Follow
Handy way to determine if some behaviour from a company is deliberately malicious or not, while minimizing personal bias:
Think of what they would optimally do if they *were* malicious, and of what they would do if they *weren't* malicious and genuinely had the claimed intentions.
Whatever they are actually doing, which of the two answers is it closer to?
This is *particularly* useful for catching cases where a company does something that could *technically* be defended as accomplishing the stated purpose, but it is deliberately inefficient to serve an ulterior motive.
It catches it because even a defensible action would be very far from the optimal solution, but that only becomes visible if you start reasoning from the optimal solution instead of the other way around.