Companies run on strictly utilitarian ethics, which is why so many ethical complaints are invisible to them. For example: (Customer) ad tracking is bad for me! (Company) But tally the value of our services, we're clearly in the black!
Let's say I hypothetically give you that the Customer sees ad tracking as "bad" (whatever that means ...let's just accept it for argument.)
(1) Then the [Customer] utility function is: (Value from free services) - (Negative experience from ad tracking) + (Possible positive experience from learning about a new product or service from better targeted ads)
(2) The [Company] utility function is: (Value from ad revenue alone) - (Negative feedback on ad targeting) + (Revenue gained from higher ROI on marketing spend resulting in more purchases/subscriptions/whatever.)
In (1), I think people on average don't care about "privacy" related news because users don't see the negative experiences outweighing the other parameters. In (2), the negative feedback on ad targeting isn't really that large at the [Company] level to warrant much change (at least if you leave the echo chamber of HN every now and then.)
In the case of Yahoo, I still hold the hypothesis that they underestimated the (Negative feedback on a breakdown in security) as well as (Positive revenue gained from trust in security.) Then again, I doubt myself because if this were true, Box would be lightyears ahead of Dropbox; sometimes the coefficient on UI _really is_ larger than that of security...?
Yahoo's stock is up (+53% since February, with a small dip in late June). Where is the miscalculation?
Volkswagen is back to positive sales growth, and their stock has recovered 50% since their discovery last September. Their calculation was correct, too.
This is a reasonable expected value calculation - and not really that controversial. The real issue is that the model for cost isn't quite accurate; if you ask an actuary, whose livelihood is based on accurately measuring and accounting "risk," he/she will tell you that you would need to account for the probable loss in future revenues due to negative customer sentiment. Once you account for that, the cost of recall is a _much_ better proposition.