TL;DR
Boycotts are the single easiest thing at our disposal to hit back.
A good chunk of people do it for products (and it works) but with Big Tech people often feel powerless — or don’t realise they’re supporting them if they’re not paying in cash.
The good news: it’s relatively easy. We’ll show you how.
(Yes, you can click a button, feel morally superior, and sleep like a baby. Enjoy it.)
In practice
- • cancel the sub
- • remove the default
- • block the hooks
- • pay creators directly
- • tell one person
What a boycott is (and isn’t)
Is
- Withdrawing fuel: money, attention, data, habit.
- A practical switch you can actually sustain.
- A signal that spreads through copying.
Isn’t
- Perfection. You don’t have to delete everything overnight.
- A moral purity contest.
- Resignation dressed up as wisdom.
Why boycotts rock
A lot of us feel powerless at the moment, but the good news is we are all sitting on one real power to impact change — and it is so easy you don’t even need to leave the house.
Whether it be your money or your attention and habits, we all have the power to cut this off for brands who do not match our values or our ethics.
And in 2026, that has an impact, because the modern economy runs on repeat behaviour (have you noticed how hard it is to buy things anymore? everything has to have a subscription):
- daily purchases
- subscriptions
- ad impressions
- app logins
So when people stop paying, stop opening, stop defaulting… companies will react, not because they want to “do better” but because they will have to.
Whilst a lot of people may (wrongly) suggest it’s pointless, or argue “what difference can one person make?” Boycotts are proven to work — and we’ll keep stacking proof here.
Why boycotts work best now
Because the machine is built on defaults.
Most people aren’t “loyal customers”. They’re sleepwalking:
- same app opens first
- same search engine
- same platform gets the spend
- same subscription renews
“I’m not debating you. I’m leaving you.”
Do boycotts work?
Historic scale
From South Africa to “don’t buy X” culture, boycotting became normal behaviour.
add citationRecent pressure
Modern campaigns still move outcomes when there’s sustained cost (partners, PR, revenue).
add citationDigital leverage
With Big Tech, “boycott” includes withholding attention + data, not just money.
See the ladder →Why Big Tech boycotts feel impossible
A certain section of society are great at switching out things they buy. Digital services from our omnipresent tech-lord scumbags can feel like a taller order.
In a world with loads of viable search engines, email providers and messaging options… why are you still defaulting to the same handful?
We get that some ecosystems are harder to leave than others — but we have methods and means to remove, or even just limit our usage and dependence.
Ultimately, we used to live a life not under the thumb of a handful of unethical American tech companies — and it’s really not that hard to do so again if you want to.
The Distraction Rebellion takeaway
If you want to hit Big Tech, boycotting isn’t just refusing to buy. It’s refusing to feed it:
- your attention
- your data
- your daily habit
EXIT IS THE BOYCOTT.
Our approach: deletion → limitation
Boycott Ladder levels
- Attention boycott (feeds, autoplay, notifications)
- Data boycott (tracking, permissions, ad personalisation)
- Money boycott (subs + marketplaces)
- Parallel systems (run both)
- Exit + pull-through (move your group)
What to do next
- Pick one company you “default” to.
- Climb one rung this week.
- Tell one person what you changed.
- Repeat until it’s normal.
Pick one company. Climb one rung. Tell one person.
Join the Rebellion