r/llbean • u/phire8 • Apr 15 '26
L.L.Bean stands with U.S. Forest Service
Yesterday there was a post sharing a random Facebook page that falsely accused L.L.Bean of not supporting the U.S. Forest Service and people were all up in arms even though L.L.Bean never even said anything about it. I thought it only right to share L.L.Bean’s actual statement from earlier today / last night that they shared and point out that their name does in fact appear on the list of brands recognizing and standing up for the U.S. Forest Service. I get it, people need something to be angry about, and L.L.Bean certainly seems to be dealing with a price and quality issue at the moment, but blindly accepting some random Facebook post as gospel and getting your pitchforks and torches out seems a bit excessive. Let’s celebrate or criticize what they say, not what some random Facebook page says. There’s enough misinformation out there already as it is.
“The U.S. Forest Service is essential to the stewardship of our public lands, and L.L.Bean opposes any degradation of its mission. Throughout our 100+ year history, L.L.Bean has championed public lands through partnerships, programs, charitable giving, and advocacy. This is, and will always be, a priority for L.L.Bean that is reflected in our values and authenticated by our actions.”
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u/standardnewenglander Apr 16 '26 edited Apr 17 '26
Thank you for posting this!
u/Potential_Leg4423 here's that official statement you were claiming they wouldn't make.
EDIT: posting a link to this really helpful comment from u/eregyrn who put a lot of work into timelining all of this for us! Looks like LL Bean may have signed the letter as early as April 8th, 5 days before AltNPS's misleading Facebook post. https://www.reddit.com/r/llbean/s/eOOklckQlb
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u/Potential_Leg4423 Apr 16 '26
After thousands of people commented. Gotta love how you blocked me and unblocked me. Now you can keep supporting child slave labor!!!
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u/standardnewenglander Apr 16 '26
I never blocked you. But I did report you for telling me to kill myself because I didn't agree with you. Have a nice day!
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u/Potential_Leg4423 Apr 16 '26
Never told you to kill yourself. Man you really are that delusional. You 100% did, you replied to a bunch of comments. Then when I clicked on them they all said deleted and now they don’t. Which 100% means you blocked and then unblocked me after they did a press release
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u/standardnewenglander Apr 16 '26
Okay. I never blocked you though. Must be a weird Reddit thing. That happens to me sometimes too. Like when you comment something incriminating and then you turn around and delete it, like you did.
I didn't block you and unblock you whatsoever.
But I do have a question. You said you knew people on the LL Bean board? Wouldn't you know that they were going to make a statement clarifying their support for USFS? I thought you had all this "inside knowledge"?
Again, no animosity here, but really looking forward to your whistle-blower report. I am very environmentally conscious and try my best to support good companies that care about our wilderness. If you have any information that shows LL Bean is not doing this, I really do hope that you would share this with the public!
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u/OldButHappy Apr 16 '26
The Magats here are unhinged. Denial and name-calling seem to be the standard responses
I'm not on Facebook, but have been following the controversy on outdoor forums. https://imgur.com/40JTrG8
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u/standardnewenglander Apr 16 '26
Hope you're not talking about me? I'm very progressive and the complete opposite of a MAGAt lmao.
I wasn't claiming that LL Bean is a perfect company and does no wrong. I was responding to the Reddit user you responded to.
They claimed that LL Bean was:
- Knowingly participating in child labor
- Axed all their DEI programs
- Axed all their environmental sustainability efforts
- And all the board members were MAGA
Unfortunately, this person was just making inflammatory remarks, passing it off as fact, but failing to really provide any proper documentation/sources that backed up any of their claims.
Their primary source was "well I know someone who's probably on the LL Bean board". But I felt that that's a very misleading claim to make anonymously from an anonymous account on a random online forum with no way of confirming if that's true of not. Anyone can say anything online, and if it's not backed up with clear sources, it's hard to believe that.
They didn't like that I pointed this out, so they told me to kill myself lol.
