> a special place in hell along with every other growth hacker
I beg to disagree. Growth hacking is a general term. You can use morally neutral or negative techniques. The fact is people prefer to hide behind terms such as "growth hacking" when what they really do is abusing gullible people. They muddy the waters as it benefits them. I do growth hacking too, most startups needs it - but I use only ethically neutral methods. We really need to make a radical distinction between these two.
I see your point, but I disagree. Ogranic/natural growth for new products doesn't exist these days. Nobody cares about a new product/service. You need some creative ideas in order to get noticed. Not all of these ideas are morally wrong.
Just a simple example. Years ago you would use social media channels such as Facebook to promote your project. But at some point Facebook realized they can monetize this and decided to drastically filter your posts unless you decide to pay them. However, people noticed that the filters on FB groups are much less strict so they started to create groups around topics related to the project. In this way they attract people who could potentially be interested in their project because they show they're interested, and not because someone tries to convice them or spams them etc. This is a simple example of ethical growth hacking. Ethical, because nobody gets hurt, and hacking, because at the beginning it was a bit nonstandard (I believe it's mainstream these days).
I beg to disagree. Growth hacking is a general term. You can use morally neutral or negative techniques. The fact is people prefer to hide behind terms such as "growth hacking" when what they really do is abusing gullible people. They muddy the waters as it benefits them. I do growth hacking too, most startups needs it - but I use only ethically neutral methods. We really need to make a radical distinction between these two.