Where do you draw the line on when to boycott something?

What I'm saying is, in society, the corporations often do something that you just hate.

Ranging from anti consumer practices, data tracking, all the way to supporting a political candidate you dislike or even in extreme cases, going full nazi. So theres a wide spectrum of "evil" that corporations do, where along that line do you say "nope, I'm out" and boycott? I mean, we can't boycott for every minor transgression, or every thing its CEO says, because there are only like a few companies out there, so if you are too restrictive in drawing that line, you would be essentially cutting yourself off of the capitalist society, and have to grow food by yourself. So when do you boycott?

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Small things like the CEO performing a nazi salute, and others not getting mad at that.
- How can you boycott a company when you already bought their product six years ago and weren’t planning on replacing it any time soon? Asking for a friend…
  
  The unrealistic option: Sell the car, buy another brand. This slightly reduces demand. (I don't think it is reasonable to expect people to do this)
  More realistic options: Slap a sticker on your car: "I bought this car before I knew he was a nazi"
  Leave a bad review, at the app store and other places you can.

Depends how easy it is to avoid using. When there are lots of choices it's easy to switch. Hard to boycott the website that handles half of all retail in the USA.
- If you mean Amazon, hard at first but once you get into the habit it's not hard at all. Whatever you would search Amazon for, search DuckDuckGo for or your websearch of choice and put -amazon in. There are SO MANY online stores out there, with perfectly reasonable prices and even free and fast shipping.
  Some general recs:
  B&H Photo or Microcenter for anything electronic or computer related
  For clothes, if you have any clothes you already enjoy, go directly to their brand website
  For food items, local grocery stores often offer online shopping and delivery. If it's a specialty item or imported the import companies sometimes have their own websites.
  For something hard to find you can't find another site for, try Ebay.
  I've been avoiding Amazon for about three years now. I do business with all sorts of independent retailers and have only had good experiences with them. I encourage everyone to get out of the trap of thinking that Amazon is the only option.
- That’s what’s hard about living in a small town. I detest Walmart but it’s literally all I have in about 100 miles in any direction.

c

if (product.evil >= product.quality + (product.quality - competition.quality)) { boycott(product); }
- Damn. This is perfect.

When it would create unnecessary waste. Like, oh I bought product X, but 2 weeks later company X has revealed they did something aweful. I won‘t throw it away, just use it until it breaks and the move on to someone different.
- same

I'm going to start by saying fuck Nestlé, they're so fucked up, they don't believe water & access to water is a human right, they go to towns & give them like $5 to suck up & process, bottle all the water in a region. They don't want people to be able to have private wells; they think water should be entirely managed, controlled, and sold by corporations. For these reasons, no one should ever buy Nestlé water.
Moving on...yes, corporations do dumb things, and sometimes those corporations are so terribly big it would be silly to try & look up, boycott every little thing they do. But if Nestlé didn't sell a single bottle of water, and they wondered why, and they come to realize they're dumb AF, evil, and they mismanage everyone's water while producing plastic waste....they'd surely stop stealing everybody's water for bottling. If it isn't profitable, they wouldn't do it.
I want people to understand what a boycott entails. The main purpose of a boycott is to have a negative impact on their business, either because you just fucking hate them or they're actively engaging in behavior, choices you don't approve of.
In this way, people who have already bought a product & then "boycott" it is kind of silly. Boycott Tesla? You have a Tesla. Best you can do is either sell, or de-badge, or throw on a virtue signalling bumper sticker if you wish. But the money has already changed hands, they profited off you. They just won't in the future.
In the same way, if you like a boycott product (but "you gotta have it" and there are no substitutes), there are acceptable workarounds. 🙂 Buying it used doesn't give them money. eBay, Facebook Marketplace, thrift stores. Or just go without...if you can. Idk how many things we actually, truly need. Choosing to boycott is a personal test of your will, your depth of knowledge, and your creativity.
I quietly boycott things all the damn time, I just don't make a big show about it. I adopt a smaller, simpler life. I also don't go crazy checking every single label at a store, no big corporation is getting rich off of my $13 purchase. I tend to go without, or I buy things that are sooooo so so much better that I almost certainly know have no connection to any dumb shit. The internet is your friend, as are the many small family-owned businesses for your basic needs. 🙂
- they'd surely stop stealing everybody's water for bottling. If it isn't profitable, they wouldn't do it.
  I don't think they would. It's far more likely that they'd "work with" governments to make boycotting their product illegal.
  One example: anti-BDS laws regarding Israeli goods, especially in the US.
  
  I think that applies more to commercial boycotts & inner dealings, idk.
  They can't force you to purchase & drink any bottled water (nor do I recommend drinking bottled water). Especially when alternatives abound. Look at Bud Light, perfect example. The consumer determines what sells & what stays on the shelf. Which, again looking at Bud Light, really hurts the company when the product doesn't move. It's time to Bud Light Nestlé.

Where possible I have ceased purchasing anything from them.
I also try to purchase second hand tech and fix what I have for as long as it makes sense to keep using it.
I dont wear clothes with brands as I dont want to pay a ridiculous price to be a walking advertisement of sweatshop labor where the poor soul got paid fuck all to stick a logo onto some fabric that is sold for the equivalent of a months wages.
I activly call them out on some fake social media accounts just for this to use their ads against them.
There are also many sea excursions to be had. 🦜

I stopped buying Nike after I heard that they responsored Michael Vick after he was found guilty of hosting a dog fighting ring and killing the dogs himself. Was years ago and still refuse

Slave labor = boycott. Child labor = boycott. MAGA = boycott.
- Slave labor = boycott. Child labor = boycott.
  yea... about that...
  I guess you cant use phones anymore. Apple, Samsung, and almost every manufacturer had reports of using underpaid minors in China/India/Vietnam.
  