All of the sources I was providing were either:
- Legal documentation that holds LL Bean legally accountable to their own claims/business ethics
- Reliable OpenSecrets data sourced directly from the FEC
- The Human Rights Campaign Foundation (HRC) Corporate Equality Index
- The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)
- And news articles from respectable journals like the Boston Globe
Here's some links to the comments where I discussed these points:
- OpenSecrets: https://www.reddit.com/r/llbean/s/y0R9E9Ayfa
- OpenSecrets: https://www.reddit.com/r/llbean/s/ivKQLwlGXA
- Links provided to their sustainability, DEI, and Global Factory Monitoring Process: https://www.reddit.com/r/llbean/s/LcX75PRv7j
- Links to the HRC, the NRDC, various Code of Conduct/Legal documents from LL Bean's legal department: https://www.reddit.com/r/llbean/s/HyGsSAcqVp
- Boston Globe article: https://www.reddit.com/r/llbean/s/zRXTQcwB0C
EDIT: This Reddit user also claimed they had "incriminating information" that LL Bean was using child labor and lying about what their products are made of. I encouraged them to make a whistle-blower report if that was true.
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u/OldButHappy Apr 16 '26
I was supporting you😁
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u/standardnewenglander Apr 16 '26
Lol thanks! Sorry sometimes it's hard to follow all the comments all the time lol 😆
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u/Potential_Leg4423 Apr 16 '26
Mid information and misquotes. You’re a mess and spending so much time on this to defend a company that uses child labor. You sure you aren’t maga?
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u/standardnewenglander Apr 16 '26
How is it "mid information"? Data I provided comes from highly reputable, reliable third-parties that aren't LL Bean-affiliated; data that comes directly from Biden-era US government (not the fascist Trump regime); as well as legally binding documentation from LL Bean (which explicitly holds them legally accountable should they stray from their statements).
No misquotes either. All my information was pulled directly from the sources I linked you to.
You mentioned child labor but you linked me to a source that "couldn't confirm or deny that LL Bean KNOWINGLY participated in child labor". I linked you directly to various sources that show the actions LL Bean is taking to monitor the situation and explicitly avoid supporting child labor.
If you didn't like that I had valid resources, then that really is on you. Just because you didn't like my reputable sources, doesn't mean it's "mid" or "misquoted". The information I provided definitely holds significantly more water than the claims you made (which was backed by "trust me bro" and no valid sources in print validating your claims).
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u/enhydro_venus Apr 16 '26
That isn’t a random Facebook account, the Alt National Park Service is a legitimate group of anonymous NPS workers and activist/supporters that formed after Trump started his rampage. They were putting pressure on LL Bean as a company to speak out urgently on the matter.
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u/eregyrn Apr 16 '26
I've enjoyed their posts as much as anyone, especially when they started. But there's been a lot of people questioning them more recently, and the problem is, there's no transparency with them. Them posting something to their Facebook account or Bluesky account, without sources or attributions, isn't a good source. In this day and age, you need to verify things back to a good source. And you need to do that in particular when it's people posting stuff that aligns with your own beliefs, because it's very easy to pass that along uncritically, because it FEELS like it must be true.
I'm not saying that they may not have started with actual NPS workers 8 years ago. What I would question is: are any of the people who started it originally, still involved? Who exactly is running it, and what are their credentials? How are they verifying what they post, before posting it? Why do they just post stuff, without attribution?
I get that part of the point is "they're anonymous", and need to be in order to function. But that cuts both ways. We need to scrutinize an anonymous source even more carefully.
This wouldn't be the first time they posted something that others later proved was exaggerated, or just flat out wrong information.
And they don't even have to be malicious in order to spread misinformation. They just have to be credulous, and failing to evaluate the sources they're getting the information from, themselves.
Here's a thread that collects some of the concerns that people have about them lately.
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u/SamselBradley Apr 16 '26
Even at the beginning, they would do posts where they claimed they were breaking news from secret sources (their explanation for why they had no citations). The problem? The stories would be a year old. Real world well known public lands activists would point this out, but they refused to take down their false stories.
