News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Australia pulls some Nurofen products over misleading claims by pistoriusp on Monday December 14, 2015 @06:15AM (#10730433)
I wonder if people would be interested in a greed index, whereby companies are rated in terms of illegal/ greedy activity and scored.

An app can be used to scan barcodes of products to lookup their greediness.

I would like to think that consumers are reaching a point where they're starting to care about buying products from ethical companies.

Money talks.

Re:Australia pulls some Nurofen products over misleading claims by J-dawg on Monday December 14, 2015 @06:53AM (#10730512)
I like this idea. It seems to me that we are seeing more and more egregious examples of companies pushing their luck with how far they can exploit their customers' loyalty.

The difficulty would be in defining an objective "greed index".

I hope you're right that we're reaching a tipping point in customer attitudes. I find it depressing that companies seem to get away with this stuff so easily.

Re:Australia pulls some Nurofen products over misleading claims by gjm11 on Monday December 14, 2015 @07:13AM (#10730568)
The greed index doesn't need to be objective, it merely needs to agree reasonably well with users' values. It seems plausible that users of such an app would agree well enough for it to be workable.

Alternatively, instead of reporting a numerical index report a summary of complaints made against the company. Downsides: more stuff to read; still subjective; maybe more risk of lawsuits from complained-about companies.

Re:Australia pulls some Nurofen products over misleading claims by voltagex_ on Monday December 14, 2015 @08:02AM (#10730741)
I listened to a Hanselminutes podcast with the founder of iFixit today - it seems like for electronic products, the repairability / planned obsolescence of products should be a factor in a greed index
Re:Australia pulls some Nurofen products over misleading claims by TeMPOraL on Monday December 14, 2015 @08:26AM (#10730849)
I love the idea, but sadly I'm reminded of existence of sales and marketing. They'll game the shit out of that index, just like they do with everything else that matters.