I think this is actually a really perfect demonstration of why you often shouldn't attribute things to malice which can be explained by incompetence.
This is on my mind a lot when I see speculation about why google (or other large organizations) does various things. It's just a bunch of human beings with egos and biases and blind spots and imperfect information. Mistakes are made.
But that is malice. They're specifically fucking over an entire country because they believe that post codes shouldn't be that way. They know otherwise.
No, it isn't. It's ignorance. It's incompetent to be ignorant of something that matters to doing a good job. It's possible to remain ignorant about something despite being told the correct information. (This is the difference between "ignorant" and "unaware".)
Malice requires intent to do wrong, either for some selfish benefit or just to be cruel. That's not what's going on in this story, it's "just" ignorance.
This is on my mind a lot when I see speculation about why google (or other large organizations) does various things. It's just a bunch of human beings with egos and biases and blind spots and imperfect information. Mistakes are made.