YSK that despite being outside of US jurisdiction, Lego has dropped diversity and inclusion terminology from its annual report
Just a moment...
I know some people are boycotting US businesses during the current administration, but the same mindset has ripple effects here in the EU. In other words: stay vigilant!
It's a sort of anti Brussels effect, I suppose: When fascism has infected the US, it starts spreading everywhere else, too.
My response to this is always...Putin really needs to die
After which someone worse will take his place and continue the same shit
What Russia needs is a fucking revolution full 1917 style where they murder the shit out of all oligarchs and setup a functional democracy
This isn't going anywhere. Climate change will make sure of that.
Removed by Moderator — Modlog
In the context of power and money, absolutely. Although the fascism is being generated beyond the US too: fossil fuel companies are considered to be the main proponents of disinformation to destroy social cohesion against minorities, for example.
While I’m 100% in favor of diversity and inclusion, I think there was a bit of a fever over it in corporate land over the last several years. I also don’t think it actually amounted to a whole lot. I’m not one of those people who got sick of hearing about it, or complained about it, but I’m also not sorry to see most of it go. It doesn’t mean discrimination is back on the menu. It’s hard to describe how much performative crap was happening. Just doing cartwheels to show how inclusive we are. We literally had sensitivity training that told us to stop using the phrase “long time no see,” because some might construe it as a mocking imitation of a Native American stereotype speech. I mean seriously, you can’t tell me it’s either THAT or FASCISM with nothing between.
Everyone needs to remember regardless where they are based out of a multinational corporation is just that multinational. So they will do what they have to do to curry favor with a powerful government for corporate kick backs.
Plus regardless of how wrong it is the the people of the United States told the world what they want when the majority elected these clowns not only by the electrical college but also the popular vote. So companies are going to respond to what they perceive is what their markets want.
I hate it as much as the next human with even a little empathy but it's how the world works right now. Just like with countries, companies don't have morals they have interests. So there is no good or bad companies only whats in their interest at the moment.
So there is no good or bad companies only whats in their interest at the moment.
That's absolutely not true. Just because a company doesn't "have morals" doesn't mean a company isn't immoral. No different than a psychopath not having morals, but us as society being able to judge them for that. You, as a consumer, have a choice on companies you interact with (somewhat, of course). Companies generally seek profit, so yes, capitalism is at fault it the core. But there are companies like:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LifeStraw
vs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_%28drinkware_company%29
Which one is more ethical?
These companies could have broken ties:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_collaboration_with_Nazi_Germany
That being said there's currently a pretty strong rise globally in support for nationalism / fascism / racism / anti-science / religious domination of government and media / genocide. So even companies that seem more local can immediately change their culture to adopt to a shift in power, belief, etc.
Just because interests align with the wellbeing of the public doesnt make a company moral. You back a few years ago and Tesla started by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning to push Electric cars and battery tech and thus would get us off fossil fuels. We all for the most part think of that as a good thing and look at them now.
The problem is companies by design eventually get big enough that the people in them don't truly care of the mission of the company. Most people do what they need to do to keep their job and when you have enough people doing that in the micro where they dont see it as immoral, but it adds up at the maco to some really immoral stuff.
It could be currying favor with Trump. However I also think a lot of companies were only doing this inclusion stuff in the first place behavior it was fashionable or assumed to be a good thing. With that removed, they’re just dropping the pretense.
Grand. That means this thing will probably be a real product within a decade. 😩
Another company that doesn't need to, cow-towing to the cowardly cunt in the White House. Or is it the kitsch Gold House now?
Omg 😂😂😂 ive been calling it the gold leaf house recently
This sucks, my daughter just got into Lego. I guess it's just another evil company I'll be boycotting.
If my daughter wants more Lego, I'll just buy it second hand
Good news: their patent expired, and offbrand lego now fits on Lego, at a third of the price.
The official bricks have a better feel than any of the off-brand versions I've encountered, though. Every other brand is usually too tight, or sometimes too loose. Lego spent a lot of time perfecting the clasping power, and it shows.
Do those companies have DEI policies, or are we just indirectly dinging Lego for having had one in the first place?
Care to share some of these offbrand 1/3 the price lego brands?
Bad news, their patent expired and they in turn, trademarked the bricks. They sue everyone under trademark now, instead of patent infringement.
I bought a bunch of minifigs off Amazon sold as "cake toppers" to escape notice.
