I don't like the blame narrative either way. There's no single party with both the power and the knowledge of the details to counterbalance the strong incentiv

I don't like the blame narrative either way. There's no single party with both the power and the knowledge of the details to counterbalance the strong incentives that are all around them. It's all well and good to say engineers should do their part to push back on dark patterns at the front line, or executives should think beyond just investor pressure for ever greater profits, but those things don't scale. What we need are external checks and balances. These can come in many forms from market competition, to government regulation, to watchdog groups. Putting pressure on individuals to change massively powerful systems from within is a fools errand.