September 30, 2025

2025.09.30 - Knowing Your Ethical Lines in the Era of Virality

By Lynn Swayze, NLP · 5 minute read

I spoke with a marketing peer yesterday about the latest “tricks” brands can use to capture more attention and get more views and engagement on their videos.

This person said, “We have to keep doing these kinds of things, because if you aren’t ahead of everyone else, you’re just losing.”

And frankly, this points to a lot of what’s wrong with direct response/performance marketing today, which I categorize into 3 main drivers:

📌The Myth of Virality = Success
📌The Always-Moving Ethical Goalpost.
📌Chasing Pre-Enshittification Era Results

📌The Myth of Virality = Success

The Myth of Virality says that all attention is good attention and if you only “go viral,” that all will be well with your business.

Following this belief are actions which align with this intention:

🔸 Chasing content formats and trends which big names are doing on social media
🔸 Publishing content which has nothing to do with the brand or your domain of expertise
🔸 Engaging in “engagement bait” to get more views, such as having an image of something “shocking” as your thumbnail, or putting an unrelated video/image into the first second of your video

These actions feel like they’re getting you close to your goal… and perhaps they are, if your organization’s aligned vision is “let’s go viral at all costs.”

Unfortunately, this kind of campaign erodes the very trust that created so much success to begin with, because the audience you actually want to fill your company with – conscientious buyers, clients who stick with you long-term, happy referrers – are put off by the sudden shift into grifter-like viral content hacks.

Before too long, you’ll find your audience flooded with people you don’t like, don’t trust, and can’t count on to create a long-term community.

Which brings me to point #2.

📌The Always-Moving Ethical Goalpost

In an algorithm-driven environment where attention drives ad results, content views/engagement, and visibility, it’s easy to engage with the kinds of aforementioned actions to grow your audience.

Yet too few business owners ever sit down and ask, “What’s our ethical line?”

What is the point where you will say, “Yes, I know this could theoretically make the brand more money, but it violates our principles and so we won’t do it.”

Is that line at…

🔸Sending unsolicited emails to a list after a conference, even if someone isn’t opted in?

🔸 Discovering individual, de-anonymized information about site visitors, and marketing to them?

🔸 Using “dark” patterns like hiding the terms, putting unrelated “shock” content at the start of your video, using one-click upsells, obfuscating your refund policy, making it hard to cancel, etc?

🔸Chasing attention and virality at the expense of your core message and mission?

🔸Scraping your competitors’ content and programs via AI, but “making it a little bit better”?

🔸Abandoning your core business and instead chasing the wider market?

I can’t make these calls for your business; only YOU can, as a marketing or business leader.

My only suggestion is that you actually talk through your line and how far you’ll go before you get stuck in circles where you’ll feel the FOMO and normalization of these behaviors and forget that you were once a person who had a deeper, driving purpose to do good in the world.

And finally, the last issue is that we’re all…

📌Chasing Pre-Enshittification Era Results

If you aren’t familiar with the term “enshittification,” then it’s time to get familiar. It’s a phrase coined by Cory Doctorow to describe “platform decay” which happens especially to algorithm-based, attention-based social media platforms.

Enshittification has several phases. I’m not quoting Cory directly here, but stating them as I understand them to be:

1️⃣Stage 1: The Platform is Great for the Users.

Early platforms make it very easy for individuals to create lots of content, connect with others, and build a “following” or “brand.” Some platforms might even incentivize this behavior with monetization and lax rules on promotions. There are often few ads at this stage as everyone hops on the platform.

(Remember too that new platforms are often using the latest dopamine-inducing, algorithmic content feed design to get you “hooked” early.)

2️⃣Stage 2: The Platform is Great for Business Users

Once individual people (aka “users” aka “content creators” aka “the market”) really get hooked on a platform, then platforms start to roll out ads and monetization. This is in part because hosting and moderating busy platforms is expensive, in part because of investor pressure, and in part because monetization was always the goal. Social media isn’t profitable, after all, unless there are ads.

So what do these platforms do? They entice business owners to join, boost content, pay for ads, and otherwise start making money off the audience the platform has built. FOMO usually kicks in, and we see the shovel-sellers start to sell programs, courses, coaching, etc on how to best “monetize” these platforms and find buyers.

For the average individual user, the experience starts to decline. All the reach and audience they had before fades, as they are forced to homogenize their content so that the algorithms and ads work better. Use hashtags! Write in these kinds of formats! Try short form! All the while, your compliance ensures that the platform’s ability to deliver ROI for businesses is assured.

This is the stage where lots of agencies and consultants pop up, promising untold riches if you only try this new platform and follow their proven playbooks.

3️⃣Stage 3: Full Enshittification

After enough business owners have bought on to using the platform, then the real enshittification plays out. Ads become more expensive as more business owners hop on. The platform also usually begins restricting what you can say and why, for reasons that are often more about profit than about the user experience…although that’s also a concern at this stage, because users are dropping. Complaints of “all I see are ads” and “I can’t even get engagement anymore” are common even for business owners. Like at a casino, the few who cashed in early are doing well, but everyone else struggles.

Eventually, individuals hop onto another, newer platform and the process continues. (What to do about this is something I’ll explore in another article.)

👉 Why this Matters

When it comes to marketing, what this means is that many businesses are still chasing the results of the 2010-2019 era of Facebook advertising, Google advertising, and SEO. And many of the gurus are still teaching and selling strategies which did, in fact, work for that era.

But times have changed, enshittification has gotten worse, and those kinds of results just don’t come so easily anymore. Which of course, causes business owners to feel like they’re missing out, and to instead chase actions which they feel (but don’t know for sure) will move the needle.

📌The Answer Isn’t Easy, but it IS Simple

As a marketer, one thing I say too often is, “it depends.” And in this case, how you choose to respond to this business ecosystem depends on you, your business, your industry, your brand’s ethos, and so forth. But you do need to make a decision.

I can’t mark your ethical lines in the sand for you, but I can help you to:

🔸Move forward deliberately and with intentionality
🔸Track what you’re doing so you are data-aware and using analytics, one of the 3 pillars of the Intuitive Marketing™ framework
🔸Help you if create marketing that builds community (online and off!), protects the trust you’ve built with your audience, and continues to generate results in today’s noisy world

So I wanna know: what are you doing about these trends? And where’s your brand’s line? How will you explore this topic with your team?

Until next time,

– Lynn M. Swayze, CHt | Founder, The Intuitive Marketer™

I Help Expert Brands Apply the Intuitive Marketing Trifecta™ of Analytics, Intuition, and Psychology for Business Growth. Working with me:

Your teams will be aligned around a guiding “North Star,” allowing everyone’s intention, energy, and action to work in concert.
Marketing and sales will be data-driven, backed by a systemized approach to avatars, messaging, action, and automation (like using HubSpot!).
Your organization will enjoy faster sales velocity, lower marketing costs, and improved marketing and business effectiveness. Oh, and it’ll be fun again!