I think that this is an obvious extension of what new businesses have been doing for decades. If you open a storefront, you would do a soft opening to test the idea and then a grand opening to generate traffic.

If I was having a grand opening, I would get every friend there, even if they would never shop at my business, to make the place seem full and busy during the "party".

Obviously this is not on the scale of a start up, but I think the idea of faking initial interest is actually common for any business.

The article hints at how sinister your faking is seems to affect how much backlash you get from it.