There really needs to be some catch-all law that prevents dark patterns like this. (Please excuse the irony that in this case the dark pattern is light text).
If an engineer or designer is told to deliberately spend time making an experience less good for someone, they should be able to report that to a government ombudsman, and if their whistleblowing is proven correct, the company should be forced to reverse the decision and continue to pay the developer their salary for the next 10 years even if they choose to quit.
I suppose there are cases when the dark pattern is actually intended to add friction to a path that leads to user errors, like accidentally making private files world-readable, but something like a jury of users should be able to unanimously reach a verdict on whether a given "feature" is really a benefit.
