Please try not to use weasel phrases like "Sorry you are having difficulty..." The poster clearly articulated the very real technical problems they are having with your broken unsubscribe process, doing your debugging work for you, and the phrasing of your response implies that the fault lies with the user. I don't think this was intentional weasel-speak on your part, but do please try to be aware of your audience.
Is "sorry you are having difficulty" a "weasel phrase"?
"Weasel phrases" are non-apologies. A simple non-apology is something like, "I'm sorry you are feeling that way". Let's say Bob wrecks Alice's car after coming back from the bar last night. When Alice wakes up, she notices the car is wrecked and she will be unable to take a client out for lunch in it. Alice becomes angry at Bob as a result and indicates he is responsible for wrecking the car and not telling her the night before, so she could get another car to drive. Alice would want a resolution, either in the moment (Bob giving Alice another car) or an assurance that it won't happen again (a real apology accepting responsibility). An "I'm sorry you are feeling this way" from Bob becomes the non-acknowledgment of the actual cause of the emotional output from Alice. Instead, it deflects back to Alice for resolve. This is tedious, at best.
A good tip for Bob avoiding these "you statements"[1] is to leave out "you" as the object of his stated emotional output. Instead, Bob could say "I hear you are feeling sad and angry because I had a wreck and came home last night and went straight to bed without telling you". This comment from Bob becomes a non-you statement by splitting on the "because" and the "without". There exists a separate acknowledgement of the emotional output from Alice, "I hear you are feeling sad and angry" and an acceptance of the action and result, "I wrecked your car and didn't tell you about it."
It is my opinion you get a lot of these types of comments in public forums, where the conversation is a matter of public record. When given the choice between leaving a public trace of "We were the cause of your difficulty...we'll fix you up though." vs. "We hear you are having issues...", I do think companies will tend to do the later, waiting to give the more specific comment to the recipient outside the public view. Maybe our tendency to think we need these comments aired in public is some sort of error in our reassignment of another's emotions. Their emotional output isn't ours, but we may have empathy for it.
As others have mentioned, the comment comes from someone who seems to care about these things, so if Alice trusts Bob, she'll let the comment slide knowing he'll come through for her in the future.
"Having difficulty" means it's still possible, just difficult and - dark patterns aside - the OP could still succeed if they knew the right steps. Given what OP said though, that's not the case here, so yeah, that phrasing is deflecting responsibility. Definite weasel wording.
How is "Sorry you are having difficulty" a "weasel phrase"? I don't see how that implies the user is at fault. It seems like you're policing language unnecessarily
I've seen you post here on HN a few times and I think you're genuine here.
However I also think the previous commenter has a point - "we're sorry you're having trouble and we're looking into it" or words to those effect are things anyone who reports issues to big companies hears over and over again and it usually means "we don't give a damn about you and we're not gonna do anything. Suck it, puny human".
For anyone who doesn't recognize you except as a random person who popped up speaking for CloudFlare, it probably seems reasonable to interpret your words as corporate weasel speak, especially on a post accusing your company of potentially illegal behavior. Even if you didn't mean it that way and this does turn out to be an honest and temporary mistake.
For those who want to reduce corporate weasel speak:
Do not criticize those who USE it. It is a symptom of a larger problem.
Rather, criticize people (like many in this thread) who say "you should sue" in response to any problem you have with a corporation. That litigiousness is what makes corporate weasel speak necessary. If the result of acting like a human and saying "oh, my bad" is to get sued (and have a slam dunk case, because they admitted to it!), then people are going to stop saying "my bad" and start saying "that sucks".
This is a cultural choice that we make in the US, and the choice is made in places like this thread. If you want to change it, start here and shame those who say "sue!" after a person encounters a bug trying to unsubscribe.
Or we can all continue to assume that everything is malicious, everyone is in on it, and there are no good people. And we'll continue to get a lot of corporate weasel speak. And we'll deserve it.
I don't think you can really know that. It's the sort of thing that would be very easy to slip through testing (or that a lower-level employee could slip through unapproved), and lots of companies don't pay as much attention to the technical side of their marketing operations as they do their main product tech.
> Because it's trying to avoid accepting any responsibility
I would argue the opposite. If you are not taking responsibility then you shouldn't use the word "Sorry" as it actually implies that it was your fault. You ought to use "I regret" in those cases - there's a blog post on this floating around somewhere.
He's not saying that the cause of the difficulty is on the user, simply pointing out that the user is facing a difficult situation (caused by CloudFlare in this case)
Well, at least you are relatable in ways that Cloudflare generally cannot be. Your recent post on the Minitel conversion is just one example [0].
There is one key thing to keep in mind for those advancing uncharitable critiques of JGC and Cloudflare. It is entirely plausible that JGC is well-intentioned. Yet, Cloudflare has had to hire quite a few people recently.
There may not necessarily be a culture fit. Some new marketing hires may have thought that this dark pattern was fair game. And JGC can strongly disagree without really being aware of this dark pattern. Those two things can hold at the same time.
*punts fourth wall* Forum's gonna forum and memefy everything it can (then there's the entirely cognitively-dissonant way this mindset looks up to things...). I think the only solution is to be hyper-aware of the unintuitive impact (and toll) it can legitimately have... but that can be difficult when distracted by idk being Senior Juggler Of Cat Herders or whatever. shrug internet be weird but probably harmless
