How much does a creator's worldview influence whether you use their tech or consume their media?

Goddamn it, I was considering switching to Kagi :(

For context, I am an openly gay man. So far, at least to my knowledge, I am not actively supporting any (openly) bigoted creators/companies. If a service I use, or creator I follow turns out to be like that, the amount of distancing would probably depend on how much I need their content/products.

If a random YouTuber I watch said some offensive shit, I'd probably unsubscribe and stop interacting immediately. (I've done it for way smaller things - my Linus Tech Tips hiatus is still ongoing and will continue until August 2024, even though it literally does nothing and does not matter in the grand scheme of things).

However if Sundar Pichai or the board of Alphabet decided to publicly blurt out some homophobia, I'd have a terrible time un-Googlifying my life. It's possible and I've done it before as an experiment, but honestly it would have to be some serious crap for me to actually go ahead and detach from Google. If it would be some "I believe in traditional marriage" stuff, I'd probably let it pass, but if he went with "kill all fags" I'd probably drop all Google services.

If I were to actually take action against every unethical or bigoted thing out there, I'd severely harm my quality of life, so I definitely have to find a balance, and it's something that changes daily. I definitely put up regularly with a fair amount of transphobia IRL because it's the norm in Romania, but if I took a stance on it I'd alienate most of my family or friends. (Still - I do earnestly believe that trans rights are human rights.) Where I can do it safely, I will avoid and shame any bigotry, but it's hard and scary to do it IRL.

I hate to say "it depends..." but it kinda does.

• How vital is the product in question? You can hate facebook but still need to use whatsapp for work or to keep in touch with family in a lot of places in the world.

• How bad is the creator? Did they make some questionable jokes 20 years ago that they've since apologized for or are they actively showcasing their hatred each and every day?

Honestly I find it pretty hard to distance the art from the artist (or the creator from the product). I think we live in a world where there's so much information out there about people and celebrities and creators and athletes and artists that it's hard to not hear about things unless that individual or company actively goes out of their way to remain out of the spotlight.

Like in sports for example, I've stopped watching/reading anything that's not talking about the game or match itself for fear that I might discover that some of my favorite players are total assholes. Then the sport loses some of its magic when I want my team to do well, but I don't want to cheer on a guy who I think is objectively a piece of shit. I've ended up becoming a lot less interested in individual players and teams as a result of this.

Same with movies, music, or other forms of art. I'll have a hard time enjoying a piece of music when I know that the incredibly talented artist actually beats on his wife, or is racist, or whatever. How can you sympathize with the main character of a show you like when the entire time you're thinking "damn isn't that the actress who thinks my people are beneath her?"

And with tech, if there's an easy alternative, then I'll gladly switch to a company or product that I feel is comparable in utility but without the sour taste that comes from the creator being a shitty person or company. But if no such alternative exists, for one reason or another, then it becomes this spectrum of how valuable this product is to my daily life vs how shitty do I find the company/creator.

It sucks to think this, but I think the best way around this is to simply not know what every creator/company believes in. Not full ostrich-sticking-head-in-sand, but just not actively trying to learn things about the media/products that I enjoy. It's simply too exhausting to have to find ethical and moral alternatives for every single product you use. If you do, I applaud you. And if something is brought to my attention about a product or service or media that I consume, then I'll be forced to internally evaluate it based on those questions from earlier. "Is this something I can ignore? Or is it too fucked up for me to be able to enjoy this thing without feeling shitty/guilty?"

Reminds me of The Good Place, where the conclusion was that the system is rigged against us humans because every action we took ended up supporting some bad thing or another. Like you buy a chocolate bar at the grocery store and whoops, your ethical score just went down because it used child labor/slavery. Found a new website you like? Sign up for it and.... oopsies the creator is a nazi, better luck next time. Just exhausting to have a moral compass in this day and age where information about people, companies, and products are so easy to come by.

