Exactly.
Would this also apply to products like Uber? I use it all the time, and can't imagine life without it. Am I addicted to it? Is it an unethical company because people love to use it and it provides value to their lives?
Would this also apply to products like Uber? I use it all the time, and can't imagine life without it. Am I addicted to it? Is it an unethical company because people love to use it and it provides value to their lives?
Would you say you have an addiction to Uber?
Social gaming (someone mentioned below) does, to a point, and then it's engineered to go way, way beyond that point.
It's complicated of course - and there's a spectrum - but I think a bad sign is if your architecture is intended to hack the reward systems of your customers.
Uber doesn't have a monopoly in ride-sharing, and Twitter doesn't have a monopoly in microblogging.