And they don't understand that respecting users (and non-users) has value, and changes how people see your company.

Respecting the users does not have value FOR THEM. That's how the job works - they're measured on how much people they trick into falling into their feature so they can put together a slide deck with nice DAU numbers.

Same for engineers - user respect doesn't have value for them either, you'll get the laziest, easiest implementation of a given ticket. Or the most complex and one if they're up for promotion or want to learn a new tech.

Afterwards, both groups will happily run towards greener pastures by the time any of this "respect value" materializes.

It's going to take a cultural shift in awareness of how abusing peoples freedom harms society before this really changes. Probably 95% of people on hackernews works for corporations that do this. Do what you can to shift the awareness.

They understand it just fine. Their reward metrics only care about the impact they had, not the externalities.

The more general problem is that software companies started having their own goals that are at odds with just serving the damn users that pay them money.