See her other replies. The only correct response to this type of situation is a professionally worded apology and some soul searching to determine where the zeal for viral distribution outpaced commonly understood limits of ethical marketing.

A user was asked to endorse people, but that action ended up endorsing a product; that is the very definition of deceptive viral marketing.

Someone who is too eager to attract users and too confident to politely respond to even the most scathing criticism is clearly struggling with a lack of maturity. If this was an overly zealous employee, that would be one thing, but the founder/CEO? Giant red flag.

This is generally called "Deceptive UX" or http://darkpatterns.org/

“It’s difficult for me [or the other customers] to tell if they do this deliberatively to try to sell… or if they’re just careless with the way they’re designing things,” he said. “You need to see your product from the user’s standpoint.” http://blog.web2expo.com/2011/10/deceptive-ux-how-to-trick-p...