Miners only have the task of organising the blocks. If miners use software that violates the rules of the network, a fork is created. Miners cannot run any other software otherwise they are no longer part of Bitcoin.
Also, there are miners who will not follow this and make a lot of money from it.
A softfork does not violate the rules of the network though, that is the difference between a soft fork and hard fork. Miners are free to choose what software to run the same as any other network participant. If a minority of hash power doesn't follow it, the majority chain will always overtake the minority fork. So any miners that don't follow it will lose a lot of money.
I see your point.
If it were the case that miners can activate soft forks from which they mainly benefit but are against the majority of the other players in the network, why haven't miners been doing this for a long time?
