Why should corporations be held more accountable than any other person*?
> "The federal securities laws prohibit deceptive conduct and material misrepresentations in the purchase or sale of securities," said Kathryn A. Pyszka, an Associate Director in the SEC’s Chicago Regional Office. "We will take action when, as alleged, parties fraudulently induce investors to sell their securities through lies and deception."
From random press release: https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2022-17
I'm not an expert on it, so I'm wondering: as it stands, can an SEC court indicate that Amazon made a material change to their company value by walking their promise to be greener back?
Public individuals are routinely held accountable for their statements.
Why shouldn't customers be allowed to hold corporations to the same standards?
If corporations promise a feature, then fail to deliver, they should be held liable for false advertisement.
Similarly, if Microsoft promises Windows 10 is the last "Windows Version", then launches Windows 11, we should be allowed to sue them for making false statements.
Oh wait
I just want a law that makes false advertisement absolutely, unequivocally, illegal. Corporations should sell what they have now, not what they might have in the future.
> Why shouldn't customers be allowed to hold corporations to the same standards?
Nothing is stopping customers from holding corporations accountable, by taking their business elsewhere if they find a corporation to be unreliable.
"Public individual" is not exclusive to members of the american government. Should we legislate that as well? Nations have started legislating laws against falsehoods after all.
Minor public figures, the latest most "current" example being video creators on social media platforms, are routinely held accountable for failure to disclose sponsorships. Why aren't corporations found in legal trouble for failing to disclose that XYZ feature was never going to happen?
I should add, private individuals are also held accountable for statements in court. Why should such things be exclusive to courts? Does the truth only matter in front of a judge? Should we not find the act of lying for the sake of greater sales, a despicable act?
> Nothing is stopping customers from holding corporations accountable, by taking their business elsewhere if they find a corporation to be unreliable.
This is a blatant lie. Customers boycotting Chevron doesn't stop them from buying judges and violating the environments of various nations such as Ecuador. Individual consumers, even consumers coming together to form a large group, still cannot effect any major damage to a corporation. The only entities that can truly "fight" a corporation are similarly sized governments or organized violent attacks on corporate property.
Which nations? How? Who determines what is a "falsehood"? A failed prediction is not the same thing as a lie. It might be disappointing if a company predicts they will be able to deliver a feature and it turns out that they can't, but that doesn't necessarily mean they were lying when they said they were going to.
Yes it would be nice if the world were perfectly controllable and predictable and everything that went wrong was a result of bad people deliberately deceiving you, but that's not reality.
All such laws would accomplish is to ensure that nobody ever makes a definitive statement about anything, ever again. Couch everything in weasel words to ensure that there is sufficiently vagueness to combat an accusations of "lying" and you're good to go.
> Customers boycotting Chevron doesn't stop them from buying judges and violating the environments of various nations such as Ecuador.
Because customers en masse largely don't know or care about the environment in Ecuador and no significant percentage of them are going to engage in any such boycott. The end-users filling up their cars at gas station are also not "customers" in any meaningful sense for Chevron, who is selling petroleum products wholesale in an entirely different market.
Meanwhile, customers finding that Sears is no longer a good place to buy the things they need and shopping for appliances at Home Depot and Lowe's absolutely did have an effect on Sears and let them know that they were failing to meet the needs of their customers.
Fakenews laws specifically. They are popping up everywhere from Europe, Asia, some American states, etc. For better or worse.
> A failed prediction is not the same thing as a lie.
It is absolutely a lie/falsehood if you use it during a sales pitch. "We promise to create XYZ feature in the near future. That's why our product is a great deal!" should be immediately binding, with legal ramifications looming. You are selling the concept of future features as a reason to purchase or invest. Failure is no longer an option.
Don't like that? Then don't make bullshit statements! It's very very easy to not make false statements!
> It might be disappointing if a company predicts they will be able to deliver a feature and it turns out that they can't, but that doesn't necessarily mean they were lying when they said they were going to.
If you make a promise you cannot keep, you lied. Simple as that. Corporations should never receive the benefit of the doubt.
> Because customers en masse largely don't know or care about the environment in Ecuador and no significant percentage of them are going to engage in any such boycott. The end-users filling up their cars at gas station are also not "customers" in any meaningful sense for Chevron, who is selling petroleum products wholesale in an entirely different market.