Personally, I feel the whole thing is overly consumeristic. We’re raised on such a fundamentally capitalist society, that we think our moral actions are defined by what we buy. Every marketing firm knows this: buy the competition’s product and you’re going to hell, buy our’s and you’re going to heaven. What you buy to eat, what you buy to wear, what you buy to watch, what you buy to listen to are what defines you in this society.

(Imagine, hundreds of years ago you’d have grown your own food and have no way to prove you’re a good person!)

I don’t want to dismiss real people’s feelings. I personally stopped listening to a beloved musician over some of his disturbing comments. But that’s because when I listen to him sing the hurt comes back. It’s a personal problem though, not a morally fulfilling action.

I judge art or tech based on the quality of the product itself, but I judge whether or not I send the creators money for it based on what they would use that money for. If they would use my cash to harm people I care about, promote terrible views, or fund hate groups, I'm less inclined to give them a cent, even if the product is good.

I weigh the convenience or enjoyment I experience against the damage my purchase causes. Even if my contribution is small in the grand scheme, it adds up, and participating makes me uncomfortable. And I try to do my due diligence, even though I live in a society where I cannot consume 100% morally. The bar is loose, it depends on how hard my life is without said product compared to the severity or publicity of the damage it would cause. If the CEO of my underwear company is homophobic, I'd never really know; it doesn't really change my underwear-purchasing habits. Coffee has a history of being sourced via objectionable labor practices, so I'll do a little checking before grabbing a new bag. A luxury item like a book, movie, or videogame being made by a creator who has a massive public presence that they use to spread abhorrent views? I'll pass. I can definitely live without it with minimal impact to my own life, while not financially supporting active suffering.

I try to keep things in perspective and have the discipline to tell myself "no" in the face of wants for the sake of my conscience.

You ask me to draw a line in this discussion, and I'll tell you that it's impossible to do so. Sure, you can make such choices, but I don't think it's possible to make them so that you don't cross a line. At best it'll be a blurry mess of a gray zone, because in my opinion, most of life is just that, and ultimately only you yourself, given time for introspection, will know if you're out of the gray and in the red, or back in the green.

That being said, I do still appreciate the question (in the same way I appreciate your presence here), because it got me to ponder my orb. A few back me and some friends went to grocery shop at a really, really big store (hence framing it as a trip rather as something mundane). In the meat section, me and my friend got into a conversation because they recently stopped consuming cow meat due to concerns over the climat footprint of it and switched to, when eating meat, pretty much only chicken. I privately scoffed at the idea as useless in "the grand scheme of things" but didn't challenge them. They're my friends and I'm really not going to criticize someone trying to do a good thing unless it has some negative effect, which it does not in this case.

Later that night during the shower my mind wandered back to that conversation and connected it to my soap. Strange I know, but that's probably because I'm one of those guys who uses solid (i.e. old-fashioned) soap and even solid toothpaste (comes in pill form and liquifies in your mouth to form the paste) in order to save water. I realized that I'm doing exactly the same thing. My action to buy these items instead of the usual will also not matter "in the grand scheme of things". The actions of individuals will not sway the problems of water scarcity or the climate crisis in any direction. We would need a genuine movement, like when CFC's got phased out of global production. But I fear that our communities are too fractured to come together like this again. Vegans are still laughed at. For some folks, their car is part of their self-identity that they see the need to move towards public transit at the very least in urban environments as an actual personal attack, when the science on it is so clear.

So why the fuck did I buy solid soap?

The truth is, it felt better. It still feels better. I receive my soap in cardboard, no plastic involved, put it in a tiny sisal bag which feels great when rubbing across my skin and the entire process uses less water and likely less emissions because the majority of liquid soap that gets shipped around from A to B is fucking water. I firmly believe that starting to improve where you don't even have to compromise is the best way to get people warmed up to the idea that soon they will have to change and compromise where it hurts. And yet if this got pushed politically I can already see my country's conservative parties foaming at the mouth about the libs wanting to take their liquid soap away and China uses way more water and go fuck yourself.

So it becomes impossible to actually solve any of these issues at scale because all that a party has to say is that there isn't a problem. Because that's easier to believe and because it's easier to change nothing, people flock there.

