"From the WSJ" means something quite different when it's reporting (like the article here), and the opinion page, like what you're linking to. That opinion piece reminds me of nothing more than this comic[0]
That is a terrible take and wholly opinion based - NOT ACTUAL REPORTING, no one including Patagonia is saying don't mine or don't use oil based products. It's utter bullshit. We can use those products but be responsible in how we gather them.
I'm sure you could find some crazy ass on the internet preaching that. Patagonia isn't saying that. Plastic used to improve a product isn't bad, it's bad if it's made and the raw materials are gathered in a environmentally destructive manner. That's EXACTLY what Patagonia is trying to criticize. Environmental destruction as part of their supply chain. Do as little harm as they can and still make the best products they can. I'm not even a patagonia customer (sizes run too small for me) but their history of environmental activism should be celebrated IMO.
They are welcome to use wool and invest in new methods of producing artificial fibers without using oil.
They've had decades to work on this, never did. Let's not forget about the massive catalogs they used to ship out in the 90s, far larger than they needed to be. They were huge because they were so dedicated to putting pretty pictures of people in nature to promote their lifestyle brand. How many thousands of trees died for their catalogs?
While we're talking about how amazingly benevolent and caring they are, what about the workers in the US they laid off when they outsourced their manufacturing? What about the CO2 they introduced into the atmosphere as a result of this decision, courtesy of their products having to be shipped across the world?
This whole reminds me of my former CEO, preaching to the company about equity, meanwhile due to Colorado regulations, we all knew that his salary was 111X that of the average employee there.
The movement can be summarized as this: "I'm really, really, really fucking rich, but don't focus on that. Focus on these terrible people who don't vote like you who do dirty, nasty, bad things people who vote like you don't like. Sure, they're getting screwed by the same people screwing you, but I promise you, your problems are THEIR fault. Now, please protect the planet, I gotta get on my private jet and fly to my chateau in Switzerland."
I'm done with you, clearly you have a bone to pick with Environmental activists or more likely you are a troll trying to get a rise out of people that care about. I never said they were prefect, that's not a requirement to do good now. Yes they laid of workers here but they pay living wages in those outsourced countries. Many of them FAR closer to the raw materials. If fact outsourcing manufacturing has at times been found to be a wash in terms of environmental impacts. Finished products are often much smaller and less impactful to ship than raw materials. I don't know that is the case here but unless you can so prove that it's Environmentally damaging to outsource their product your are spouting bullshit. Beyond that Patagonia sells their products all over the world so no one aside form them has any clue if it's a negative impact or not. Also how do you know they haven't invested in new methods of producing artificial fibers? Also since when do you need to be a materials scientist to care about the environment? Also they use a TON of wool in their products. I've tried to buy their products, they are normally cut in a manner that doesn't work well for me - slim and tapered, often when I wanted it was because of the wool usage as it's a great material for outdoor clothing.
I'm not a troll, and in the early 2000s I worked on renewable energy installations (off-the grid solar and microhydroelectric) and during that time I lived for a 14 months in a self-sustaining, off-the-grid community (left when it got a little cult-y). I did all sorts of green building (primarily cordwood/earth plaster) techniques, and worked for one of the authors of this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Building-Green-Complete-How-Alternati...
He gifted me with a copy as a reviewer back then.
I'm a committed environmentalist, and I've grown deeply skeptical and disgusted with corporate douchebags who live in giant mansions and fly in private jets and pretend to really care about the environment. Haven't you?
It's obviously functioning as a religion-like tool for them to reclaim moral superiority due to a prevalent ideology that makes them feel guilty for their wealth. It lets them continue to keep their money and feel good again. You may disagree, but I'm not being disrespectful to you in any way. "I'm done with you" followed by ad-hominems isn't a productive response.
BTW, I take cold showers daily, keep my house at 65 in winter, turn off AC in summer and use open windows and fans. I drive a Tesla. I don't pretend to be super eco-friendly, but I'm sacrificing more than these posturing executives and board members do. I've met a few very prominent voices in this space, and been in a couple of their homes. They are gluttonous consumers of energy, raw materials, resources, and fossil fuel energy in general. People who live in 20,000 square foot homes should shut up about climate change. They tarnish the entire movement when they open their mouths.
