So should every startup fake their way to traction?
I can think of very few startups that failed because of shady early tactics, as long as it stayed only a way to get to traction, and wasn't a decisive part of the business model. If you're small, nobody will care enough about you to learn about your tactics. If you're big, you should have enough money to rebuy a reputation with marketing/PR.
Honesty is a quality that can only be recognized when someone maintains truthfulness and fair-dealing when they know that they will be punished for it.
Honesty will, if anything, destroy your authenticity.
Let me explain:
So $business_name faked their way into relevance, $somebody found out about it, $angry_mob_of_other_founders argue and rally against it.
Nothing of this will matter in any way cause it's almost certain Joe Normal will never ever hear the slightest about it and will happily continue using $business_name.
The only possibility of Joe Normal ever finding out is if $business_name overdid it in a way that might prompt (inter)national media to report about it or have it mentioned by a buddy to him.
Even then, he couldn't care less about it cause he still could peddle his wares on the site (or whatever), make a profit from it, and just shrug about the advice given by his buddy.
But yeah, it still works for dating sites (I know someone that started one) and the like. Normally you have to have a couple friends help you, because activity is great, but eventually people want you to jump on the webcam.