It was probably 4 years ago when our publicist first told us about double spaced motivational nonsense going viral consistently. We were amused, bemused really, because we didn't care for it but were fine with the low effort involved.
Now with the aforementioned tactic, LinkedIn does consistently surface "[First] <Race> [Female] <Accomplishment>" posts, and I like to look at the source article to see if it was actually published that way, because if it wasn't I have a good chuckle because I know exactly what's going on. The people in the comments only react.
The game is supported by the players willing to play. If you play, you're culpable.
Ethics become a bit more complex when you are employing people. Would you rather your business fail, so that all the people working for you become unemployed overnight, despite a lot of them having their livelihoods depend on that?
To be clear, I don't think that "i have people working for me, whose livelihoods depend on my business surviving" is a great excuse for all kinds of immoral behavior, but it definitely adds to the nuance. And given what specific scenario we are dealing with here, I don't think it is as clear-cut as you try to make it seem.
It is the other people that don’t understand that and are also triggered by it that boost the engagement by orders of magnitude
Publicists do more representation posts because of the engagement
Publicists are aware why the engagement is so high
Is it unethical manipulation if the publicists aren’t aware?
Is it unethical manipulation if people weren’t triggered by representation posts?
Is it unethical manipulation if the platforms themselves didn’t rely on and enable commenter controversy?
But go ahead, gnaw at the messenger who hired a publicist and is telling you how the whole network of publicists operate right now