[snerbles]

The incentive is less about morals and very much about self-preservation.

With online mobs, when the target shows any sort of regret there is blood in the water and the sharks feast. It sometimes turns into a very public form of struggle session for the person under scrutiny. Besides avoiding the faux pas in the first place, one well-tested mitigation is to be absolutely unapologetic and wait for the storm to blow over.

[serial_dev]

For what it’s worth, I found the original announcement childish and unnecessarily negative towards people working on the product (against their CoC which I found hilarious and hypocritical), and I find it refreshing that they updated the post to phrase their criticism much more professional.

[Eisenstein]

I think that real honesty works well as long as you have the character to stand up for yourself. An unflinchingly honest self-assessment which shows that you understand the error and rectified it is almost always the path to take.

Acknowledgement of mistakes do not invoke much of a mob reaction unless there is wavering, self-pity, or appeals for leniency. Self-preservation should be assumed and not set as a goal -- once you appear to be doing anything that can be thought of as covering up or minimizing or blaming others, the mob will latch on to that and you get no consideration from then on.