this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2025
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Some French consumers are looking for ways to do without American products to protest President Donald Trump’s policies on Ukraine. But close trading ties and the nature of multinational companies is making it tough to identify which products to boycott.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago

There is an app for boycotting companies complicit in Israels crimes called "No Thanks".

You just have to scan the barcode and it will check it against its database.
It is a pretty straightforward design that should be easy to implement/expand for specifically US products.

As a start many of the companies that are boycott targets for their complicity in Israeli crimes are also US-American or heavily involved with the US.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-google-reinstates-app-boycott-companies

[–] [email protected] 33 points 3 days ago (1 children)

While I wholeheartedly support their idea, one must also note the irony of coordinating action via Facebook.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

They can start by not using Facebook (including Instagram and Whatsapp).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Oh how I’d love to get off WhatsApp…

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm probably on a different part of the world than you are, and I can relate.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

I mean.. technically it’s easy but it’s a choice of cutting a lot of contacts or having to convince a lot of people

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Someone could just point out to them, and any other person looking to identify the origin of a product, this site:

https://madeometer.com/

P.S.: It was made in Denmark πŸ‡©πŸ‡°β€οΈ

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 days ago

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/39212308

Sadly Made O'Meter seems to be basically a wrapper for ChatGPT 4o-mini and the quality of the responses reflects that. It will confidently hallucinate incorrect owners for brands. It's only really reliable for well-known brands that you probably know the origin of anyways

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I just tried it out and it generated some bullshit. Apparently it is AI-powered in too many ways.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago

They also use Google Analytics lol

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The plural of "anecdote" is not "data", I know, but I tried three products (Swedish nicotine pouches, British vitamin supplements, French deodorant) and it got all three perfectly.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

I mean, it kind of is though? It's a handy sentiment, but if you think about it, good data is just a well-curated collection of anecdotes. 🀷

Sorry, bit of a tangent. πŸ˜…

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The first 3 characters of barcodes means the country of origin.It won't tell the nationality of the owner of the factory, but you can see where it was packaged, if there are no other clues it can help. Here is the full list. Basically if the first number is 0, 1 or 2, there is a big chance it's from the us.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago

According to your link

GS1 prefixes do not identify the country of origin for a given product.