The quip about "living wage" in those countries, paired with no apparent concern for people in your own country is exactly the rationalization made in boardrooms, when everyone knows it was driven by the bottom-line and nothing else. Your rationalization made it sound as if the intention of outsourcing was to help the environment. I think you know this is absurd. They reduced their costs and didn't lower their prices, so they could pocket the difference. Because that's what corporations are designed to do, and the posturing is serving the same purpose via emotional brand marketing for a target demographic.
Most companies are guilty of this, doesn’t make it right.
I’m not saying Pantagonia might not be a better company environmentally than others, just mentioning that I find their usage of plastics in clothing objectionable.
I also do find it hypocritical that they sell plastic products while doing some kind of boycotting of companies producing raw materials for plastics.
Recycling plastic drinking bottles into something useful, like a vest, instead of letting them go in a landfill sounds pretty needed to me. They aren’t creating plastic.
That's not at all the case, none of the companies they refused were in their supply chain. Also that's a ridiculous argument, you use this product that EVERYONE in the world uses and modern society demands, but you don't have the right to criticize it? So mining and petroleum companies are allowed to do what ever they want. I can't advocate for cleaner energy because I drive a gas powered vehicle? I can't work towards renewable electricity because I currently use carbon fuel based electricity (the only kind available to me)? It's absurd and a absolutely absurd argument to lay at Patagonia.
But it’s a great argument if you want to derail a discussion about reform. Instead of talking about reforming mining industry or reducing single use plastic, you can get everything focused on “hypocrisy” and who should be able to criticize and how genuine Patagonia really is. It’s a great argument if you know what it is actually trying to do.
Totally, it's the low hanging fruit of the political discussion. Someone says something that should change, instead of attacking the argument they point and yell look they aren't perfect!!! We can't listen to them.
So, you can’t participate in commerce and criticize or attempt to reform anything about it. Seems ridiculous to me. It seems like using your power and position to attempt to affect change just realistic, rather than some imagined high minded idea that just closing up shop and wandering into the woods is the only way to participate in any system one deems to have unethical aspects of any kind at any level.
What is a responsible way to use oil based products, in the eyes of Patagonia and other moral posers? They refuse to sell apparel to oil companies. The apparel they refuse to sell is created with polyesters made from the the commodity these same oil companies produce.... and people are going to pretend like this isn't objectively hypocritical?
I grew up in an evangelical Christian fundamentalist household. I know what the hypocrisy and nonsensical self-contradictions born of performative ideology looks like. And this, along with the rest of the current "stakeholder capitalism" zeitgeist reeks of it.
I also grew up in a evangelical Christian fundamentalist family (Pentacostal - Church of God with snake handling and speaking in tongues, the whole crazy line of shit), so I feel like I'm pretty aware of that line of hypocrisy. To say that environmental leadership in for-profit companies is ANYTHING like that is lazy cynical bullshit. I can't believe that someone that grew up in that level of shit show could possibly state that, I simply don't understand that AT ALL. Patagonia started and has been a leading member of 1% for the planet, for their website:
donate 1% of annual sales or salary
That's the minimum to be a member. I've done volunteer work with partner orgs and 1% for the planet is a large help for the environment. Tell me again how starting, leading, and donating to that kind of fund is hypocritical? They are committed being as Environmentally sound a company as possible. They make products that are aimed at outdoor and people that care about the environment, their products are huge in hiking, climbing, and fly fishing communities. Sure a large number of people buy their products because of looks or prestige but that has never been their target market. You are talking about a company that actively encourages customers to buy their products used and to reduce/recycle.
To answer your question, which I highly doubt it in good faith, a responsible way to use oil, is to extract it from the environment with the lowest possible risk, placing the planet before profits, and extracting the product in as socially responsible way as possible. Don't drill sensitive areas just because it might be cheaper. Recycle and reuse (Patagonia is one of the best clothing companies actually doing this) as much as possible. Above all else be a responsible steward of the planet and it's environment.
Again I want to be clear, I'm not affiliated with Patagonia in anyway, not an employee nor a customer. What I am is an environmental activist, fly fisher, and outdoor person. To me Patagonia is a model of what an environmentally responsible company should be. I care deeply about climate change and to defeat that we need companies like Patagonia.
I am hitting the paywall. Is there really anything more to this argument than some Patagonia products rely on oil and mining? We are all hypocrites by that standard. There is no way to completely divorce yourself or your business from some of the ills of society. Therefore failing to do so shouldn't mean you lose the ability to criticize those ills.
