Gross doesn't mean anything beyond "it offends my sensibilities." I also don't know if the individuals in this situation feel harmed - nor do you, because that's not how harm works. What I did say was that the actions were unethical because they made discovering and communicating harms less likely.
Ethics[0] is not exactly concerned with material harms to people. You can unethically help people and ethically harm them. That said, what is considered "ethical" is generally based on ideas of what should promote the beneficence of everyone in the situation. Choosing to engage /specifically/ with a group who you think is unlikely to detect deception or tell others about your interaction is unethical.
If you aren't sure why, here are the problems I immediately think of:
- If you are misleading people, it's likely that you're worried they will perceive a harm (real or imagined) if they were fully informed.
- If you are seeking out people who are socially isolated because they are unlikely to speak to others, it suggests you are concerned about the outcome of them telling others about your actions. You can also see this in abusive personal relationships where the abusive party will socially isolate their victim.
- Both of these conditions (knowledge and social capital imbalances) make understanding the impact of a relationship (positive or negative) difficult to determine. It might be that no harm has been done, but the account in the article suggests that the contractor went out of their way to create conditions where, if the participants were harmed, they would not be aware of it or would not be able to communicate it.
Lest you think this is all bleeding heart hand wringing, you can see these same principles encoded in economics. Contract law has the notion of material misrepresentation and there's lots of economic theory around the harms of information asymmetry (you could also look into companies that are convicted for material misrepresentation in advertising).
Is it really so hard to imagine they lied because people wouldn’t want to participate otherwise, regardless of any actual harm? There are plenty of people out there who think it’s illegal to take their picture or record them in public without their consent. “I didn’t consent to this” isn’t a trump card.
Material misrepresentations are a big part of contract law because they almost always, ya know, cause harm. Not too many people out there cooking the books to make their company cheaper to buy, for example.
Ethics[0] is not exactly concerned with material harms to people. You can unethically help people and ethically harm them. That said, what is considered "ethical" is generally based on ideas of what should promote the beneficence of everyone in the situation. Choosing to engage /specifically/ with a group who you think is unlikely to detect deception or tell others about your interaction is unethical.
If you aren't sure why, here are the problems I immediately think of:
- If you are misleading people, it's likely that you're worried they will perceive a harm (real or imagined) if they were fully informed.
- If you are seeking out people who are socially isolated because they are unlikely to speak to others, it suggests you are concerned about the outcome of them telling others about your actions. You can also see this in abusive personal relationships where the abusive party will socially isolate their victim.
- Both of these conditions (knowledge and social capital imbalances) make understanding the impact of a relationship (positive or negative) difficult to determine. It might be that no harm has been done, but the account in the article suggests that the contractor went out of their way to create conditions where, if the participants were harmed, they would not be aware of it or would not be able to communicate it.
Lest you think this is all bleeding heart hand wringing, you can see these same principles encoded in economics. Contract law has the notion of material misrepresentation and there's lots of economic theory around the harms of information asymmetry (you could also look into companies that are convicted for material misrepresentation in advertising).
All of which I find gross.
[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ethic