> might they all pursue this kind of deception

They might but multiple competitors engaging in ongoing deception as an intentional corporate strategy isn't required to explain what we're seeing. It's entirely possible to get the same clearly unethical outcome without any employees knowingly participating in an explicitly unethical plan of record.

Instead it happens without overt coordination when individuals and groups within an org each pursue their local metrics and incentives. In isolation, no individual action seems obviously unethical on its own. They just look like 'optimizing performance', 'maintaining ASP or ARPU targets' or 'achieving operating margin', etc. Customers are still getting deceived and receiving less for their money than they think. The difference is most of the people involved in enabling it get to not feel bad about themselves.