  It’s difficult. But I try to avoid buying from companies that do this shit when I can, and I try to buy from companies that at least claim they are trying to do something about it.
- I live in the south, and if a small business is pushing their religion or politics to their customers, that's an instant no from me.

When I can, really. You're right it's be nearly impossible to boycott all the shitty brands in the world so instead I do my best to minimize consumption and purchase local, used, or from brands with better reputations.
If it's something possible enough to boycott like Starbucks or McDonald's, sure, but how am I going to entirely boycott the electronics or telecomms companies that have literal monopolies where I live.
As for where I draw the line for disliking a company, I'd say like blatant human rights infringements or if a CEO is saying some shit and the company backs them on it.

I have greatly reduced my consumption, particularly of new products. I've blocked most major socials by DNS in hosts of my PC (lots of japanese businesses still use some as their only way of stating business hours and info and same with updated disaster info, so I don't block on my phone but don't use unless I must). I don't buy from companies who have a record of human rights positions and environmental policies that I disagree with whoever possible.

First of all there's no such thing as ethical consumption under capatilism, however for me being disabled with only food stamps I get little to no options to boycott anything

I made sticker mule delete my account as soon as someone tried to shoot trump and the owner tweeted some shit about "no violence in politics!". fuck that, everything is violence against non whites with trump. and I told them exactly why to delete it, fuck your boss.
same with Jack black, fucking chode.
and anything with "influencers" and scams like PRIME drinks. fuck the Paul brothers too
- Wait, what happened with Jack black?
  
  same shit. his music partner said some shit about she shooter shouldn't miss next time, and jb got all weird and canceled his shows, saying "no violence in politics" bullshit.
  everything trump says is violence, so he gets what he fucking deserves, all the hate. don't act high and mighty because someone finally stood up and took a shot. fuck jb

I haven’t touched Gillette since they decided to disparage their primary customer base, then doubled down on that insult. I’ve even gone so far as to divest myself of many P&G products, since a parent company is ultimately responsible for the bigoted and sexist attitudes used by subsidiaries.
- I'm out of the loop on this one, but comfortable staying that way.

There's a ton of privately owned mid sized companies that you've never heard of that heavily fund the GOP. The Unihleins that own Uline are a prime example. There's thousands of these multi millionaires out there running companies that make things you use everyday that you don't think of. The guy who owns the trucking company that delivers stuff to your grocery store. The contractor that builds the roads you drive on. The company that rebuilds the pumps that run your local water supply and on and on. There's so many of these people out there that you can't avoid them at all.

For me it's a graph where Y is the likelihood that I will boycott and X how easy/convenient it is to find a replacement inversely related to how terrible said company is.
So the worse a company, the harder I will work to find a replacement.
- Have you been able to keep Nestle out of your life?
  
  It's sooo challenging, but I try. Buycott helped for awhile, but I haven't redownloaded since I got a new phone. We typically try to stick to best choice equivalent brands, but I do check the packaging to see if whatever brand is under Nestle.
  The hardest part is convincing my SO to stop eating Stouffer's.

Being a DIYer is a good way to boycott stuff. Scumbag mechanic trying to screw you on the oil change? DIY. Scumbag cloud company, trying to hold your data hostage? DIY, self host or write your own!
Obviously it doesn't work with everything, but for certain things it works really well.
It's really hard to boycott when you've been de-skilled and depend on a service.

I stopped eating grapes for a week when Microsoft discontinued Outlook Express.
- ...why?
  
  It just seemed right shinigamiookamiryuu, it just seemed right.

I've noticed that shitty customer service is where I usually draw the line. And I'm not talking someone rude or the like. But when something shitty happens (company level, not employee level) and I make a complaint or submit a bad review and they either remove my comment or block my account, or some other shit like that. That's when they're blacklisted.

If I had to boycott every company that was unethical or had a piece of shit CEO, I would literally starve to death and die. Every company is fundamentally evil. Better to just go about your day and not try to boycott every company that gets bad PR. You'll drive yourself crazy. And unless you live off the grid and grow 100% of your own food, just forget about it.

When people agree with me

Boycotting as it's often explained is one of those kinds of things I can only imagine myself doing as a last resort. One could say I have, for example, boycotted bananas since both of the major banana companies have a history of exploitation, but that wouldn't necessarily be my mindset if, say, a provider of a tech service had questionable views and someone asked if I was going to use the service (which, at the same time, does not mean I don't condemn the tech service provider).

This is probably a hot take in many circles, but I do not boycott companies.
The purpose of a business is to make money. I do not fault a business for doing something in pursuit of maximizing their money any more than I fault a goat for eating a tin can or a stove for burning my dinner.
I fault our government for not protecting the human rights of the people that business harmed, and I fault the individuals who work in that business for knowingly helping to cause human misery.
The sole exception to this is companies like meta, who have intentionally worked with foreign actors to subvert our democracy. That is treason, and by extension they have made their company an instrument of a foreign power. That entity should be forcibly dissolved and the people in power should be prosecuted under the relevant statutes.
- I'll boycott companies.
  Something being technically legal doesn't necessarily make it moral or OK and whilst I absolutely agree that laws and regulations should be in place to prevent horrible behaviour, it's not reasonable to expect this in every case.
  I'll absolutely make a decision to withdraw my custom if I don't agree that a company is acting appropriately, it's the only power you have as a consumer and the only thing companies care about is getting your money.
  
  Oh legality absolutely does not equate morality, although we obviously work to correlate them as much as possible.
  I will admit, much of my reasoning here is driven by the fact that I live in suburban America, and if I expect to buy literally anything, I buy it from or using a company that does something horrific. It isn't reasonable to boycott based on even something as simple as "don't kill people", because...well I don't have an alternative.

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