Why did you have to mention your edit?

You're right, it's astroturfing a placeholder in the market in the absence of product. The difference is probably just the target audience - feels like this one is more aimed at share-holders and internal politics.

possibly securities fraud though. Their stock popped a few percent on the back of that faked demo.

It's still false advertising.

This is common in all industries. Take gaming, for example. Game publishers love this kind of publicity, as it creates hype, which leads to sales. There have been numerous examples of this over the years: Watch Dogs, No Man's Sky, Cyberpunk 2077, etc. There's a period of controversy once consumers realize they've been duped, the company releases some fake apology and promises or doubles down, but they still walk out of it richer, and ready to do it again next time.

It's absolutely insidious, and should be heavily fined and regulated.

As a programmer, I'd say that all the demos of my code were honest and representative of what my code was doing.

But I recognize we're all different programmers in different circumstances. But at a minimum, I'd like to be honest with my work. My bosses seem to agree with me and I've never been pressured into hosting a fake demo or lie about the features.

In most cases, demos are needed because there's that dogfood problem. Its just not possible for me to know how my (prospective) customers will use my code. So I need to show off what has been coded, my progress, and my intentions for the feature set. In response, the (prospective) customer may walk away, they may have some comments that increases the odds of adoption, or they think its cool and amazing and take it on the spot. We can go back and forth with regards to feature changes or what is possible, but that's how things should work.

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I've done a few "I could do it like this" demos, where everyone in the room knew that I didn't finish the code yet and its just me projecting into the future of how code would work and/or how it'd be used. But everyone knew the code wasn't done yet (despite that, I've always delivered on what I've promised).

There is a degree of professional ethics I'd expect from my peers. Hosting honest demos is one of them, especially with technical audience members.

I prefer to let my software be good enough to let it speak for itself without resorting to fraud, thank you ver much.