Boycotting JKR will achieve fucking nothing. As @FluffyKitten pointed out accurately the Kagi criticism is in most cases, blown entirely out of proportion. Ultimately though, if it makes you feel better, do unsubscribe, or stop reading Harry Potter, because you are the ultimate gauge in this situation. Where your gray zone lies is going to be different as to where mine lies. Personally I find it easy to not support JKR anymore because she has not made anything of significance since Harry Potter and believe me if I could have given Terry Pratchett's Alzheimer to her I would have and I would have improved both their legacies because "Beloved children's book author dies to dementia" reads much better as a headline than "beloved children's book author is now a raging bigot" and both of them are worse than the fact that there's now a tombstone somewhere with Pratchett's name on it.

But I can still enjoy Harry Potter as series. Sometimes I still read it. It's good. Flawed, but good. The issues that ultimately resulted in JKR's bigotry are planted there as seeds, but I'm very good at engaging with entertainment and art on the level it wants me to.

Because the consequence of any of these actions is going to be, at best, minimal outside the consequence on your own emotional state, how they affect you is the only thing that matters. A fraction of your cash going to Brave, of which a fraction again mind end up in a homophobe's pocket is not going to change anything. I think you could even make the argument that it will deprive a small company trying to genuinely innovate in a field that has seen zero innovation in a long time of funds that keep it afloat. It could over time have a net negative effect. However, that argument too is so hazy too, that honestly, who cares. If it makes you happy to unsubscribe, do it. If the opposite is true, then stay subscribed. I consider it in the same category as my strange form of self-care with buying solid soaps. Your feelings matter. You all matter. I just wish us leftists would stop trying to devour each other over appearances. Isn't one of the main points of this entire political leaning that what matters is not on the outside?

Edit: I forget words when writing longform stuff sometimes. I have to proof-read and insert them in post. Yes, I'm stupid.

It can influence me, but it takes a hell of a lot more solid evidence of wrongdoing that what I'm seeing diving through the linked kagi stuff. Someone already went into detail on it but I think this is a perfect example of how purposefully misleading and deceitful communities can be in attempting to find cause to be upset. As such should I decide to avoid a creators products or services its certainly going to be after a lot of primary source research, not interpretations of quotes of screenshots and on and on and on.

I had a longer post but it was getting pretty rambling, so I've wiped it out and just left this because I think it's one of the most important things in the modern age. The amount of pointless witch hunting to try and turn people into Monsters when there merely just not perfect/kinda trash is disturbing and dangerous. It's personally extra frustrating because the people doing it so often are SO quick to recognize when "the other side" (whoever that is) is doing it and how totally unacceptable and how they just don't understand the whole story or context or whatever, but will then straight up organize what looks like a classic high school bully/rumor mill the moment they get the chance and attack anyone who points out flaws.

It is hard to come up with hard rules for these things and it is always case by case. In general I would mostly consider who I give money to directly. It becomes somewhat complicated if I had to consider several layers of seperation, like in the Kagi thing where I pay a company for a product and that company pays another company for a product and that company has a CEO with terrible political views. I realize it is sort of a convenient excuse, but in practice I would have to consider literally thousands of companies and individuals if I had to not only consider who I buy things from but also who they buy stuff from. Of course it will all come down to the level of involvement and what the actual issue is.

Artists I am mostly in the camp of separating the art from the artist. I am not ashamed of owning a couple of Burzum CDs, but I don't have any wish to buy his merchandise for example. For dead artists I wouldn't pay it any attention. Not going to boycut Wagner operas just because Hitler liked him.

If I can skip it, I will.

• Unsubscribed from Spotify when they got Joe Rogan
• I no longer read JKR due to her doubling down on transphobia
• Samurai X is one of my top fave animes but I just don't feel the same towards it anymore after learning about the creator being a pedophile

That said, there are too many things to keep track of, so I don't exactly go out of my way to check on the creators of every single piece of media I consume. If I hear about something and it bothers me and I can skip it or switch to something else without too much trouble, I do. (The worse the thing is, the more trouble I'm willing to take to avoid supporting.)

