Dark Patterns – Preselection

Say you have stakeholders wanting a certain journey which you deem unethical.

Would you agree that pre-selecting an option for a user before they've even had a chance to read the options is considered a Dark Pattern?

For example, you enter a subscription pricing webpage. The premium option is pre-selected which is double the price of the basic option. This pre-selection isn't very obvious to the user and the 'continue' button is already lit up to indicate you're ready to continue down the purchase funnel.

What are your views/ideas on making this more ethical?

Please note this is purely hypothetical.