Pity Shilling

To deflect, knowingly and unknowingly, from the problems one might have with a commercial product/a corporation's unethical behavior by turning it into an overly emotional issue centered around how a high-level executive directly responsible for said problems must have felt.

Originally used on Blizzard Entertainment's Overwatch 2 forums to describe the perspective that the game's director, who misled an entire community by lying about a game feature that was heavily advertised when they knew prior to the game's release it was cancelled, must have felt too ashamed to act otherwise.

A: I feel so bad for the game director, they must have felt too bad to tell us the truth...
B: That's pity shilling- feeling too bad to do the right thing means nothing when not doing it means you are misleading people.