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I think this is because "tech" is quickly becoming a business utility, and every company is becoming a "tech company" just by augmenting its business with an ap

I think this is because "tech" is quickly becoming a business utility, and every company is becoming a "tech company" just by augmenting its business with an app stack. "Tech" has become watered-down by proliferating everywhere, and accordingly developers have grown in number and diminished in average passion and skill. Coupled with this, everyone knows these tech-driven ad-distribution companies posing as "social media" are pretty shady, because they're based on coyly mining user attention for $. So I you get a job there, your moral bar is low enough that a dark pattern here and there is no big deal.

dont__panic 5y ago
It is a losing and neverending battle, too -- new C-levels come into your company, new managers and directors cycle in, perpetually looking for low-hanging fruit to up usage and profitability in their fiefdom at the expense of long-term goals and faithful users. You can explain once or twice how you're not going to implement some dark pattern, but what about the tenth time? Or the hundredth? Or the thousandth? And even if you manage to block it every single time, that same rot in the company will eventually wear down other reasons you'd like to work at the company, whether it's compensation or cool underlying tech or culture or remote-friendliness, and then you'll leave, and who will stop the dark patterns now?