Which is why the laws are needed.
> Meanwhile, customers finding that Sears is no longer a good place to buy the things they need and shopping for appliances at Home Depot and Lowe's absolutely did have an effect on Sears and let them know that they were failing to meet the needs of their customers.
Which resulted in Sears attempting to catch up VIA IP theft. They have lost multiple legal suites over this, with entire expose' written about it. Overall, this example is irrelevant, as Sears is a local company beholden to local consumers. Completely unlike major corporations like Chevron or Microsoft.
> Nations have started legislating laws against falsehoods after all.
Unfortunately, this is just a tool in quite a large government's drawer for suppressing any kind of dissent. "My" government and their political party are the biggest spreaders of misinformation and blatant lies, but don't even for a second think this will be used against them or any lying corporation. This is squarely aimed at the political opposition, and even more so at anyone daring to upset the status quo.
One might think that tool morality is a result on how it’s used, bit I would rather not have it because it’s ripe for abuse.
Nothing except layers of political lobbying, misleading advertising, opaque corporate ownership, and monopolistic practices. The result being:
- You won't find out about corporate misdeeds, and if you do
- You will be told it's not that bad or that they've changed, and if you don't believe that
- You will have trouble finding a brand that they do not own, and if you find that
- It won't be as easy to obtain or cheap
> If corporations promise a feature, then fail to deliver, they should be held liable for false advertisement.
You will definitely find out if the promised feature was delivered or not. You will be aware of the identity of the company that promised the feature. You may absolutely evaluate whether you continue to purchase things from that company, based on their past performance.
This is well within the ability of consumers and they do it all the time, regardless of any laws about "false advertising" to which this may or may not apply.
As for whether consumers should be making their purchase decisions on completely unrelated data about "corporate misdeeds", such as how the company may or may not have behaved in a foreign country, a situation the consumer does indeed know little to nothing about. No, I don't think that basing purchasing decision on things like that is effective or useful, but people are of course welcome to use whatever factors they like.
Then they simply wouldn't set any such goals. Why would they bother risking it?
If you want targets that are accountable, advocate for actual laws that set emissions limits, and a government that is willing to enforce them. Nobody is going to eat a fine on a completely voluntary PR statement. It's easier to just not make the statement in the first place.
Good. At least then they're not profiting off of the climate crisis while taking no action.
It would still be different from a statement like "Windows 10 is the final version of Windows".
What damages would you claim?
If not possible, then Microsoft should refund every single Windows 10 purchase, as well as all license fees stemming from that same claim.
The answer would simply be "It's not Windows10."
They promised Windows 10 as the last edition. It doesn't matter whether Windows11 is an upgrade or not. Microsoft explicitly made a marketing statement declaring that all future updates to "Windows" would be updates for Windows10, not new editions.
Further more, the Microsoft Corporation explicitly stated that "There will be no Windows 11".
Further quotes : "Right now we're releasing Windows 10, and because Windows 10 is the last version of Windows, we're all still working on Windows 10," Jerry Nixon
Any other claims by Microsoft are automatically denied, pay up or get fucked.
I wish that was how it worked.
Again, they gave you a free upgrade. What exactly are your damages (and no, "Microsoft lied" is not damage)?
> Speaking at Microsoft’s Ignite conference in Chicago, developer evangelist Jerry Nixon said: “Right now we’re releasing Windows 10, and because Windows 10 is the last version of Windows, we’re all still working on Windows 10.”
> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/may/11/windows-1...
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> Again, they gave you a free upgrade. What exactly are your damages (and no, "Microsoft lied" is not damage)?
Doesn't matter. They pulled a bait and switch. They refund all Windows10 license purchases which were predicated on the expectation of Windows 10 being the last version.
The time period would be from the first time they officially made that claim, all the way till the official announcement of Windows11.
They shouldn't get to claim "This is the last version we will ever release, there will never be anything better", then turn around and shit on the statement.
In civil court, damages are the only thing that matters.
The legal fiction if corporations being legal person-like that shields sackler's and whoever headed the credit rating agencies leading up to 2008 is obscene
And because their fiduciary duty is for profit and not a sustainable world, their accountability should be even higher.