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Many of us try to make ethical choices every day. That might be buying cruelty-free soap. It might mean skipping a brand embroiled in a child labour scandal. We may share information about which coffee companies to avoid. In small, symbolic ways, we stake a claim: I do not support injustice.

But the deeper we look into it, the harder it gets. It’s one thing to avoid a scoop of ice cream. Quite another to reconsider the smartphone we text on, the laptop we work from, the cloud that stores our family photos.

In reality, injustice doesn’t only live in glossy advertising, but also in the circuitry, the cobalt, the code. And that raises a difficult question: what do our boycotts really boycott?

In truth, we live in a world where the tools of everyday life are deeply entangled with global power, surveillance, war, and extraction. The devices we use, the platforms we rely on, the chips that drive innovation — all of it is embedded in supply chains and economic structures that are anything but clean.

Yet most of us, even the most committed, don’t think twice about logging on. Some would say this isn’t hypocrisy but survival. You can avoid a fizzy drink, but you can’t easily opt out of technology. Not if you want to participate in modern life, or if your job, education, social world, or even your activism depends on being connected.

This is the quiet truth behind many ethical movements. We may be sincere, but we are also selective. Often, we target the things that are easiest to give up: those things that we can live without.

There may be no shame in that, but it remains a challenge. If we’re serious about justice, we need to be serious about where injustice hides. Not just in boardrooms and branding, but in the invisible infrastructure of our daily lives.

What might a truly ethical tech ecosystem look like? It would begin with transparency: open hardware, with auditable supply chains. Labour protections. Resistance to surveillance. Systems built for people, not just profit. It wouldn’t be sleek and might not be fast, but it would be more honest.

However, that’s nearly impossible to achieve. Until then, we must lean to live with this tension. While we may keep on making small choices, we must stay awake to their limits. For ethical consumption isn’t just about where you shop, but about how far you’re willing to see.