Ep 211: Is a Little Deception Okay? Paid Crowds and Native Advertising

We face more moral "dilemmas" in everyday life than maybe we realize.  How do we resolve them?  In this episode I discuss two interesting moral dilemmas: a) should you employ for-hire crowds of actors to attend your event in order to make it look like you're more popular that maybe you really are? and b) should you place your advertisements on web and print pages in such a way that they don't really look like ads at all?  I discuss the moral questions involved in "native advertising".   We're all getting really good at using technology to avoid advertisements, but as we all know, "there's no such thing as a free lunch" - companies have to get you to find out about their products and hopefully buy them.  But when do we step over the line?  Is a little deception okay?