It’s not “without conscience” to change the default from opt-out to opt-in and it’s not “without conscience” to withdraw the entire feature citing negative feedback, so I think that’s a very uncharitable representation that you’re making.

I'm specifically reacting to akerl_ saying that they wouldn't apologize because there's no selfish benefit.

I think the point is more that elaborate apologies and mea culpas don’t actually help anyone. They don’t help the company that does them and they don’t really do anything for us as customers either.

As a customer, am I going to believe TripleByte is sincere when they apologize to me? Maybe, but probably not. The only way to be sure is to judge them by their actions.

And in this case in particular, there’s not technically anything to apologize for since they never actually rolled out the feature.

Any liar can make beautiful apologies without meaning a word of them. It takes an honest person to demonstrate conscience through their actions.