> I’m not sure how you expect to have a productive conversation when, in this and parallel comments, you’ve made several insinuations that I’m a conscienceless lizard person.

Your reaction that perhaps corporations shouldn't apologize when they do something wrong if it have any selfish benefit, does lack conscience and is a wholly inappropriate reaction to this situation. Discussing the self-centered strategic merits of apologizing from the perspective of a sociopath isn't a productive conversation.

However, I'm not one to write people off based on one interaction. Just because you've reacted without conscience in one situation doesn't mean you would do so in all situations.

> But to be clear: Triplebyte’s specific situation is a an ethical issue only in respect to the fact that they planned to enable by default for existing users. That’s a bad move. They’ve stopped the bad move.

There are more ethical issues than that--they haven't stopped them all.

> I’m more interested in the overall pattern of “company does thing, people disagree with thing, people express outrage to company, company issues statement”. Which in many cases has zero ethical components.

Which is irrelevant in this case, because this case does have multiple ethical components.

And, more to the point, this is still an ethical question. Apologies are never about benefiting the person apologizing. Apologies are inherently an ethical action--if you claim that the company didn't do anything wrong, then they shouldn't apologize. Not because it doesn't benefit them, but because lying about being sorry isn't ethical.

"Should a company lie and pretend to be sorry when they haven't done anything wrong?" is still an ethical question, and you're looking at it from the perspective of selfish gain is still an inappropriate way to look at it.