I didn't mean the dropshipping is inherently morally murky (which I'll get to in a moment), but that Theive.co harvesting all their user data, then selling that

I didn't mean the dropshipping is inherently morally murky (which I'll get to in a moment), but that Theive.co harvesting all their user data, then selling that to other companies to use for marketing and whatever else you can do with the data is morally murky. I used to work for a company that was intending on selling all their user data to third parties (anonymised, of course) as an extra revenue stream. It definitely made me uncomfortable, my boss fully intended to sell as much of the data as legally possible. It was one of the reasons I left the company, especially considering the nature of the data we held. Now, back to dropshipping. Falsely representing your product as "normally $80, now free if you just pay $10 for shipping" like in the linked podcast is false advertising. It's also probably illegal, you can't put product costs into shipping costs. It's a pump and dump scam. It's like the classic fake watch scam run on street corners all over the world, except you're now wheeling and dealing on the internet instead. Selling a bunch of drop shipped Hawaiian shirts by using clever marketing, that's fine. The shop I mentioned made no misrepresentations, they didn't claim they were bespoke shirts made in some little village on a Pacific Island. They didn't claim that they were offering a massive discount. But if you claimed that you were some bespoke Hawaiian shirt manufacturer who's just started up, and you're giving away shirts if you just pay shipping and tag your mates in the post. That's sort of sketchy isn't it? You can see the moral difference here? Maybe you buy some likes and followers on Facebook or Instagram to make you look more legitimate. Put a couple of stock photos of your "employees" in some remote village in the Solomon Islands. Maybe claim that your shirts are ethically sourced. Are we getting into morally wrong territory here?