Fresh Cambridge Analytica leak ‘shows global manipulation is out of control’

I still think there are some problems with your definition, and I'm thinking strictly from a legal point of view. There's so much manipulation that can happen from a sole proprietorship that wouldn't be allowed by your definition, simply based upon the quantity of sales (which is fine, if you think that's an acceptable demarcation line, but it will still lead to lots of cases where large companies are legally treated differently, which, in and of itself does happen, but any new text added to a given law will simply pad the lining of lawyers pockets whose job it is to argue over the minutae of each word).

But if I pepper a market crowd with my family members all randomly talking about how amazing the food/widgets/whatever over at Bob's Widget Stand are, so that over hearing bystanders can hear is a form a psychological manipulation that may fall into a gray area.

Ultimately, each time you say "this is fine, this isn't", you're adding an exception and branching logic that will be argued about ad infinitum.

Laws, like lines of code, have a technical debt to them, except the lines of law are likely to impact more people generally, enough so to ruin lives and industries (which can happen with code, of course, but code doesn't have the same global application to every member of society backed up with the use of force).

I'm not saying that reaching an acceptable compromise is unachievable, but conceptually, it's a lot more involved than simply laying out the broad strokes, with tons of ramifications, implicit and otherwise, that have to be considered.

Okay, I can see your point about wanting to curb the abuses, but how do you accomplish that without removing the positives?

For instance, I find that the advertising done by Facebook and Instagram very effective for me. The advertising tends to cater to niche things I have actually gotten real use from (in my case, it's soundkits containing midi files, and/or software musical instruments).

I've purchased many of these and have been quite happy with both the offerings and the purchases.

Sometimes these are by small companies (one to two man shops, or 10 people companies), and sometimes well known large companies.

Under your thinking, and correct me if I'm wrong, but this sort of thing would be illegal.

Word of mouth wouldn't work for me in cases like this, since it's particularly directed towards things I like, but I don't have very many friends in the music producer community (learning it for less than a year), and it seems in my case, I've really only been "scammed" once, which was easily disputed and rectified via PayPal.

Now, I've been scammed before, online and off, with shady advertising, but this current model greatly benefits me.

If I'm correct in assuming that you're against this sort of advertising, is there a substitute that would work, while still bringing the benefits to both sides?

Because it appears to me that anything will have it's abuses and negative forms, but it really comes down to, is the advertising to blame, or the malignant folks who abuse it?