You are correct, I would include advertising in a strongly questionable moral territory. I think having the question "Is what we are doing morally virtuous?" h

You are correct, I would include advertising in a strongly questionable moral territory. I think having the question "Is what we are doing morally virtuous?" hang there as a Sword of Damocles[0] is the way to go. Sure, few things are 100% morally virtuous. But the fact that you cannot achieve perfection doesn't mean you can or should stop trying. I see this kind of reasoning a little too often and it's a slippery slope to moral bankruptcy. Once you accept trading in part of your morals, all of them end up for sale, eventually. Instead, trading in morals should be a bloody tooth and nails fight. At best, you should only trade them in temporarily and never should you make your livelihood depend on your trading them in. We should be as terrified of losing our morals as we are of losing our lives because once a critical mass of our morals is lost, our lives are no longer worth living. Only once we are all truly terrified of losing our morals, constantly, will we stop not only producing bad (as in: truly questionable) technology, but also using good technology for bad. The difference between a good and an evil person isn't that the good person is perfect or unfailing. The difference is that good person hasn't stopped trying to be good. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damocles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damocles (including this here because it's an educating read, even if you think you know about it)