You still need incentive to lie, why would you lie to a friend about this? It's not like they're going to report you

If your friend complains about something you talk about then you stop talking about it.

If your friend complains about something they saw you do then you stop doing that in front of your friend.

If you're getting money to do something why would you stop just because a friend complains?

This is ultimately an ethical question. Not everyone has the same ethics.

I disagree. Some people lie just for the fun of it.

And some people tell the truth. Just because some people do it, doesn't necessarily mean that its likely in this case.

Shame and revenue are powerful motivators.

I very much doubt shame was involved. At least I don't think I know anyone who would feel shame over doing this

I have prior experience with a friend deciding to get into shady Internet ripoff stuff. They definitely were ashamed to discuss it with me and ended up trying to lie about it so they wouldn’t lose me as a friend. I don’t contradict that some would be unashamed, but I encourage giving more credence to the human capacity for cognitive dissonance.

It's why public/published reviews/testimonials for general public consumption are bunk. Lower quality, crappier or knockoff product, will have higher profit margin to afford marketing/advertising and other tactics like fake reviews.

Word of mouth reviews from your trusted tribe leaders, go-to people you come to learn to trust (vs. random internet stranger), slows down processes but inherently has quality-trust built into the process.

I am a fan of a lot of what Tesla and Elon has done, not a fan of others parts of the whole, however what I think I value the most so far is that Tesla doesn't advertise: the attention they've gained has arguably been deserved and not bought.

This is a very powerful and important mechanism that society hasn't understood yet, and needs a Facebook->The Social Dilemma moment to bring to light of the cascading consequences of the Ad industrial complex - of people being able to cheaply buy attention they haven't earned nor deserve (for products and services). En mass this industrial complex is funnelling money into feeding this low quality, bad actor tactic system - and away from honest, high-quality, deserving individuals, organizations/companies, and systems.

With the correct policy we can quickly knock out likely 4 or even 5 birds with a single stone; more likely it's 10 policies fix/shift 3x the systems that need fixing from their foundation. UBI, a share/dividend from just some of the productivity of the society paid back to the largest cog in the wheel of capitalism, will be one such policy - that then applied with say 9 other policies and/or systemic changes - will then each compound with the others giving a 100x improvement.