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
Because it's trying to avoid accepting any responsibility for a problem that is quite clearly Cloudflare's intentional doing.