This isn't a great look, but calling Lego "evil" is a bit of a stretch. This was one report that has no bearing on how they run their company or how they interact with their customers.
They still support and promote diversity in their products, which is where it matters.
No, it's not. Lego has been bullying local distributors of other brick systems (e. g. CADA) by issuing patent claims, knowing very very well that those claims are false and the patents have expired long ago.
However, customs has to hold and store the shipping containers until the court settles, and they charge for it. A lot. This forces small shops (down to your local mom&pop toy store) to pay for customs storage fees, for weeks, sometimes months. These costs are high enough to force small shops out of business, mind you.
Along with the declining quality of the sets and the increasing cost, Lego is very well a shitty company.
You might have a point. It's only one document that they decided not to mention DEI related words in dispite using it 7 times in the same document the previous year.
However, I've been on the fence about even buying Lego for my daughter. The fact is that they sell a product entirely made from plastic, it doesn't matter that they use paper bags now to contain their plastic. This is the modern day equivalent of buying your children toys made with asbestos or lead. These products make our children and planet less healthy in ways we aren't fully sure yet.
Maybe they aren't evil. But they also seem to be far from innocent.
I think I'll still stick to buying second hand if at all.
I'd agree "evil" might be hyperbolic, but it's not like Legos are made out of bamboo or aluminum, either.
If my daughter wants more Lego, I'll just buy it second hand
That's where most of the sets my kids had came from.
It's a durable product that is easy to clean. Buying used is very low risk.
Imo the title falsely implies that Lego not being a US company means they are completely independent and unaffected by US actions.
Lego presumably does substantial business in the US and thus is beholden to US jurisdiction and the whims of Trump to some degree. Them dropping diversity and inclusion from their reports just shows their priorities. However on that note Lego still being family owned lets us pin this decision more squarely on some particular individuals, rather than the usual vague mass of shareholders.
Damn. You’re right. I actually thought my title implied that connection, but I can see how it works the opposite way too. I’m not sure how to phrase it without editorialising too much / posting opinion as fact. I’m open to suggestions.
Most companies with specific dei reporting in my country started because of political pressure via us investors to begin with.
HR is a scam - if you've an issue go to your union rep instead, that's why we have them. If you live in a country w/o them, get some.
Profits before ethics.
Shame, I expected better of them.
LEGO: No guns
STAR WARS: These are blasters
LEGO: OK. Give us the money.
I think they've reached the point of being a huge corporation where they no longer have any morals beyond whatever makes them money. They sell pride sets when acceptance is profitable, and now they're cool with giving JK Rowling money to hurt trans people if it means they'll see a few bucks from it.
The oligarchy transcends borders
That's what they are doing. I am amazed that no one from outside has yet pointed finger and warned about Heritage Foundation's attempt to influence Europe. They want to see the world burn, literally.
Heritage Foundation is a terrorist organisation and should be treated as such.
money is fungible
If they suddenly care what Americans think they should just go ahead and rename the system “legos”.
😂
Corporations are not our friend. They love money above all. And they constently need to make more money. And. And more. How much money is enough? More.
As "woke" has died in the U.S., the spiritual guide of the western world (🤮), companies are fast to follow their lead.
Honestly it is quite bizarre that despite everything people still believe capitalism can save us, when it is evident that it can only kill us and while it is at it will take most life on earth with it.
Time to wake the fuck up and kill capitalism.
Capitalism was a failed experiment that should have ended in the 1920s but it served certain people well to keep it going, so they popped it up, rather than letting it die. So now we have this stupid hybrid system where it's capitalism, but only until capitalism fails. Then suddenly it's socialism time, but only for businesses, until they feel like they can cope again.
It's megacorporations that rule law and decide, we are since years back in a hyper capitalist suicid extinction event. Those who do the bidding of any megacorp today are cells of a demonic post human entity and wish upon humanity death. Surely somehow we can wake people back, land on Earth again, travel and eat without carbon dioxide so that the taiga can avoid being set ablaze in a few years and our doom sealed to forever. We have to stop avoiding the speciecide class war culture that decides fantastic and impossible idioms that you must follow, like eat milk and meat to grow or that you must give up your values to a hypnosis machine or several, or maybe if only you give the firm more than the required wake hours so that you can buy a fucking insane metal monstrosity to travel inside that weighs several tonnes, because it is safer apparently to accelerate a several ton air conditioning human payload missile to hundreds of kilometers per hour and then measure how many second that took as the variable that should stimulated your geniala slightly more, than to travel together with strangers coated in god knows what pathogens? We cannot help but form a mass psychosis ever since media trained zealots are allowed to serve children corporate propaganda on a regular basis. No lobbyists that serve nature, or humanity are allowed in the death chambers high command. Only the most vile homicide designers on the planet are psycopathic and dominant enough to work actively on the slaughter of our entire species yet nobody rise from the sofa to stop them as if that was the plan all along; to just lobotomize the cattle so the machine gets it easier with the grinding of swaths of human collectives, cultures being unmade and live on as bonemeal for the ultimate end of their offspring, no say in life or death equal.
