Ironically, frontend engineers are exactly why we ended up with this problem in the first place. The rewrite of the frontend wasn't about engagement or dark pat

Ironically, frontend engineers are exactly why we ended up with this problem in the first place. The rewrite of the frontend wasn't about engagement or dark patterns (those could have been implemented just fine with the old UI), it's that they had a significant dev team (& managers, UI/product designers, etc) and needed them to do something, so a rewrite was kicked off, and now it's too late to turn back while saving face. They would've ended up in a better position had they just given these people one year of PTO instead of having them "fix" things that aren't broken just to keep them busy.