and regulators got into the mix hard about those issues. I invite you to go look up how both of them played out, because, man, is there a difference between how fast the companies reacted once there was someone in a public position going "hey, maybe we need to take a look at this".

Mistaking how a brand manages its public perception for effective political actions is dangerous. Letting corporations appease you through those means only serves to set up a bad precedent when those brands decide the time has come to squeeze and go hard on monetization. You need public institutions that are strong and vigilant enough to put some bite behind that public displeasure.

Can a boycott work? Sure. As a coordinated political action, the consumer-side equivalent of a strike. This takes just as much work and coordination as any other political activity.

But spending your money based on the outrage that reaches you through social media is not a functional way to generate change. It's just you being part of the mass of consumers brand manage with their messaging tools. You're a rounding error in a stat, part of the manipulation of the market that is built into every corporate action. When you do that you're a focus group data point, not a political actor.