I don't want to help someone profit who has a world view that I abhor. If I am motivated to use their content, used bookstores exist or other alternatives.

I actually quite respect and appreciate past figures who do better than the social norms of their time regarding human dignity even if they don't fully match modern standards. Sadly some are not just typical for their time, but worse but still influential. Looking at you H P Lovecroft, among others. However, if you want to understand a field of knowledge, or an art form, you have to look at who was highly skilled and shaped trends.

Usually very little.

I can't really watch Cosby or Louis CK because it's impossible for me to dissociate their work from their crimes. But I use Google every day, I have an Xbox, and I pay for a subscription of World of Warcraft because, in those cases, it is much easier to focus on something I want very deeply while ignoring a systemic, diffuse lack of ethics.

I could try some tortuous argument which justified my choices, but the reality is much simpler. I'm just weak and not really a good person.

I make a specific point about not getting into any fandoms or look into the people whose product I'm consuming because it's never a good idea.

People on the Internet tend to throw around hyperboles, exaggerate and get frothing-from-mouth angry from very different things. And I really don't want to spend my energy and mental health by digging deeper and checking the facts myself.

It'd be nice to know if someone blamed for, say, homophobia is blamed because they did a shitty edgy tweet 15 years ago or did they publicly say "gays are bad and should be put into conversion therapy" a few weeks ago. But, as said, my mental health won't get any better by digging and finding out.

It can be tricky. I like redneck shit like tools and trucks and guns and metal, so over the years I've sadly had to unfollow several creators who thought their audience would be into their right-wing political bullshit.

• AvE - The faceless Canadian wonder who got me into YouTube to begin with. Sometime in early 2020 he went off the deep end about covid. Fuck that, unfollow.
• Waldo's World - California tech dude who moved into the New England wilderness and started welding and working on trucks and stuff. Became aware of his BS when he started selling "let's go Brandon" shirts, and then the Hitler youth haircut made sense. Ah OK, you're a techbro libertarian - unsubscribed.
• Austin Niemala (sp?) - Built some really cool Toyota trucks very much to my taste, always had a suspicion which was then confirmed when he slipped in some comment about the president (Biden) being a "scam" with a little snicker. No thanks Austin, I'll get plenty of those jabs from my family at Thanksgiving.

Ones that haven't yet met the chopping block:

• Junkyard Digs - No actual idea their political leanings, but it's all Midwestern white dudes drinking Busch Light, so I can guess. The content is usually great, so as long as he keeps whatever politics to himself I'll keep watching.
• Puddin's Fab Shop - He's up front but not in your face about his Christianity, so that's fine. He's an ultra-redneck from Kansas, but seems like a genuinely good person, and can be quite entertaining if you enjoy his Red Green Show type shtick.
• Pole Barn Garage - Another ultra-redneck car guy, his chain-smoking sarcasm is winning. We'll see if he feels safe enough to get political once he gets a little more settled in to his youtube success.

If anyone has similar youtube channels to recommend, please do! Especially for tools, I haven't found anyone who does what AvE does. Probably won't either tbh, his level of specialized engineering knowledge can't be common. Especially not when combined with his bonkers personality.

Mostly not much, but there are exceptions. I wouldn't read Mein Kampf for example. For media creators they usually filter themselves out by not producing things that I'm interested in, but that's more me not being very interested in the content rather than the creator. For platforms such as in the example with kagi i probably just don't know most of the time.

For me, its the extent to which I feel capable without significantly impacting myself in a way that would be detrimental to my well-being. I don't mind switching services or such, I've done a LOT to de-google over the past several years and I think there's arguments to be made that supporting Google is bad in different ways than supporting other companies.

