It doesn’t effect my decision on what to buy or watch. Like I can’t buy chocolate or just basic groceries without supporting slavery so if some person is a massive asshole it would just be hypocritical to boycott them and not the million worse things that you are basically required to monetarily support just to survive.

I’d probably be more selective if I was rich but I don’t have the time or money to fuss about that.

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

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

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

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

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

Used to watch a lot of sailing channels. One popped up in my feed and I liked that they were essentially noobs, so they detailed their learning experience.

Then one day, they mentioned how they had homeschooled their kids back in Texas because something something trans people are evil.

Unsubbed and marked the channel “do not recommend” in SmartTube.

With some creators, I actively avoid knowing about them. My partner loves celeb gossip, and I don’t. They used to ask me things about my favorite musicians’ personal lives, and I always reminded them that I enjoy the music and I don’t want to know them. That’s harder to commit to these days.

Joss Whedon? I still love Firefly and Buffy and Dollhouse, but I’m pretty crushed that a hero of mine in the “strong female leads” department is such a POS to his actors.

I just finished a months-long movie marathon of our favorites, and we were saddened by how many of those movies are Miramax (Weinstein) productions. Sigh…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s a really hard question for me. It’s mostly a feeling more than a science so it becomes a bit hard to lay it down rationally and I know that doing that will result in weird inconsistencies but if I had to define it, it’s probably these three things.

1. The influence of the author or vibe

I find myself thinking that if I associate a particular piece of art as the vision of a single person rather than a collective work, I tend to be more critical of that art or product. Rationally speaking, I know Kagi is made by more than one person and I know the same to be true of Brave but the fact that I strongly associate both to, in my view, very concrete people whose ideology is very clearly shown in the product, it becomes very hard for me to dissociate the product from supporting that person. Of course, if the vibe of the product or art is off, I just don’t want to indulge with it - it’s essentially an instant turn off. Sometimes it’s just a little thing but it lives rent free in my mind.

2. The timeframe

If the person that has an influence is dead, well, I don’t have a feeling of contribution to something bad and I might overlook that dislike for the author.

3. The need

If I don’t need it and I don’t vibe with the author, well, I won’t buy it. There’s better things out there. On the other hand, if I have no option but to use that product, I might swallow my pride.

It depends. People are allowed to have their own opinions as far as I’m concerned.

If their products are good, I see no reason why I shouldn’t use them. Even if I don’t agree with said opinion.

However, if they are actively making the world a shittier place for others, then I start to have a problem with them.

Like JKR not being pro-trans is just her opinion. And as far as I know, she hasn’t gone on a crusade against anyone yet.

But Blizzard encouraging the sexual harrasment of it’s female employees is a totally different beast. And I didnt feel right keeping supporting them.

But it’s a line everyone has ti figure out for themselves.

If i don’t like their views, and me using their products helps support them, then i’m not using their product. Even if their views aren’t reflected on it and i was able to enjoy it just fine before i found out they’re shitty. I’d rather support someone better (i only do this for things i have a choice in wheter i use or not, obviously).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ever since kagi expressed that they’re not interested in caring about the effect of LLMs on the environment (https://kagifeedback.org/d/2425-would-love-to-see-a-blog-post-about-how-kagi-views-the-environmental-impact-of-ai-and-the-ethics-of-how-llms-are-trained/2), i had already hopped off because i could see their talk about “making the world a more humane place” was just talk. so i’m not really surprised to see this shit unfolding either

i’m surprised to see that the dude who replied on my post is actually the kagi guy, though. that’s surprising, i took him for some q&a support mod lmao

but yea i’m trans so i do my best not to support transphobic (or otherwise bigoted) people. seems like it’s in my best interest y’know. and sometimes i don’t know! i was pretty excited for kagi at first blush, it’s really a shame they’re not worth the time or effort

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

The only thing that’s changed about artists and people in power is that we now know a lot more about their beliefs and personal lives than we used to. One thing that hasn’t changed is that everybody has skeletons in their closet and is the hero in their own story.

As such, and given that I don’t seek out salacious details about people I’ll never meet, so long as their irrelevant-to-the-content/product personal views don’t filter into what they produce, I tend to be unaware of anything else about them.

There are of course exceptions, with Musk being at the top of the list. But as I’m not in an income bracket that would let me avail myself of any of his products, it’s still largely irrelevant.

And the further back you go in someone’s history to find dirt, the more likely they’ve changed. I’d hate to be judged now by some of my early columns in college when I was in my edgy atheist libertarian raver phase, so I’m inclined to give others a pass on adolescent musings.

With more recent stuff, as people let more of their personality into their crafted public personas, it’s not all that difficult to deduce whether their worldview is going to be offensive. But commerce overall is not about whether I’d enjoy grabbing a beer with someone so much as whether their product fulfills a need.

I definitely think people like Roman Polanski need their work to be eclipsed by their crimes. I won’t watch anything by Polanski, he deserves to be remembered primarily as a brutal rapist, his work should not be celebrated.

But Polanski is an extreme example. I’ll still watch and enjoy something like Firefly, for example. Although, learning that Whedon had been kind of a verbally abusive creep, and that Baldwin is kind of a right-wing shithead does kind dampen my enthusiasm for the show in a way I can’t help.

When I watch it I tend to get distracted sometimes by some of the elements that now come off as more obviously sexist than when I first watched it.

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

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