The U.S. boycott remains strong. Why many Canadians are digging in their heels

What about whataboutism?

Brudda, it's a geniune question. The article talks about physical products. I'm wondering how it going on other fronts i.e the non-physical. A real answer would be appreciated instead "I'm on high alert and will interpret any answer I see as malevolence".
- Brudda, it's a geniune question. The article talks about physical products.
  
  It wasn't only tactical whataboutism, it was literal verbatim whataboutism.
  
  That is the very specific method to get me to dismiss you.
  
  I'm wondering how it going on other fronts i.e the non-physical.
  
  No, you're not. You're attempting to undermine the central message of the story.
  
  A real answer would be appreciated instead "I'm on high alert and will interpret any answer I see as malevolence".
  
  Something that you could have looked up. But oh no, you had to deliver a whataboutism turd of a comment.
  
  You're fooling absolutely no one.
  
  Brudda.
  
  What? There's absolutely no way we can interpret intent in this case - this could genuinely be a fair question asked in good faith.
  
  "What about US tech?" could be interpreted a number of ways, from "are Canadians also divesting from US tech?" to "But Canadians aren't divesting from US tech, what about that?". There's no reason to believe this person is going after the latter case here when "ok that's retail, how's tech doing?" is equally likely and imminently reasonable.
  
  I'm fine to get dog piled here but I think you've assumed bad faith where there is no reason to make that assumption, especially after the user attempted to disambiguate in exactly the way I've described.
  
  I'm also curious to see how Canadian usage of American tech companies has changed. I wonder if it got more people to quit Twitter finally.
  
  🙄
  
  You're like the caveman who thought they saw eyes in the bushes only for there to be a clearing behind it.
  
  Stay on high-alert all the time. I'm sure it will do you good.
  
  You're like the caveman who thought they saw eyes in the bushes only for there to be a clearing behind it.Stay on high-alert all the time. I'm sure it will do you good.
  
  Translation:
  
  You're not engaging with my whataboutism on my terms. Whaaaaaaaaaaa!!

What US tech? You mean the tech they buy from south-east Asia and slap their logos on?

While it’s true there’s a lot of that, AWS just dominates the cloud, and many of our own tech companies here in Canada use AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, not because they’re cheap, but because they have good uptime guarantees, security guarantees, easily allow you to deploy worldwide and provide fast access to customers almost everywhere (especially major markets like the EU and Asia), and provides companies access to a large talent pool who know how to use these systems. You’d be hard-pressed, as a business owner and/or CTO, to use other options and handle all those downsides yourself, slowing down your ability to do business. The only other potential non-US alternative here is probably Alibaba, but they’re not even close to being considered competition internationally.

Aside from Apple, the big tech companies down south are big and hard to displace not because of what most people know them for, but because of this large arm of software infrastructure that basically serves as the literal backbone of the consumer-side of the Internet.

And for those who think that we can just build that infrastructure ourselves, take note that these companies have been doing this for at least a decade, and spent billions and probably trillions doing this in the US and abroad. AWS itself claims that between 2011 and 2022, it invested $108.9 billion in USD, just within the US alone, and they have data centres in many parts of the world. Not discouraging anyone, but you have to think about where that kind of money has to come from.

I have stopped paying for US services, my future computers will either be from outside of the US, or used with a clean install of some flavour of Linux. It will be difficult to transition myself away from Apple when the time comes to update my phone or tablet but it will happen eventually, there are plenty of non US phone and tablet makers who do not use iOS or Android. Once Trump burns down the US even more competition will come around.

After reading some more of your replies, I have personally dropped almost all of my US online stuff. Apple still has some to backup my iPhone and iPad but I am trying to get away from that to, it just involves me figuring out what is up with my old Mac and getting sync setup on there and backing up my iPhone and iPad onto sync via my Mac.

I divested from US tech decades before it was cool.

Pepperidge farm remembers! (Is there a famous canadian farm one could use in this meme?)
- Uhh... Probably don't want to use that one.

What about it?

Is this “us tech” in the room with us now?

Yes.

There is likely a device running US software in the room you are in.
- It was a psychiatric question. Zoooom.
  
  I know the joke, but it doesn't really work in contexts where the answer is just "yes."
  
  Hmm did you not see the second half of what you wrote?
It might be listening in an destroying your democracy. It might also just be the tinfoil hat scratching against my ear.

The U.S. boycott remains strong. Why many Canadians are digging in their heels | CBC News