Our dollar is our voice: The ethics of boycotting

Boycotts can be an effective mechanism for making change. But they can also be weaponised or harmful. Here are some tips to ensure your spending aligns with your values.

There I was, strolling through campus as an undergraduate in the 1990s, casually enjoying a KitKat, when I was accosted by a friend who sternly rebuked me for my choice of snack. Didn’t I know that we were boycotting Nestlé? Didn’t I know about all the terrible things Nestlé was doing by aggressively promoting its baby formula in the developing world, thus discouraging natural breastfeeding?  

Well, I did now. And so I took a break from KitKats for many years. Until I discovered the boycott had started and been lifted years before my run-in with my activist friend. As it turned out, a decade prior to my campus encounter, Nestlé had already responded to the boycotters’ concerns and had subsequently signed on to a World Health Organization code that limited the way infant formula could be marketed. So, while my friend was a little behind on the news, it seemed the boycott had worked after all.  

Boycotts are no less popular today. In late 2025, dozens of artists pulled their work from Spotify and thousands of listeners cancelled their accounts after discovering that the company’s CEO, Daniel Ek, invested over 100 million Euros into a German military technology company that is developing artificial intelligence systems. In 2023, Bud Light lost its spot as the top-selling beer in the United States after drinkers boycotted it following a social media promotion involving transgender personality, Dylan Mulvaney. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has been promoting boycotts of Israeli products and companies that support Israel for over a decade, gaining greater momentum since the 2023 war in Gaza. And there are many more. 

As individuals, we may not have the power to rectify many of the great ills we perceive in the world today, but as agents in a capitalist market, we do have power to choose which products and services to buy.

In this regard, our dollar is our voice, and we can choose to use that voice to protest against things we find morally problematic. Some people – like my KitKat-critical friend – also stress that we must take responsibility for where our money flows, and we have an obligation to not support companies that are doing harm in the world. 

However, thinking about whom we support with our purchases puts a significant ethical burden on our shoulders. How should we decide which companies to support and which to avoid? Do we have a responsibility to research every product and every company before handing over our money? How can we be confident that our boycott won’t do more harm than good? 

Buyer beware

Boycotts don’t just impose a cost on us – primarily by depriving us of something we would otherwise purchase – they impose a cost on the producer, so it’s important to be confident that this cost is justified. 

If buying the product would directly support practices that you oppose, such as damaging the environment or employing workers in sweatshops, then a boycott can contribute to preventing those harms. We can also choose to boycott for other reasons, including showing our opposition to a company’s support for a social issue, raising awareness of injustices or protesting the actions of individuals within an organisation. However, if we’re boycotting something that was produced by thousands of people, such as a film, because of the actions of just one person involved, then we might be unfairly imposing a cost on everyone involved, including those who were not involved in the wrongdoing.  

Boycotts can also be used threaten, intimidate or exclude people, such as those directed against minorities, ethnic or religious groups, or against vulnerable peoples. We need to be confident that our boycott will target those responsible for the harms while not impinging on the basic rights or liberties of people who are not involved. 

There are also risks in joining a boycott movement, especially if we feel pressured into doing so or if activists have manipulated the narrative to promote their perspective over alternatives. Take the Spotify boycott, for example. It is true that Spotify’s CEO invested in a military technology company. However, many people claimed that company was supplying weapons to Israel, and that was a key justification for them pulling their support for Spotify. However, Helsing had no contracts with Israel and was, instead, focusing its work on the defence of Ukraine and Europe – a cause that many boycotters might even support.  

Know your enemy

The risk of acting on misinformation or biased perspectives places greater pressure on us to do our own research, and it’s here that we need to consider how much homework we’re actually willing or able to do.  

In the course of writing this article, I delved back into the history of the Nestlé boycott only to find that another group has been encouraging people to avoid Nestle products because it doesn’t believe that the company is conforming to its own revised marketing policies. Even then, uncovering the details and the evidence is not a trivial undertaking. As such, I’m still not entirely sure where I stand on KitKats. 

While we all have an ethical responsibility to act on our values and principles, and make sure that we’re reasonably well informed about the companies and products that we interact with, it’s unreasonable to expect us to do exhaustive research on everything that we buy. That said, if there is reliable information that a company is doing harm, then we have a responsibility to not ignore it and should adjust our purchasing decisions accordingly. 

Boycotts also shouldn’t last for ever; an ethical boycott should aim to make itself redundant. Before blacklisting a company, consider what reasonable measures it could take for you to lift your boycott. That might be ceasing harmful practices, compensating those who were impacted, and/or apologising for harms done. If you set the bar too high, there’s a risk that you’re engaging in the boycott to satisfy your sense of outrage rather than seeking to make the world a better place. And if the company clears the bar, then you should have good reason to drop the boycott. 

Finally, even though a coordinated boycott can be highly effective, be wary of judging others too harshly for their choice to not participate. Different people value different things, and have different budgets regarding how much cost they are willing to bear when considering what they purchase. Informing others about the harms you believe a company is causing is one thing, but browbeating them for not joining a boycott risks tipping over into moralising. 

Boycotts can be a powerful tool for change. But they can also be weaponised or implemented hastily or with malicious intent, so we want to ensure we’re making conscious and ethical decisions for the right reasons. We often lament the lack of power that we have individually to make the world a better place. But if there’s one thing that money is good at, it’s sending a message.