Do founders' political views affect how you see a product?

4 points by rishikeshs 37 days ago | 6 comments

There is a product I really like. Love using it, love tinkering with it, and I buy into the overall vision. Founder has also always been pretty respectful publicly.

But I recently came across some of their political views and now I just feel a bit weird about it. Nothing changed about the product, just how I feel.

Do you separate the product from the founder? Does this change whether you keep using something? Or only if it starts showing up in the product?

Don’t ask what the product is. It doesn’t matter and I’m not going to share.

didgetmaster 34 days ago |

Cancel culture is alive and well. There are many people who will boycott businesses, shun performances, or refuse to associate with someone whose views differ from their own.

This happens even if the product or service has nothing to do with anything political. It must be hard to shop when you feel like you have to investigate the backgrounds of everyone who might have built it.

ok1984 35 days ago |

Of course, you might have the best product in the world, but if you are an a* then I will buy somewhere else even if that means pay more or not use the service at all.

apothegm 36 days ago |

Depends. I prefer not to give money to people who will use that money to achieve political ends that horrify or disgust me. I’m boycotting a select number of companies for that reason.

That said, they’re generally not early stage startups — more typically megacorps whose owners or lobbying arms have sufficient wealth/power/influence to make a meaningful impact that’s harming our economy, democracy, or social order. Sometimes a scale-up whose externalities are particularly destructive.

muzani 35 days ago |

We shouldn't separate them.

Capitalism and democracy is often sold to us under the assumption that humanity is intelligent and can calculate depth.

Let's say Company A makes $100 products but creates 5000 units of pollution. Company B sells their product at $95 but creates 15000 units of pollution.

In this case, the penalty for pollution is built into the free market. Pollution is still necessary, but at what point is it just reckless? But this can only be the case as long as the market is aware of this cost.

"Political opinion" is an umbrella term for something that should be abstracted out. Global warming is a political opinion. People can just have the "opinion" that the pollution doesn't exist. Same for sweatshops, child labor, bribery, corruption, women's rights, and all these other pollution-like effects that damage the world.

Yes, I like my cheap, high quality t-shirts from Bangladesh, and I like the low cost labor that bring me my $0.16 tea bags. I like the water-guzzling, plagiarism machines that write my code for me.

But we have to decide at what point we tolerate these costs and for what output.

johncoltrane 37 days ago |

> Do you separate the product from the founder?

Yes… if the founder does. I don't care on which side of which ring they are as long as they keep me out of their pointless fights.

rishikeshs 37 days ago | |

Interesting! Yeah founder never imposed or brought those into the conversation