Where possible I recommend not caring because figuring out whether malice was present is difficult and you can likely address a problem without needing to be sure.

For example by creating working processes which never end up "accidentally" causing awful outcomes. This is sometimes more expensive, but we should ensure that the resulting lack of goodwill if you don't is unaffordable.

Worst case there is malice and you've now made it more difficult to hide the malice so you've at least made things easier for those who remain committed to looking for malice, including criminal prosecutors.

And I'm positive that you understand the spirit of the post you're replying to.

The saying implies that incompetence and malice are polar opposites. They're not.

Microsoft's incompetence is certainly reckless at a minimum, and often manifests in ways that come across as misanthropic toward their users. They don't really fit the pattern of mere bumbling fools.

And the person you are responding is asserting that the response to incompetence of this level should be the SAME as if it directed and intentional malice. Which is a completely valid way to view a fuckup like this.

Malicious people are quite good at feigning incompetence.

I mean, sure, but at a certain point negligent incompetence is directly harmful and the motives or lack thereof are just context.

Except that the system that removes culpability, visibility and consequences of this kind of abuse is set up deliberately to avoid liability and consequences of such actions.

This isn't a tee-hee accident, this is deliberate organizational design which removed any kind of bad consequences or even thought about what the software does to user from the engineers at Microsoft. They're happy about that. They now don't need to deal with that. And if you'll ask them, they will refuse a change that will make them responsible for abuse of their users.

So, to hell with them :)