It's also easier to balance the above when considering the extent to which the creator or controlling person seeks to exert their worldview over others. It's one thing to have an opinion, and it's another thing to take your opinion and power and influence and exert it over others. The louder and more obnoxious one is about it, the more it feels like supporting the things they make is supporting another cause. The more proactive they are in pushing their opinion, the more it impacts my first remarks about being a detriment to my own well-being. Musk being the most recent and perfect example of this, he's been channeling all of the support his companies have gotten over the years to proactively pushing his opinion on others well beyond the point any single person should be capable of doing simply because he's so rich. So every dollar you give to any company he has a stake in, you can be assured he's converting a good portion of that dollar towards a message that you disagree with and towards actions you do not support on a larger social scale.

I'd care less about the person who thinks the things Musk thinks but also understands that they have a responsibility not to abuse a special standing to exert inordinate amounts of influence beyond what a single person should have and perhaps understands that as a matter of business it isn't necessarily a good thing to antagonize people with those opinions. Another perspective of that could be that they're seeking to avoid consequence for their unpopular opinions, but I don't care so much that someone is wrong about something, lots of people are wrong about lots of things including myself at times, what I care about is that they can't amplify their disagreeable opinions so much greater than what any other person can. To that extent, any celebrity or noteworthy person deciding to "No comment" political questions or such are people that are potentially respecting the elevated standing they have by not misusing to leverage pushing their agendas. Of course if they remain quiet but then donate tons of money to causes that do the same thing then as the supreme court told me to do, I view their money as speech and in that case they're back to abusing their standing, except this time it's their financial standing rather than their social standing.

You asked about creators and it seems like a lot of people here expanded that to include more things.

I guess I am a hypocrite. How valuable something is to my life directly affects how easy it would be for me to cut it out for bad behaviour and I am great at justifying things to myself.

So to your question, creators aren't that important to me. I enjoy their YouTube channels and podcasts but if I learn any of them are homophobic or racist or anything else that is against my values then they are out. I wouldn't bat an eye.

But I am a hypocrite. I love my Tesla. Elon went full Nazi. But I justify. I already gave Tesla my money. I used to work there. A lot of my friends still work there. Does taking a loss and selling my car punish Elon in some way? Not really.

I have a pretty simple rule of thumb: I don't spend money when it goes to people who are trying to hurt people I care about. That means I didn't see the Ender's Game movie because it would support Orson Scott Card. That means I didn't buy Hogwarts Legacy because it would put money in JK Rowling's pockets. I don't buy books by Chrisopher Rufo or Ben Shapiro.

In an ideal world I would avoid doing business with evil companies as well, but there are some that are simply unavoidable.

The Kagi criticism is interesting, I also am not concerned by the worldview ones. The latter bit about AI is more concerning but I think it's just reflective of what most people will strive to do if they're running a business, trying to respond to market needs, etc. I don't like it (I actually think more people would pay for Bill Gates' search history algorithm than their own; same for Kim Kardashian's, for the right needs) but I understand the need.

This isn't specific to Kagi (I have not researched the founder), but I think it's also difficult to run an authentic business of any kind and to please everyone. The higher you get, the harder you fall. The more you are yourself, the more likely you are to run afoul of others-- to be venerated by most people and deeply known by most people is an impossible task for anyone. It's much easier to build a fantasy when you can fill in the gaps.

More to the point of the thread question, I thought about it and I think on my mind is:

• "Does their worldview seem evident in the thing I am consuming?" I don't have hesitations around Firefox or Brave due to Brandon Eich, as I don't see the relationship. (I don't agree with his views.)
• "Does the value of this rely exclusively on believing this worldview?" I can't think of a better example than a director: Luc Besson. I would have liked to watch his movies but based on his personal life, I don't think I could stomach watching Leon the Professional.
• "Is this a practical line to draw?" I assume a lot of well-known successful people are some kind of problematic (not to diminish it, just a matter of what it takes to get to where they do). I will usually take the products of their work (as long as they didn't make any of their coworkers uncomfortable and people in their personal life are happy). I'm sure there's someone out there pioneering a clean energy breakthrough or something that may be say, anti-choice in all circumstances.
• "Will my consumption feed into their success which feeds into them becoming a personality and not just a credit?" I do think supporting inventors of all kinds is fundamentally different from supporting people who sell their face in some way (like politicians or celebrities or beauty brands). Some exceptions might be for very big tech companies, but even then, I think Elon is the only one for whom I can muster personality-related criticisms. Everyone else in my head is in the sphere of business, tech philosophy (e.g. what do you want your tech to do in this world), or quiet and bland image building (like Zuckerberg).

