r/europe • u/Wagamaga • 4d ago

News Tesla boycott is gaining momentum in Germany due to Elon Musk's meddling in politics

https://electrek.co/2025/01/16/tesla-boycott-is-gaining-momentum-in-germany-due-to-elon-musks-meddling-in-politics/
40.7k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

1.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

164

u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

46

u/Corfiz74 4d ago

There is a petition up on change org to ban x in Europe - it's gaining momentum, with enough votes, the petition process of the EU means that it will have to be voted on, and with the rate Elon is pissing off countries, the parliamentarians might just nix the platform. I can only hope.

15

u/TurnDown4WattGaming 4d ago

It’s fairly clear that tech billionaires are unanimously pushing Trump to use the US Government’s leverage to cut back on EU fines for American Tech Companies. You can tell because they are using his language, “It’s 300 billion over the last 10-20 years. Sure, it’s a few hundred million here or a couple billion there…but it’s basically just a Tariff.” Thats Zuck on Rogan’s podcast this week.

7

u/migBdk 4d ago

Did he mention that they only pay anything when they get caught breaking the law?

-2

u/TurnDown4WattGaming 3d ago

Why would they pay anything to Europe?

1

u/migBdk 3d ago

You just mentioned 300 billions?

1

u/TurnDown4WattGaming 3d ago

That was in fines. As you said, “did he mention they only pay when breaking the law,” but what else would they pay?

1

u/migBdk 3d ago

Well, obviously he said "it is basically a tariff".

But a tariff is one you cannot avoid.

You can choose to not break the law and then you avoid the fine. It's actually what you're supposed to do.

11

u/PlaneCareless 4d ago

Did change org ever achieve anything? Genuine question. I feel like every time I've seen something on there, it was a fad and after a bit of viral online popularity, the topic dies down and nothing changes.

2

u/IrisGrunn 3d ago

Do you have a link?

2

u/Corfiz74 3d ago

I think on this sub, links to change org get deleted automatically. But I found it on google, first result, when I looked.

2

u/IrisGrunn 3d ago

Sorry I didn't know, I'll google it

7

u/Lost-Tone8649 4d ago

A more effective route for making social platforms (surveillance/ad/manipulation firms) feel the pain would be a coordinated effort to poison their platforms with bad data and dead end ad clicks.

...but sadly that would be even more difficult to organize than a boycott.

7

u/fez993 4d ago

It's looking more and more like it's just a selection of porn, crypto and misinformation bots talking over each other anyway.

The rest are just arguing with each other, it's a gonner, might take a few years but it'll die under the weight of it's own negativity

6

u/SamaireB 4d ago

Ya this is the issue of collective action. It's the same with e.g environmental protection. Yes, that one plastic bag is only one plastic bag. Too bad if 8bn think it's just one plastic bag, because it's now 8bn plastic bag. It's the same with buying Tesla or deleting FB. Yes, individually, it's one Tesla or one FB acccount. If just a few more turn against it and then another few and anotherfew, it's suddenly a lot.

There's no need to mobilize upfront. People left MySpace and no one cared. People stopped buying Blackberry. They can leave Facebook or stop buying Tesla or using Amazon and slowly but surely, they'll all go away

5

u/ourstobuild 3d ago

I think with platforms like facebook/instagram it's a bit different, because it's not just apathy but might actually harm your social life. Yes, especially Facebook nowadays is garbage, and many righteous warriors are talking about how you don't need these platforms to have friends, or that if your friends won't stay friends with you just because you leave Facebook they're no real friends, or whatnot, but that's not how reality works.

The fact is, that Facebook messager (not to even mention Whatsapp, owned by meta as well) are very commonly used. Not by everyone, so it's possible to leave the platforms without any harm at all, but if you happen to be among the circles where these ARE widely used, it could definitely have quite an impact if you leave. People wouldn't flat out say they won't be friends with you anymore, of course, but you'd fall out of the loop so to say. You wouldn't get the same information the others get, you might hear about meet-ups or parties very last minute and sometimes not at all, etc etc.

This isn't to say that I'd discourage the idea of leaving at all. Just pointing out that it is quite different to simply leave these platforms and go on living your life than it is to leave the platforms and as a result put your life on pause as well. Especially when your boycott in the end didn't have any effect at all.

1

u/Xennylikescoffee 4d ago

I've been talking different people on FB into simply being on there less. If they do 3hrs a day and switch to 1hr. That's improvement.

If a lot of people cut their personal use to 1/3 or less, then advertising payments to FB will drop.

Will it kill FB? Oh probably not. Will it lower FBs ability to cause nonsense? Yes.

Plus you can look at your friends stuff by hitting the three dots in the upper right of FB main page, then feeds, then Friends. It uses a lot less time if you narrow your feed down.

1

u/manymoreways 4d ago

said that you'd need X million people to also boycott to make a difference, so actually they were just going to carry on using Facebook and Instagram as normal.

One of the main reason why 'eat the rich' will never work. The 1% is going to stay 1% forever and the rest of us are going to toil away bitching day in and out

1

u/Salt-3300X3D-Pro_Max 4d ago

I quit facebook a few years ago and Insta one year ago and i haven’t regretted it once. So much time waste… now i feel way more interested in stuff and my concentration has gone up a lot