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Comment by lemax | Hacker News Reader

Is this really any less ethical than a more sophisticated marketing scheme?

"Black Hat Firm" vs. Expensive Growth Marketing Firm:

– unestablished writer vs credentialed, domain experienced writer (with a salary?)

– spammy Medium.com presence vs Editor Connections at TechCrunch

– network of "dozens" of nearly ineffectual sockpuppets vs dozens of employees with "real" accounts ready to upvote and engage on Boss's call

If you're surprised by this, spend a day in the pits of a product launch in literally any industry. We welcome ingenuity when we talk about growth hacks but criminalize it when it's not classy. This is all a matter of access, Marketing and PR generally comes down to what resources people have and what they can get away with.

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Most "sophisticated" marketing schemes are incredibly unethical (and I've even argued that marketing at it's core is unethical, but that's a hard sell most places). That might mean that it's not any less ethical, but equally scummy.

The fact that it's not a surprise (and implying that everyone does it) is not an excuse to keep manipulating people at a mass scale when they're browsing the internet in (primarily) good faith. I'd say that pointing that out and accepting it as a good justification is in and of itself unethical.

>(and I've even argued that marketing at it's core is unethical, but that's a hard sell most places)

100% agreed, and I gather from other times/places where this was brought up that there's more of us than you might think.

I sincerely hope so. I fervently believe that all advertising is, by definition, paid manipulation. As such, it is deeply immoral, despicable, and should be outlawed on the constitutional level! I also believe that this manipulation is the foundation of almost every evil in the western world, because it is the perverse motive that corrupts our democracy and our economy. The ability to manipulate masses of people to buy your idea or product using money allows those with money to dominate, not those who are competent or correct (either at politics or economy). The fact that our societies not only allow this but actively celebrate the biggest manipulators as the best of us (google facebook etc.) is beyond immoral for me. It's insane!

I also believe that anybody who calls out this sick game at the level of society would be cruelly ostracised by those in power, either in media or politics or economy. Still, we should voice this more often. We should make people rethink our societies.

At the end of the day it's all about good faith. You either have it or you don't. It's completely obvious to me that it's ok for a product company like Apple to have industry / journalism ties that they provide information ahead of time for a bigger launch day.

I could go essentially any situation with marketing and that's what the ethics boil down to for me. It's simply not good faith to rig voting on a social network. I hate it when my friends ask me to upvote their HN post just because they've asked and they know I've been around here a long time. But if they write a cool post and say "hey if you like this spread it around a bit" then that is fair and I'm happy to submit it to others here.

So to answer your original question: Yes, it really is less ethical and the continuum does not range from spammy to sophisticated. Spam can be quite sophisticated. They're correlated, but they're different measures and, really, a true master doesn't employ these techniques because they're playing a different, better game.

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