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Comment by bradjohnson | Hacker News Reader

> Nothing is stopping customers from holding corporations accountable, by taking their business elsewhere if they find a corporation to be unreliable.

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

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There are very different things being talked about here as if they are the same. The original comment I replied to gave this example:

> 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.

I'm referring to the article, not a feature of a product. I consider profiting off of green-washing while simultaneously being one of the biggest contributors to pollution and then silently reneging on your carbon emissions target a "corporate misdeed". I think that all of the companies that set these public carbon emissions goals as PR should be held fully accountable for missing them.

> I think that all of the companies that set these public carbon emissions goals as PR should be held fully accountable for missing them.

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.

> Then they simply wouldn't set any such goals. Why would they bother risking it?

Good. At least then they're not profiting off of the climate crisis while taking no action.

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