> I think we all understand what that word means in this context.

No, we don't, and that's exactly the point.

We tend to anthropomorphize companies. "Good Guy Google" has become "Evil Google". "Micro$oft" has become "Altruistic, OSS Microsoft". Apple has become "Defender Of Privacy". But all of these are illusions created by marketing departments; there is no real sentiment behind any of them that can be used to predict future behavior. And it takes constant vigilance to remind yourself that those narratives are empty.

Persons [edit: I don’t mean in the legal sense] they are not, but do you think it is reasonable to model companies as non-person _agents_? (In the sense of “thing which has goals/preferences, (and beliefs?) and acts so as to further those goals/preferences”.)

If it is useful to model such organizations as non-person agents, then while they of course would not “care”, in the sense of emotions, about things, it would be coherent to say that such an organization e.g. “has protecting privacy as a goal”.

Err, I guess I’m eliding the distinction between “being useful to model as an agent” and “being an agent”, which may be a mistake. I suppose what I should say is “if it is useful to model as an agent, it is useful to treat as coherent the claim that it has goals of e.g. privacy stuff.” .

Even at this late date in the advance of capitalism I think it's still a useful reminder.

With all of the carefully crafted marketing aimed at bypassing the forebrain and making people feel as though corporations care, it doesn't hurt to keep the fact that they don't at the forefront of the conversation.

Corporations can care, they're groups of people; they choose not to on the whole.