alt Hacker NewsThe problem is not just empathy. It is also ethics. The fine distinction between opting out of A and opting out of B described in the post served to justify ignoring the opt out request. That's lazy ethically. The entire US business sector's customer relations are completely compromised ethically. It's taken to extremes in tech contexts.
In large organizations motivated reasoning trumps ethics. Behavior starts working along incentive gradients like an ant heap. Spend enough time in an environment like that and you learn to frame every selfish decision as good for the customer.
I think maintaining ethics in large organizations is one of the main challenges of our time, now that mega corps dominate our time and attention.