> Some devs would be surprised because this stuff is effective at getting a larger N - total sales funnel volume, not efficiency, is most of their goal.

This is a short-term/long-term tradeoff. If you have the choice between:

- N people into the funnel, 10% decide to join, the rest go away without a negative opinion, some of them even with a "not right now but maybe later" opinion

- 10*N people into the funnel, 2% decide to join, the rest go away with varying degrees of negative opinion

Short-term, the second choice will give you 2x the users joining. Long-term, the second choice will give your company a bad reputation.