I have mixed feelings about Patagonia. I think corporations should have high standards and I share a lot of their outspoken values. At the same time however, they do have polyester in almost all clothes which risks ending up in the ocean as micro plastics when washing them. They also according to themselves still use DWR-treatment with fluorocarbons. It's sometimes like they think that publicly recognizing a problem is enough while there are other brands who's already banned all forms of fluorocarbons and don't use polyester or spandex in all their clothes still making less fuzz and bragging about their environmental efforts.
Patagonia's approach perpetually teeters on balancing pragmatism, quality, and environmental values.
If the company doesn't exist, it can't effect change. If a product doesn't perform a top-notch job, people won't buy it. There is a lot rolled into the phrase "Cause no unnecessary harm" [1]; I imagine it is a perpetual internal struggle within Patagonia.
Links to an opinion piece making up a fake controversy using a fake stance the company does not have in a transparent "gotcha" attempt to undermine them. So I guess you apparently can make this stuff up.
Heaven forbid any company try to make anything in the world better by any means, then. I’m sure some clever person can find a way to criticize something about them! They probably make products for (shudder) coastal elites!
A good position to take from Patagonia, especially now after the rebrand to Meta and the change in direction they promised. If everything goes as Zuck is planning, we are in for a mighty bad rid; I hope something will be the stick in Meta's gears for the sake of humanity or that there's a way to stop Zuck's Metaverse phantasizing.
The number of local businesses, from tattoo artists to breweries to coffeeshops to schools, that use Facebook as their only presence on the web is astounding.
I don't like Facebook, and I refuse to use it on moral grounds. But I do want to patronize some of those businesses. Without at least basic knowledge of how to register a domain, build a website, etc... what options really exist for these places, especially at the "totally free" starting point of Facebook? I've often considered building a web app that serves as a non-programmer friendly frontend for a Jekyll blog/website hosted on GitHub Pages, since most of these places don't have super high requirements.
If you want to avoid Facebook the product, this will work. If you want to avoid Facebook the company (now Meta), this will not work because Facebook acquired them in 2012.
> Without at least basic knowledge of how to register a domain, build a website, etc... what options really exist for these places, especially at the "totally free" starting point of Facebook?
Wix? Squarespace? WordPress.com? All of these make purchasing a domain, and building a website very easy for the "average" business owner.
How easy is it to integrate your site on Wix or Squarespace or Wordpress with Google Maps, FB, and Instagram - compared with just having a FB page?
Also - if these business owners are already spending time on FB and Instagram personally - it's less of a stretch to have a page there. Once they have a page - then they need convinced that they need a full-fledged site. And maybe a lot of them actually don't.
People are going with facebook because it’s free, and because you’d “have” to do it anyway, and most importantly because it has a built in audience.
I recently made a website for my personal art projects - i got absolutely zero feedback. I’m sure many friends/family/random people have seen it now - but they’re not liking, sharing, or commenting anywhere that I can see so how am i supposed to feel that was effort well spent? If I made a facebook page, i’d get to see immediately who followed it - who likes it - who comments - etc.
Not to mention every time i put effort into adding content, i’d see some feedback for that.
If facebook is to be toppled, the feedback loop needs to be tightened for off-facebook content
There are hundreds of alternative options to Facebook to host a website on the internet, there's really no excuse to be dependent on Facebook, it is a voluntary choice.
the moat that facebook have with their sheer number of users is their #1 feature. IMHO, this is why certain social networks exist for parts of what facebook offers but none quite encompass the entire breadth.
Just as an example, i have a facebook account with bogus info but i've had it for nearly fifteen years now. Over time, i've used it for chatting with friends, reconnecting with lost ones, buying and selling locally, finding events and even as a local rideshare.
No single platform can do all of this and despite the horrible things facebook does and enables, there is real value in their service.
I think it's a business problem rather than a technical one, how do I get people to even know my website exists? Google Maps, Facebook pages, Instagram are your immediate choices.
I’ve noticed Google maps building out functionality of listings — e.g. deals and news embedded directly in the little pop up when you click on it (at least on mobile). Would hope this might be a viable alternative?
It is better to get some non-abusive Wix-like company to host you, but those have a non-zero start cost (there a re many of them). Looks like a price of zero on a service is only achievable through some customer abuse.
Those exist already really, especially something slick like Wix.
However, one big thing missing is like, free advertising, and communication.