I have recently cancelled my Kagi subscription. I liked the service but the more I read Vlad's comments the less I want to support him.

The tipping point (big warning, this thread discusses suicide, the first words you see when you click this link may be very confronting) was this feedback thread. It reads to me as if his personal beliefs have an outsized influence on Kagi's decisions and often feels like he's coming up with words to justify his position rather than reasoning his way to a good decision. Also that thread in particular he insists that the request opens up a slippery slope, when no other search engine has slide down the slope that he claims exists.

I'm also bothered by his repeated insistence that Kagi doesn't and won't introduce bias into their results. I find it a bit ridiculous, I don't believe unbiased data is a coherent or realistic concept. As a rule I don't trust people who work in tech who make such claims, this is my major reason for cancelling.

I had a much shorter fuse with Kagi than I normally would. I have been making an effort to de-Google recently and I definitely try not to support obviously unethical businesses or shitty founders, but I think the fact that Kagi's slogan is "humanize the web" made me put up with less. (also, it is quite expensive, that makes it easier to drop too)

Unless it affects their work or their work is tied into themselves as a person I don't really care much.

Well damn. Not an answer to your question but it looks like I'm unsubscribing from Kagi and going back to Google. Unless others have an alternative they recommend?

I have two rules of thumb, which admittedly I will sometimes not limit to just these two.

1. I do not wish to aid anyone in any way if their desire is to hurt me or those I love (hurt being broad, but including without being limited to the attempt to legislate me or mine out of existence.)

2. A good artist tends to invest themselves rather heavily into their art, to the point where my desire to avoid artists is deliberately higher than that of companies or tech figures.

It depends, I try to make the best choices I can, when I can, but acknowledge that I can't always and don't stress so much at, say, the grocery store, where one purchase is truly insignificant. The more direct the harm caused or the more individualized the purchase/support the more it matters.

JK is easy because she's so awful and because she sees the money she makes as proof of support of her. I missed nothing by not playing the video game, etc. Simple choice.

Not shopping at Hobby Lobby is very easy, I have no idea whether Michael's or JoAnn Fabrics are fundamentally better companies but I know Hobby Lobby's deal so I avoid them.

Not buying Nestle, I usually don't think about. My one purchase isn't a big deal but I also don't have the personal energy to figure it out nor know what other products are better.

Everyone has a different line. Plenty of queer people eat Chick-fil-A... I don't. But I'd never had it before learning their owner's beliefs, and I don't really like fried chicken so... it wasn't a huge loss? I'd drop a Patreon that directly supports a person much more quickly than something where a shitty employee worked - though if that employee is running their twitter maybe that'd change my opinion. I mostly just evaluate things individually when I find out stuff. I don't deeply research in advance unless I'm donating to an organization or something.

It's pretty sad, but anecdotally the more exposure I have to a particular creator, the less likely I am to support their work. Having said that, a creator with an abhorrent worldview should not necessarily be completely ignored. We are all constantly growing and changing as people and I know I have made stops at some questionable stations throughout life. I'm sure we all have. And I think it's important to leave open the possibility of forgiveness. If someone has genuinely changed for the better we should lift our boycotts because it rewards the behavior we want to see.

There are also a few different levels of "consumption" to consider. You may choose to not give this person your money. You may choose to not indirectly send money to this person (e.g. ad revenue from watching YouTube). You may choose to not give this person any attention. You may choose to actively work against this person. You may choose to pull support from any who willfully associates with this person. Each of us is responsible for setting our own thresholds and it's not vital that we be consistent. We only have so much bandwidth for researching the ethical implications of every decision we make and evaluating its impact on our own lives.

