>In what way is it unethical? No harm is done to anyone.

I'm not sure what to say to you if you can't see it. No harm is done? Maybe you only imagine physical or financial harm. These aren't meaningless numbers in a vacuum; likes/followers are taken by people to indicate social importance or approval, they show how other people in the world feel and think about things (comments, pages, issues, opinions). A large part of the public sphere is in this form nowadays. Faking likes/followers/comments is deliberately misrepresenting yourself, fraudulent deception - lying.

Seems to me your argument would apply to faking or buying votes in an election, or TV ratings, or referendums or..faking corporation profits, buying fake stories in news media, or anything in the world where the numbers are diddled. "In what way is it unethical? No harm is done to anyone. There's this system with side effects. Finding a way around the rules does not make it unethical."

Imagine if voting and ranking on HN stories and comments was entirely determined by bought upvotes, downvotes, flagging, abuse reports etc. The site would be destroyed. And if the same thing happened on every forum of any kind online? "No harm done?"

Likes are supposed/believed/intended to be a form of social proof by most people. Buying likes destroys that. So harm is done.

> No harm is done to anyone.

I disagree. I think harm is done to everyone who uses the site.