When running a business, it is useful to be able to know your “target audience.” The surveys are one way I can better understand the target audience and make plans about, for example, what demographics find Plucky most (or least) useful, whether I should invest substantial time in accepting payments from Germans or not, and similar decisions.
Now, you may imagine I am some kind of independently-wealthy snob who only makes Plucky in order to lord it over others, or that I have limitless time and resources at my disposal, so any desire to plan is simply silly. You may imagine anybody who wants to know anything about the target audience of their work is obviously a corrupt institution (even if it is one person), that should be overthrown at the earliest possible moment, lest the world suffer one minute more under their cruel and oppressive tyranny.
If you imagine those things, I’m afraid my real life will disappoint you. In real life, I have a finite number of hours with which to work. I have a family to care for. I eat food. And if you cut me, I bleed. And eventually, I’ll die.
Those who provide false information in Plucky surveys not only pay nothing for Plucky, they also make planning more difficult for me because they mislead me as to who is using it.
Why would you do this? Don’t you understand that when you mislead me you actually, indirectly make Plucky, a service you use, worse?
Even if you have zero moral qualms about lying or being a jerk to somebody who has never done anything wrong to you (as far as I know, at least), even if you are only self-interested, why throw stones at Plucky?
Lying on surveys is not neutral behavior. Taking freebies might be neutral, but lying on surveys actually misleads the Plucky team (me).
If you don’t want to take surveys, don’t.
If you feel you are entitled to use Plucky without offering anything in return, please reflect: Would you want to be treated that way? Imagine you had a job. Would you want to be paid nothing for your work? Get nothing in return, and have those you are trying to help scribble all over your walls for no reason whatsoever?
And if you use surveys as an opportunity to cuss out Yours Truly because Yours Truly is obviously one of the worst people on the planet and a complete and total Blankety-Blank because (insert crazy reasoning here that you would never apply to yourself), perhaps you should pause a moment before unleashing such tirades on complete strangers who are attempting to help you. Think twice about what you expect from me and why. What exactly do I owe you? Do all people on the planet owe you the same? Or only those who happen to have made something that you want, but who don’t turn around and give it to you scot-free, like they would do if they were moral? You know, the kind who care more about strangers such as yourself than about the well-being of their own offspring.