> In Juul's case, fraudulent proclamations of "empathy" served as a smokescreen for the true aim of the company, which was to use d.school-inflected product design to addict, capture, and monetize an entire generation of young nicotine users.

People try to make everything about "empathy" these days. The term has been on the rise since September 2008 [0] and I've seen it routinely used and abused. Who can refute empathy or a lack thereof? I recently took a corporate training about personalities. The whole seminar was supposed to show you strengths of the various personality type, what their opposites are, and how to interface with them better. Make better teams through understanding; nothing new. One measurement went from what's basically Extremely Empathetic => Data Driven (neither being bad, explicitly stated.) Routinely people that I worked with recategorized people in "data driven" to "non-empathetic" in casual conversation. Reading this article made me realize the real deceiving UX isn't unique to code or processes, it's just human inclination for things they don't like; whether that be the "cancel" button or personality traits.

[0] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=e...