The owner's instagram apology post has a bunch of "I did not understand..."s and language about disrespect, etc-- which makes sense, they're trying to get out of trouble, but it is in a way dishonest. Things would be better if they felt they could write "I didn't realize you all hated this. Now that I know, I'll take it down. Sorry about that." because it avoids them feeling they were threatened into "falling into line". As it stands they were forced to lie to get out of trouble about something they didn't even realize was wrong (they don't actually care about AI, obviously, or they wouldn't have used it), and they are necessarily bitter as a result.

Not that they were in a position to figure that out, in the moment, but I think it is a good thing to take away from the story... The interpretation of transgressions as moral failures instead of mistakes has done a lot of harm to society in the past few decades, because it creates bitter people instead of resolving things cleanly. It's a failure of the whole norm around these things, rather than any individual per se; people are rarely in the position to realize their behavior is contributing to a toxic norm on a daily level.

Edit: even in this comment section there are a lot of people who are bitter about this (which showed up since I started typing this). Goes to show how important it is.

Personally I will not fault any individual for following a norm that they do not have the perspective to reject. So I think the coffee shop owner and the critics both screwed up here, by participating in shame-culture on both sides. However they did not know they could do differently---nobody has demonstrated to them the harm and degradation of their actions, nor what the alternative is. But as analytical outsiders we can make that observation and put it to use later by not practicing that behavior ourselves, and by helping others learn to not practice it either.

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boogieknite 2 hours ago | parent [-]

first ill address your point and anecdotally i think this is sort of how "normal" people apologize now. i find it gross, personally, but its so ubiquitous ive learned to tune it out

why i actually replied: would have been an excellent punch line if the apology post was clearly ai gen chock full of clauddish. not sure if id come back around to respecting the owner, but id laugh for sure

	▲	ajkjk an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I think it is how people apologize normally because it's a norm, yes, but it's to everyone's detriment. They don't like it, the people receiving it don't care about it, it's not a real apology, it's just a sort of trapped norm that needs to change. That's why I bothered to point it out.