An investment in an ETF or other mutual fund is putting your money in the hands of the managers of the fund. They set out objectives for the fund, but they don't necessarily have an obligation to meet those objectives or to keep the same objectives. They can change the objectives within the processes required by the bylaws of the fund. Most of the objectives will have weasel words for management discretion in case of volatile markets.

They have quarterly reporting obligations, and you can review those reports to see how they're doing. If you don't like what you see, you can sell the funds and/or file a shareholders' lawsuit and/or file a SEC complaint.

If you don't like that, the good news is with zero comissions as the norm, and fractional shares at many brokerages, you could build up your portfolio to match an index of your choice, without significant monetary transaction costs. It would take a lot of time to setup and when you made contributions, and dividend processing effort could be significant.