Roughly 15 years ago I worked for a large media company that was thinking about moving into the smart energy meter business.
I was late to join the team, but when I did, they'd already bought and branded thousands of meters that were boxed and ready to go in a nearby warehouse. The team had already built a number of APIs exposing controls for these meters as well as various monitoring and reporting interfaces. A UI already existed but it had issues, my job was to come in and fix that and get us ready for release.
We worked hard for a couple of months and whipped this thing into shape. Meanwhile a multi million budget was lined up for the marketing launch. Adverts where drafted, installation technicians where trained and merchandising was branded. All systems go.
It all drove towards a set in stone deadline and we busted our guts to get there... When the day arrived, there we sat. Ready. All features built, no bugs that we knew of. Ready to hit the 'go live' button. Honestly in 30 years working in the industry, that was the only time I think I've ever been in that situation.
Our product owner walks into the room and says, "erm, there's a couple of issues we need to discuss at board level. Hold tight guys I'll be back".
So we sit...
Two days later he returns, "erm, guys... the board aren't sure that this product is on brand. And they are concerned that if it fails it could be bad for reputation. So, we're not launching."
So we sat... for a month... working down our contracts whilst I taught myself Node.js
Surely there is still a distinction between knowing that people use your product to do bad things & knowing that specific people are doing specific bad things and continuing to allow it.