You're on the money. Like literally, empathy here would convey some sadness, or just "negative feelings", which would affect how the money feels. We can't have the money feeling bad now can we? Plus who cares anyway, we all know software monkeys don't feel. They just want to sit around all day drinking coffees and mashing little plastic chiclets! And the money is perfectly happy with this arrangement. /s

Somebody else will make it sound empathetic /s

I'm really having trouble connecting the dots between potential liability and leading with "building the future of human connection"

Good people remember though and hold a grudge if you insult them on the way out the door. People you want to hire in the future are watching as well. There's incentive to be classy (ex: Microsoft's https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/01/18/subject-focusing...) unless the whole ship is going down.

Edit:

That being said, after actually reading it, the Meta letter is relatively classy. The HN comments made it seem worse than it was.