If your customers have to be naive and gullible for the company to succeed (even if it's for the very short term) didn't that used to be called a 'scam'? Not su

If your customers have to be naive and gullible for the company to succeed (even if it's for the very short term) didn't that used to be called a 'scam'? Not sure I'm imagining or if it's real but cynicism is strong recently. I get the idealism around startups got a bit overblown but there's got to be some people who still want to work on something that 'makes the world a better place' even if it's in a small way.