[noirbot]

I think the case here is that, say, the companies that were contracting with Foxconn or the like weren't doing anything explicitly illegal, but a large portion of people would see it as immoral/unethical. I'm certainly not saying that the government couldn't compel companies to label/disclose that sort of link, but assuming that's not the law, should Apple be sued for fraud if it turns out they were contracting with firms using unethical labor?

Obviously Exxon and others went further and attempted to discredit the evidence that what they were doing could be wrong, but if they'd just done the research into the climate impacts, and just never published it, would that have been fraudulent? To just pretend they didn't know what they were doing was immoral/unethical? That seems like the sort of things plenty of companies do all the time, to varying degrees of moral and ethical fault.

[beerandt]

To extend the metaphor- is it implicit guilt and/or misleading for Apple to generate PR about the ~300 jobs in Texas it created in making new pro laptops / desktops (a relatively small market), when they're responsible for mistreating 3000-30000 laborers making iPhones in China? (numbers made up)