I agree. I think our biggest fuck up is thinking we own the place and do whatever without any consequences. Disgusting.
And I think a big part of the problem is the psychology of group behaviour compared to individual behaviour. We can be far less moral in groups, by compartmentalising morality onto “someone else” in the group. I’m not sure that any other system can help us address that aspect of group psychology.
Humans being social animals surely does play a big factor into controlling us, thats for sure.
While this is true of public companies privately held companies have more flexibility.
If the Kristiansens wanted to they could direct the firm to be more inclusive. In this case it's not "the company" making the choice, it's the Kristiansen family and you can point directly to their need for money.
Not buying from companies that bow to MAGA racism.
Also, I'm still waiting for bricks made from recycled plastic rather than new oil.
I am not trying to invalidate your comment, but saying that is like trying to boycott goods and services from China.
I haven't heard of China having DEI programs, so I doubt MAGA racism is part of US-China trade talks.
Really Denmark?
Fuck Lego. What does the k'nex annual report say?
K’nex appear to be owned by “Basic Fun!”, a U.S. company. Unlike LEGO I can’t find any social obligations that they’ve committed to in the past. https://www.basicfun.com/about/
Welp, fuck Lego too I guess. I hope at least some of their fans vote with their wallet and choose new hobbies a little less supportive of fascism.
As if I could afford any to begin with.
That would be assuming most corporations care about idealogies.
LEGO would sell their toys in Nazi countries simply to make money. Like any other corp, that's the one and only thing that matters.
Anyway, knock-off LEGO has become just as good as the real thing these days, but significantly cheaper to buy. Perhaps better, since knock-offs often have colours LEGO doesn't.
Accenture is an Irish consultancy firm that did the same.
Is it actually an Irish company, or just one of those Irish companies in the same way Apple is an Irish company?
It's a global conglomerate
You’re right: https://diversity.com/post/accenture-dei-rollback-2025
It’s a similar timeline too (~2025). I honestly think it’s very pathetic of them to stoop so low for the “Yankee dollar” (or any other trade relationship).
Well, their products were overpriced anyways, also still selling wizard legos...
The wizard lego is very disappointing, and goes completely against their other inclusive language. As for pricing, I'm not sure since quality is top tier. But I suppose the profits will tell us just how much room they have to lower their prices.
well their patent dropped so you can buy "lego" pieces from china. If you are not a rich collector just go and buy 10k pieces from china for 20 bucks. Your kids won't mind.
Or 3d print them, it works too but it's more expensive
Their patents dropped ages ago, I got fake lego 100% compatible with the real one in the nineties, since my parents were poor.
I was about to ask what you meants with wizard lego.. but I assume you mean that they make Harry Potter ones?
Yep.
Fucking cowards.
Give it a couple more years and they'll be making Noah's Ark and Golgotha play sets. Oligarchs have no shame about virtue signaling to whoever holds the brass ring.
Noah's Ark
I think that would be cool.
I'd prefer a Marx revolution set.
What's the US have to do with it?
China doesn't have DIE, despite Blackrock heavily investing in China.
Blackrock requires it everywhere else they invest, except China.
As do the European sovereign funds.
It’s a 180° u-turn on their statements just a year or two ago. The timing is interesting from that point of view. USA is also their largest market. And while LEGO is a privately held company, they likely have US investors too. In other words, I don’t see any other motivation for the shift than the political climate in the U.S.
China doesn't have DIE
So that's how they have such a large population!
Lego is an anti-family company.
They didn't change. They just don't pretend any more.
lego is a really shitty company even if it weren't for this. support different brands that are even way better and way cheaper
I’m actually pretty clueless about them, which is why this article surprised me so much. It sounds like they at least say the right things about diversity and fairness, but I have no idea what to think https://omnitalk.blog/2025/04/18/lego-quietly-scales-back-dei-language-in-latest-report-while-maintaining-gender-metrics/
I do want to learn though. Being an ethical consumer is one of the few things we can really do to contribute to society.