With a website, people have to remember to come back. Or you can try email blasting them(annoying). With Facebook, you can just post your new wares and deals and followers see it in their feed.
Further, something I've noticed in other countries more than here, businesses will actually chat with you on Messenger. No need to email or call, just fire off a message and get a response.
Don't get me wrong, I don't like FB and don't have an account there, but I totally get why businesses do this, even if it costs them business from folks like me and you.
Web hosting is easy. But what Facebook offers is the local advertising. Local businesses really should do both.
Some try to get away without the web page. But even if they have it, they need to get people to visit it. People searching for, say, a coffee shop will find you. But that can't match being shoved into the feed of somebody who says, "Hey, new coffee shop. I should try it."
Facebook, operated properly, is actually a pretty decent way to advertise within your community. It knows where people are and has at least some inkling of who might want a coffee/beer/tattoo.
Facebook isn't operated properly, along dozens of different lines. But a large subset of its users do still use it for that basic way of connecting to other people, including things that they might want but don't yet know about.
Building a website is easy. Squarespace, Wix, Wordpress, all can be used with zero technical knowledge.
Driving targeted local traffic to that website is a different matter. SEO is hard, takes time and money and technical know-how, and is not guaranteed to work. Search ads are expensive. Facebook and Instagram pages work perfectly for these small establishments.
> "Patagonia said it began boycotting Facebook platforms 16 months ago because of its claims that the social network spreads hate speech and misinformation about climate change and politics. Mr. Gellert said the company would continue to withhold its advertising until Facebook makes sure its products can mitigate harm."
Perhaps I'm a cynic, but this reads like 'mood affiliation' and a brand play to me. I doubt Mr. Gellert and Patagonia have a well-thought out perspective on hate speech/misinformation (if they do, please point me to it) and the complexities of even judging what it is and the myriad of considerations for whether/how to manage it. If I were to predict the 'socially conscious' positions they will take, I would guess it will align with those of their customers: higher socioeconomic status, urban, democrat-voting (but not necessarily liberal), college-educated, and mostly white people.
At the end of the day, they are a for-profit company, and want to remain attractive to their core customer base.
The "people over profits" bit is kind of rich, in my opinion. Given that Patagonia products have huge markups and are inaccessible to middle and lower class people due to their price. A big part of their brand is about a social status signal from wearing an upmarket brand. They depend on conspicuous consumption.
I say all this even as a Patagonia customer. I do like their products, but the proselytizing about issues without humility on how they themselves operate and the lack of consideration for the complexities of issues, is all a bit much.
Patagonia could (and used to) make their products in the US, sell them for the same prices, and still make a profit. They don't, and instead chose to outsource their manufacturing to countries where environmental regulations, even if they exist, are seldom enforced.
This is a canonical example of companies who embrace a veneer of social good piety, and under the surface are utterly hypocritical.
Most of the items in the brand are entirely, as you say, social status signals.
This is a PR strategy from Patagonia. And it’s one that will play perfectly to their customer base.
There are a million businesses they could target as bad for the environment. Like, I don’t know, oil companies. Oil companies whose product they use to make their fleece.
Instead they go after a company that is moving to carbon neutrality, why? Because they don’t want to pay for advertising and would rather get free PR from the media, who also hates Facebook.
I'm pretty sure that by targeting recycled materials for many decades, Patagonia has been doing its best to separate itself from petrochemicals. I have a fleece that was given to me in the late 90s that was made from recycled plastic. Still works great.
It is a PR strategy from Patagonia, but not necessarily for sales. For as long as Chouinard is steering the ship, Patagonia's goals are much broader than financial success.
This is actually a much better reason for boycotting than taking on some quixotic initiative based solely on principle (however honorable that may be):
the market has decided that FB is now the poster child for bad business behavior.
That is, it makes financial sense for (some) companies to disengage from the FB brand.
For a company whose business models rely on leveraging social network dynamics to sell more ads, it seems welcomingly ironic that FB should be labeled the social pariah, if even for a short moment in time.
¿Por que no los dos? Fuck fossil fuel AND social media companies. They are toxic for different reasons, and social media companies deliberately fuel polarization which prevents us from making progress on climate or anything else.
So posts the user on a social media site using their smart device or computer, which required incredible amounts fossil fuels to produce, manufacture, and distribute, while using electricity which globally is also predominantly generated via fossil fuels.
Not only that, but I have the audacity to eat food that is grown and transported with machinery powered by fossil fuels, what a hypocrite I am!