Here's an incomplete list of my own examples:

• Five years ago I would have considered buying a Tesla. I would not do so today because of what I've learned about Elon Musk.
• I no longer use Spotify because of their association with Joe Rogan.
• I will not support anyone who willfully associates with Alex Jones.
• As a DJ, I have removed all Chris Brown songs from my setlists.
• I've stopped reading Dilbert and no longer buy the desk calendar.

There are others who I have a more nuanced view of. Robert Heinlein, for example, was arguably very much a fascist at some points in his life, but through his work he explores what I believe are important questions and even though, at times, he appears to be advocating for fascism, I often see his failure to support the claim. I view Ayn Rand through a similar lens. I think her stories can be compelling at times (and overly long-winded), but I also think she chooses a convenient philosophical stopping point. If we ask follow-up questions, a lot of holes start to develop.

I tend to be more lenient towards dead creators since it's easier to separate the art from the artist.

Back in the bad old days there were just as many assholes but asshole behavior didn’t spark this kind of moral panic that the social media age has brought. It’s easy to think that kids these days are too easily outraged and their skins are too thin but I think we are seeing a wider generational shift where cultural norms are evolving toward restraint.

Of course this is fueling a quite strong reaction from right wing and traditional culture, but that’s been true forever.

As others have said I treat art and other products different.

For me art depends on its age. Historical artists I try to contextualize in their era. Tolkien is a good example; I still love LoTR but I read it with a modern lens and separate the author from the work. Modern artists I stay away from if they are problematic; I don't listen to Chris Brown.

I've stalled out on reading some books when I learned the author had views I disagreed with. Not really because I thought the art was bad but because the dissonance between the values represented in the books were at such odds with the the author's public statements.

I struggle with a couple musical artists still. Brand New was a favorite band in my teens and have a hard time listening to them now that the lead guy was outed as a serial abuser. I really like Electric Wizard but they've taken such a milquetoast stance on nazis at some of their shows that I can't recommend them to others. I have a similar hang up with "folk Scandinavian music." I like it but I feel disturbed thinking about how ideas around it could be twisted.

For tech/products it's going to depend entirely on economics. If Tim Cook came out as a bigot I'd probably still use Apple products. For smaller businesses where a leader has more cultural sway I'm more inclined to avoid the product.

I try not to support anyone who not only goes against my moral compass, but also would benefit from my purchase or usage of their creation. Unfortunately, in today's world, that's near impossible.

In fact, something I like to point out to people: do you use Amazon in any capacity? For all the Internet's virtue-signalling about how it's run by a billionaire and billionaires shouldn't exist, and how terrible it treats workers... it seems that two-day delivery is too convenient for anyone to give up. In addition, for those using Prime (which would also be the aforementioned with two-day shipping)... I wonder if it's going to turn into a netflix 2.0 situation: the Other Site was saying that when Netflix decided to crack down password sharing, they would lose a TON of users. Well, the Other Site got major egg on its face, so to speak (not that anyone would admit it): a lot of people decided to just make their own separate account anyways, because Netflix is/was just that convenient. Don't know if the subscriber situation has changed recently though.

I don't usually write comments on such themes as I'm not native English speaker and using a bit morenbasic words can get me misunderstood. I will try my best in this comment though.

About where is my line: If web/service/creator is not shoving ideas of LGBTQ-etc. (don't know the acronym as I don't use it much) I'm okay with it. I respect other people, be it gay, trans, whoever. I just expect the same from them - respect me. If I don't get the same respect and the web/service/creator/person keeps shoving their ideals onto me, I go anti-them (anti-gay, anti-tranw, anti-whatever). I believe I'm not racist, homophobe etc. but heavily one-sided view can easily trigger defense mode in me and then I'm not that nice anymore.

It is also the reason why I don't engage in such topics that much.

About creators view on the world: It is kinda obvious that I don't follow creators who are heavily one-sided. I'd rather watch somebody who acknowledges the existence of LGB... and can speak freely (I mean unbiased) about it and respect them. At one point in time I watched a few of Hannah Witton's videos and I think she is (was at the time, I don't follow her) just about right in what I mean.

I follow creators that are completely out of these questions (technical stuff), so it kinda goes around me.