As if I would care what’s included and not in an annual report. Stop acting as this is the only thing which is wrong in any given company. How about you just boycott everything, starting with the manufacturer of the device you are currently using. Hypocrites.
Even though I have reservations about US-style DEI initiatives (I'd much prefer France's way of not recording ethnicity, race, religion etc), I do find Trump admin's policies to be beyond absurd and stupid of just nuking everything.
The good news though is that fascists typically shoot themselves on the foot and end up destroying themselves because their decisions are based on emotions. There is quite literally neither rhyme nor reason. If one reads into Nazi and fascist policies and institutions, they don't make any sense whatsoever. Nazi Germany was actually on the brink of self-made bankruptcy by excessive overspending, until Hitler declared war to delay the inevitable by plundering the resources of Europe. Eventually, American fascism will just end up eating itself.
The problem with France s approach (as I understand it) is that by not recording ethnicity data, employers have free rein to discriminate if the persons background becomes known to them during the hiring process. Discrimination is rife because of this and they lack sufficient data and regulations to tackle it.
Studies have been carried out which send crafted resumes of different ethnicities to employers to assess callback rates. https://www.povertyactionlab.org/evaluation/discrimination-hiring-and-anonymous-cvs-france-cv-anonymes
I hope you’re right about US fascism. But while the U.S. President is an impulsive man child, his puppeteers are a lot smarter and more committed. We also have greater wealth inequality compared to WWII giving these guys a bigger advantage this time.
It might be more difficult to dismantle US fascism because it is oligarchic technofascism, than old school fascism. However, if there is one thing that is proven, is that eventually people rise up. Time and time again, those who come to power become too corrupt to be palatable. This has been observed since Plato's time.
I'm not certain having data on people's ethnicity is helping at all with discrimination on hiring.
There is very strict laws in France against discrimination as well. The problem isn't that there isn't ethnic data, the problem is that it's really hard to prove that a candidate was rejected because of their ethnicity.
I'd be happy to be proven wrong though.
One issue is, while there's a light at the end of the tunnel, many won't be able to reach it.
Other is that DEI also includes education material for HR, and in my country (Hungary), where it's frowned upon by the state, often ableist and racist pieces of shits manage to get there. Someone acts a bit like an autistic person? They probably only got there where they are thanks to their mom sleeping with teachers and such, otherwise they likely have some severe intellectual disability and cant even count to ten. Someone has a darker skin? First they're dumb, second they steal. And any counter to it is bad, because it's a human right to have an opinion on something, even if it's wrong, and even if said people act out on that wrong opinion. If they're cishet white christian men with an able body that's all. Everyone else have to follow those opinions, even if they're wrong, because those men built "western civilization".
I always thought that the solution to sexism and racism in the workplace isn't necessarily forcing sexism and racism in the other direction, but rather by eliminating it entirely by demolishing all workplaces
Enough of skin tone mini figures, make everyone yellow again.
Buy Cobi, they're a company from Poland producing their bricks in Poland. And they have tanks.
No shit. There's a New World Mafia.
Definitely a much more evil company than all the others still doing it purely out of fear of being bullied into bankruptcy otherwise.
From my European point of view, this whole thing looks like keeping shoes on indoors - mostly only done by Americans, and even there, most people think it’s stupid.
Shoes indoors are certainly stupid. I don't even bring my work shoes home due to the types of places I walk through during a shift. No shoes in my American home.
Guess it wasn't profitable enough
Well, no one has ever accused the Danish of having a spine.
There's 2 things in this world that I hate. Intolerance for other people and the Danes.
Why does Thorfinn speak in broken English while Sasappis doesn't? Neither encountered it in their lifetimes, and both have been exposed to it for hundreds of years now.
God I love Austin Powers.
https://youtu.be/zcUs5X9glCc
Took me a minute
As a Dane who's also a big fan of Thorfinn, I am vexed. VEXED, I tell you!
(Also, amused that the viking and the hippie are dating, given my username 😁)
Don't talk with your mouth full!
😂
The Dutch. The Danes have enough having to speak Danish, no need to pile on them!
But we're talking about Lego, which is from Denmark. Correcting the quote is at expanse of the joke/relevance.