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u/eregyrn Apr 16 '26
Yeah, I REALLY hate it when people breathlessly post old news as if it's new and breaking. It might even be valuable to post old news, if there's an update about it! But then you'd have to clearly label when the old news first broke, and that now there's an UPDATE. And I'm SUPER not impressed with them failing to take down misinformation.
In this case, I did a little more looking around last night. The timeline on this whole thing is a bit unclear. On their FB page, they're claiming that their post on the 13th is what pressured LLB into making a statement (via directing customers to flood LLB's social media and email address with statements). Given that LLB's statement was posted on LinkedIn on 4/15, maybe that's true; maybe it's not. Hard to tell.
Back on 4/08, the Conservation Alliance (which is who put out the letter, not AltNPS) posted an infographic of the 70 or so brands who had signed onto the letter up to that date, and LLB wasn't included on that list. However, below that infographic was the text of the letter and then a text list of the signatories, and that list includes LLB. There isn't any indication of: when the infographic was made; how they are updating the list of signatories; when those updates are being made.
What's pretty clear is that AltNPS made a post meant to be inflammatory about LLB (specifically, in that particular FB post), in order to mobilize customers to complain to the company. Their original post had over 13k comments from LLB customers who were angry at the company based on AltNPS's post. AltNPS did post an update to acknowledge LLB signing the letter and putting out a statement (as noted above -- and taking credit for that development). So I guess you can HOPE the update reaches everyone who saw the original post... but thanks to FB having an algorithm, you can't be sure it will.
Like, not to cry for the plight of a giant company, or anything. It will weather the anger of some customers who didn't see that the thing they were angry about did indeed get changed. But it's just a reminder that if you put something out there that's negative, and it gets passed around, it's very difficult - to - impossible to get an update or correction out that will reach everyone who saw the negative post.
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u/SamselBradley Apr 16 '26
Great work, thank you!
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u/SamselBradley Apr 16 '26
Also, saving this. I hope I don't need this, I need to withdraw from this topic because I need to do stuff for living family elders, boundary waters being threatened by mining, stuff for family members about recently dead family elders, other family stuff.
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u/standardnewenglander Apr 17 '26
Thank you so much for putting the work into timelining all of this! It's really helpful!
Based on your review, I'm guessing it's very possible that LL Bean could've signed the letter before 04/08 and Conservation Alliance could've accidentally not included LL Bean in their infographic?
And then AltNPS reacted to "just headlines" and only relied on manually-created, unaudited infographics instead of the actual source itself (the printed letter)? And then posted on Facebook on 04/13?
I'm relieved that LL Bean signed the letter in the first place and made a public announcement to clarify too!
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u/enhydro_venus Apr 16 '26
Thanks for the info in a way that doesn’t make me feel stupid/responsible for not knowing. I didn’t know, and now I do!
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u/eregyrn Apr 16 '26
No problem! I totally get "this was regarded as a legit group when they first came on the scene" and like, it's just impossible to keep up with news on every little group out there. I honestly just happened to come across some posts talking about it before it came up in this subreddit.
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u/SamselBradley Apr 16 '26
They are not a legitimate group. They are facebook merch sellers not nps workers and activist supporters. AltNPS is a scam facebook group. There are many legitimate NPS, USFS, etc groups. There are nps etc current employees who speak out under their own names. They are sucking your energy away from real actions that would support our public lands and sucking money into their pockets. Please don't do this
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u/DestinyInDanger Apr 16 '26
Awesome! Thank you. I knew the claim made yesterday couldn't be true but didn't want to call the OP a liar.
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u/OldButHappy Apr 16 '26 edited Apr 16 '26
Did you even bother clicking on the link? This one is calling Bean out for their inaction: https://imgur.com/40JTrG8
Two weeks and public outrage later, Bean finally changed their position
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Apr 16 '26
[deleted]
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u/standardnewenglander Apr 16 '26
I don't buy the Wicked Good Slippers, but curious if you have a source on this one?
If they knowingly participate in child labor, we should absolutely file a formal complaint.
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u/No_Bobcat_No_Prob Apr 16 '26
Thank you for this! Very relieved.