Of course, my consumer choices are absolutely negligible and the most significant thing I can do by far is vote and advocate for the climate. Fussing over my consumer choices is penny-wise and pound foolish, and the fossil fuel industry and other polluters bank on convincing consumers that if they just buy the stuff with the faux burlap packaging the climate will be just fine.
Similarly, whether I use Twitter/etc or not won’t move the needle on the harm they do to our democracy. Systemic problems like these aren’t significantly altered by individual choices to partake or abstain—political intervention is required. And of course, comparing HN to Twitter and Facebook is just absurd.
> Fussing over my consumer choices is penny-wise and pound foolish, and the fossil fuel industry and other polluters bank on convincing consumers
And yet, aggregating over the populace, this mindset that "my choices are negligible (it's the non-climate-change-voting populace's consumption that's the problem), and it's penny-wise and pound foolish to focus on my choices" is actually penny-foolish and pound foolish. You (and I) are in fact yet another consumer they've convinced that our choices are "negligible".
If this was a one off event I could see your point of view but Patagonia has a long history of putting their money where there mouth is including donating 1% of all revenues and pretty much alienating about half of their addressable market with stunts like putting “Vote the assholes out” in their tags and suing the federal government to prevent a scale back on designations of federal monuments.
Corporate activism frequently does seem to be a bit about PR but Patagonia is one of the best examples we have of it in practice.
I'm pretty sure "vote the assholes out" is a strategy most of us can get behind. We might disagree about who they are, exactly, but voting for good governance is a widely-shared aspiration.
Patagonia's leadership doesn't seem very competent, they thought covid would be over in a month[1], and turned out to be very wrong. Alienating a huge swath of America by siding with a narrow political spectrum never seemed like a bright business move.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 139 ms ] thread[0] https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/
Plastic shouldn't be used where it isn't needed, e.g. vests.
They've had decades to work on this, never did. Let's not forget about the massive catalogs they used to ship out in the 90s, far larger than they needed to be. They were huge because they were so dedicated to putting pretty pictures of people in nature to promote their lifestyle brand. How many thousands of trees died for their catalogs?
While we're talking about how amazingly benevolent and caring they are, what about the workers in the US they laid off when they outsourced their manufacturing? What about the CO2 they introduced into the atmosphere as a result of this decision, courtesy of their products having to be shipped across the world?
This whole reminds me of my former CEO, preaching to the company about equity, meanwhile due to Colorado regulations, we all knew that his salary was 111X that of the average employee there. The movement can be summarized as this: "I'm really, really, really fucking rich, but don't focus on that. Focus on these terrible people who don't vote like you who do dirty, nasty, bad things people who vote like you don't like. Sure, they're getting screwed by the same people screwing you, but I promise you, your problems are THEIR fault. Now, please protect the planet, I gotta get on my private jet and fly to my chateau in Switzerland."
He gifted me with a copy as a reviewer back then.
I'm a committed environmentalist, and I've grown deeply skeptical and disgusted with corporate douchebags who live in giant mansions and fly in private jets and pretend to really care about the environment. Haven't you?
It's obviously functioning as a religion-like tool for them to reclaim moral superiority due to a prevalent ideology that makes them feel guilty for their wealth. It lets them continue to keep their money and feel good again. You may disagree, but I'm not being disrespectful to you in any way. "I'm done with you" followed by ad-hominems isn't a productive response.
BTW, I take cold showers daily, keep my house at 65 in winter, turn off AC in summer and use open windows and fans. I drive a Tesla. I don't pretend to be super eco-friendly, but I'm sacrificing more than these posturing executives and board members do. I've met a few very prominent voices in this space, and been in a couple of their homes. They are gluttonous consumers of energy, raw materials, resources, and fossil fuel energy in general. People who live in 20,000 square foot homes should shut up about climate change. They tarnish the entire movement when they open their mouths.
The quip about "living wage" in those countries, paired with no apparent concern for people in your own country is exactly the rationalization made in boardrooms, when everyone knows it was driven by the bottom-line and nothing else. Your rationalization made it sound as if the intention of outsourcing was to help the environment. I think you know this is absurd. They reduced their costs and didn't lower their prices, so they could pocket the difference. Because that's what corporations are designed to do, and the posturing is serving the same purpose via emotional brand marketing for a target demographic.
Most companies are guilty of this, doesn’t make it right.
