I got into a discussion a while ago with a friend of mine that liked to think of themselves as libertarian. No beer was involved, but going to the absurd definitely came out. He tried to take the view that the government should get out of everything. My counter was that very quickly some company would take over enough of each market to effectively become the government and dictate terms to everyone else. My point to him was that -something- fills that void so at least if it is the government doing it there is a slim chance I can influence it. This is a bit indirect to your comments, but my big point is that I don't want companies ever trying to set the bar or come up with morals because their version of 'good' won't be one that is good for society. If we expect them to be 'good' they will define it and I want society to do that, not them. Dark patterns are bad, but we need to start holding our government accountable for not holding companies accountable. We also need to hold ourselves accountable for buying from those companies. I assume every company is adversarial because that is the nature of capitalism and I don't want to slip into the false security of 'they will eventually do the right thing because it is the right thing...'