[nitrogen]

A team that ignores product quality will soon run out of money to spend on solving social etc. issues. Effort follows attention, so attention should be weighted appropriately across issues, but it's not uncommon for companies and causes to over-index on just a few issues and sacrifice other aspects of team dynamics and product quality as a result.

[headmelted]

You might as well say that the team that enjoys a beer and meets up to watch the game on a Sunday is ignoring product quality.

You’ve no basis to point to social causes or anything else and say “something is causing a stink round here and it’s that!”.

Software is built by people. People have viewpoints. There will inevitably be overlap in those viewpoints. There’s no reason to think any of this has anything to do with the thread.

[nitrogen]

I'm not the OP. They linked to a prior comment of theirs that makes their case in this specific instance. Their take may or may not be an overreaction.

However, commenting generally (with all the caveats that implies), it's abundantly clear from personal experience and the commentary of others that there are certain causes which have a habit of absorbing all the air in the room. You claim there is no basis for this observation. This Feedback Hub discussion gives us one example, where a "zero negative feedback!" mandate takes the air from things that would be more beneficial to (in this case) product quality.

In the OP's example, redefining words to have meaning contrary to their prior accepted usage is an example of air (or energy or attention or whatever you want to call it) being spent disproportionately, with quality suffering as a result.

To borrow an old metaphor, a falling tide grounds all boats. A cause, any cause, whether it's a zero negative feedback mandate or whatever, that lifts some boats while lowering the tide overall, will eventually leave every boat stranded, including the ones the cause is trying to save.