I’m not saying Pantagonia might not be a better company environmentally than others, just mentioning that I find their usage of plastics in clothing objectionable.
I also do find it hypocritical that they sell plastic products while doing some kind of boycotting of companies producing raw materials for plastics.
I grew up in an evangelical Christian fundamentalist household. I know what the hypocrisy and nonsensical self-contradictions born of performative ideology looks like. And this, along with the rest of the current "stakeholder capitalism" zeitgeist reeks of it.
donate 1% of annual sales or salary
That's the minimum to be a member. I've done volunteer work with partner orgs and 1% for the planet is a large help for the environment. Tell me again how starting, leading, and donating to that kind of fund is hypocritical? They are committed being as Environmentally sound a company as possible. They make products that are aimed at outdoor and people that care about the environment, their products are huge in hiking, climbing, and fly fishing communities. Sure a large number of people buy their products because of looks or prestige but that has never been their target market. You are talking about a company that actively encourages customers to buy their products used and to reduce/recycle.
To answer your question, which I highly doubt it in good faith, a responsible way to use oil, is to extract it from the environment with the lowest possible risk, placing the planet before profits, and extracting the product in as socially responsible way as possible. Don't drill sensitive areas just because it might be cheaper. Recycle and reuse (Patagonia is one of the best clothing companies actually doing this) as much as possible. Above all else be a responsible steward of the planet and it's environment.
Some reading on Patagonia's Environmental activism: https://www.onepercentfortheplanet.org/ https://www.patagonia.com/activism/ https://www.patagonia.com/our-footprint/ https://journal.businesstoday.org/bt-online/2018/patagonias-... Here is a duck duck go search for a ton of more resources: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=patagonia+environmental+activism&i...
Again I want to be clear, I'm not affiliated with Patagonia in anyway, not an employee nor a customer. What I am is an environmental activist, fly fisher, and outdoor person. To me Patagonia is a model of what an environmentally responsible company should be. I care deeply about climate change and to defeat that we need companies like Patagonia.
If the company doesn't exist, it can't effect change. If a product doesn't perform a top-notch job, people won't buy it. There is a lot rolled into the phrase "Cause no unnecessary harm" [1]; I imagine it is a perpetual internal struggle within Patagonia.
[1] https://www.patagonia.com/core-values/
[0]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09213...
Links to an opinion piece making up a fake controversy using a fake stance the company does not have in a transparent "gotcha" attempt to undermine them. So I guess you apparently can make this stuff up.
A good position to take from Patagonia, especially now after the rebrand to Meta and the change in direction they promised. If everything goes as Zuck is planning, we are in for a mighty bad rid; I hope something will be the stick in Meta's gears for the sake of humanity or that there's a way to stop Zuck's Metaverse phantasizing.
It's companies cutting ad budgets who were going to do it anyway.
I don't like Facebook, and I refuse to use it on moral grounds. But I do want to patronize some of those businesses. Without at least basic knowledge of how to register a domain, build a website, etc... what options really exist for these places, especially at the "totally free" starting point of Facebook? I've often considered building a web app that serves as a non-programmer friendly frontend for a Jekyll blog/website hosted on GitHub Pages, since most of these places don't have super high requirements.
Wix? Squarespace? WordPress.com? All of these make purchasing a domain, and building a website very easy for the "average" business owner.
Also - if these business owners are already spending time on FB and Instagram personally - it's less of a stretch to have a page there. Once they have a page - then they need convinced that they need a full-fledged site. And maybe a lot of them actually don't.
I recently made a website for my personal art projects - i got absolutely zero feedback. I’m sure many friends/family/random people have seen it now - but they’re not liking, sharing, or commenting anywhere that I can see so how am i supposed to feel that was effort well spent? If I made a facebook page, i’d get to see immediately who followed it - who likes it - who comments - etc.
Not to mention every time i put effort into adding content, i’d see some feedback for that.
If facebook is to be toppled, the feedback loop needs to be tightened for off-facebook content
Just as an example, i have a facebook account with bogus info but i've had it for nearly fifteen years now. Over time, i've used it for chatting with friends, reconnecting with lost ones, buying and selling locally, finding events and even as a local rideshare.
No single platform can do all of this and despite the horrible things facebook does and enables, there is real value in their service.
It is better to get some non-abusive Wix-like company to host you, but those have a non-zero start cost (there a re many of them). Looks like a price of zero on a service is only achievable through some customer abuse.
