The last sentence summarizes all of this thread perfectly IMO.

Without giving away too much detail I’d ask if that designer is a one person or very small department? That would be my guess. It makes these arguments a lot easier to win if you have a mature design practice with good leadership who can say “What biz/sales/product are asking for is not feasible as it violates our established criteria for dark patterns”.

This is, of course, toothless in small or medium sized orgs that only maybe have a few floating designers, for example.