Perhaps the word “tool” was misplaced. For something like a hammer that you can buy once and then just use, the manufacturer's corporate personality isn't really relevant, yeah.
But for goods and services where you're (perhaps tacitly) entering an ongoing relationship with the manufacturer — like software, which requires maintenance — the company's reputation is important, and it reflects on the values of the consumer.
In a free market, consumer choice dictates what companies do, so by buying from a company that uses child labour (for example), you're endorsing and literally funding that practice.
I don't think this is a new phenomenon: companies have long been rewarded and condemned for taking positions on the moral questions of the day, at the very least as far back as Luddism.
I guarantee that at least 15-25% of the population finds same-sex marriage morally reprehensible and that Mozilla is alienating an enormous number of current or potential users with its woke ideology. Is flipping the bird to the conservative half of the electorate good for business?
Maybe corporate virtue signaling appeals to you but it repulses me. Given the choice between a company that supports far-left causes and one that remains politically neutral, I would, all other things being equal, always go with the latter.
Yeah, each person is going to choose where the line is for themself.
Activists will whinge loudly on Twitter because that's the only effective influence they have (because it turns out consumerism doesn't actually produce rich consumer choice; rather, it cements already-rich companies — who'dathunkit?)
If you're running a company, and your newly-promoted executive is actively making political donations in support of a campaign that you know a reasonable number of people consider morally reprehensible (whether you agree with those people or not), then you can expect to see an impact on your company's reputation, and you get to decide how to respond.
You (the hypothetical person running a company) may believe that it shouldn't matter, and that's fair enough, but unless your customers already agree with you on that point, then you're going to have to persuade them.
But for goods and services where you're (perhaps tacitly) entering an ongoing relationship with the manufacturer — like software, which requires maintenance — the company's reputation is important, and it reflects on the values of the consumer.
In a free market, consumer choice dictates what companies do, so by buying from a company that uses child labour (for example), you're endorsing and literally funding that practice.
I don't think this is a new phenomenon: companies have long been rewarded and condemned for taking positions on the moral questions of the day, at the very least as far back as Luddism.