However, one big thing missing is like, free advertising, and communication.
With a website, people have to remember to come back. Or you can try email blasting them(annoying). With Facebook, you can just post your new wares and deals and followers see it in their feed.
Further, something I've noticed in other countries more than here, businesses will actually chat with you on Messenger. No need to email or call, just fire off a message and get a response.
Don't get me wrong, I don't like FB and don't have an account there, but I totally get why businesses do this, even if it costs them business from folks like me and you.
Some try to get away without the web page. But even if they have it, they need to get people to visit it. People searching for, say, a coffee shop will find you. But that can't match being shoved into the feed of somebody who says, "Hey, new coffee shop. I should try it."
Facebook, operated properly, is actually a pretty decent way to advertise within your community. It knows where people are and has at least some inkling of who might want a coffee/beer/tattoo.
Facebook isn't operated properly, along dozens of different lines. But a large subset of its users do still use it for that basic way of connecting to other people, including things that they might want but don't yet know about.
Driving targeted local traffic to that website is a different matter. SEO is hard, takes time and money and technical know-how, and is not guaranteed to work. Search ads are expensive. Facebook and Instagram pages work perfectly for these small establishments.
Especially since I feel like people visiting are more likely to pull on their map app to find local places to go to.
Perhaps I'm a cynic, but this reads like 'mood affiliation' and a brand play to me. I doubt Mr. Gellert and Patagonia have a well-thought out perspective on hate speech/misinformation (if they do, please point me to it) and the complexities of even judging what it is and the myriad of considerations for whether/how to manage it. If I were to predict the 'socially conscious' positions they will take, I would guess it will align with those of their customers: higher socioeconomic status, urban, democrat-voting (but not necessarily liberal), college-educated, and mostly white people.
At the end of the day, they are a for-profit company, and want to remain attractive to their core customer base.
The "people over profits" bit is kind of rich, in my opinion. Given that Patagonia products have huge markups and are inaccessible to middle and lower class people due to their price. A big part of their brand is about a social status signal from wearing an upmarket brand. They depend on conspicuous consumption.
I say all this even as a Patagonia customer. I do like their products, but the proselytizing about issues without humility on how they themselves operate and the lack of consideration for the complexities of issues, is all a bit much.
Patagonia could (and used to) make their products in the US, sell them for the same prices, and still make a profit. They don't, and instead chose to outsource their manufacturing to countries where environmental regulations, even if they exist, are seldom enforced.
This is a canonical example of companies who embrace a veneer of social good piety, and under the surface are utterly hypocritical.
Most of the items in the brand are entirely, as you say, social status signals.
There are a million businesses they could target as bad for the environment. Like, I don’t know, oil companies. Oil companies whose product they use to make their fleece.
Instead they go after a company that is moving to carbon neutrality, why? Because they don’t want to pay for advertising and would rather get free PR from the media, who also hates Facebook.
It is a PR strategy from Patagonia, but not necessarily for sales. For as long as Chouinard is steering the ship, Patagonia's goals are much broader than financial success.
the market has decided that FB is now the poster child for bad business behavior.
That is, it makes financial sense for (some) companies to disengage from the FB brand.
For a company whose business models rely on leveraging social network dynamics to sell more ads, it seems welcomingly ironic that FB should be labeled the social pariah, if even for a short moment in time.
(let's hope it sticks)
Of course, my consumer choices are absolutely negligible and the most significant thing I can do by far is vote and advocate for the climate. Fussing over my consumer choices is penny-wise and pound foolish, and the fossil fuel industry and other polluters bank on convincing consumers that if they just buy the stuff with the faux burlap packaging the climate will be just fine.
Similarly, whether I use Twitter/etc or not won’t move the needle on the harm they do to our democracy. Systemic problems like these aren’t significantly altered by individual choices to partake or abstain—political intervention is required. And of course, comparing HN to Twitter and Facebook is just absurd.
And yet, aggregating over the populace, this mindset that "my choices are negligible (it's the non-climate-change-voting populace's consumption that's the problem), and it's penny-wise and pound foolish to focus on my choices" is actually penny-foolish and pound foolish. You (and I) are in fact yet another consumer they've convinced that our choices are "negligible".
Corporate activism frequently does seem to be a bit about PR but Patagonia is one of the best examples we have of it in practice.
[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/12/business/patagonia-reopen...