> This is not just "these companies are evil and should be stopped". It is: there is a market pressure to do these things.

They are evil tho, on top of there being market pressure. Their executives are incredibly comfortable with causing large scale harm, even when they are NOT forced at all.

> If you cap advertising dollars, you cap advertising effectiveness.

And that is OK. Not just ok, but actually good. Their effectivity and their evilness are closely related. Their effectivity and harm they cause are essentially the same thing.

> The impact of reducing advertising effectiveness is disproportionately concentrated on small business where cheap and effective advertising is so important.

Nice try, but no. Who benefited the most were the bad actors, conspiracy theories, weight loss programs specifically marketted to teens who posted about being insecured about their issues.

Marketing is just an arms race. It is ok to limit how manipulative and harmful it is and force companies to compete on something else.

> Marketing is just an arms race. It is ok to limit how manipulative and harmful it is and force companies to compete on something else.

I agree with this, and I think you are right about a lot of this being really just not market-relevant factors that are driving a lot of the downsides here. All of these should be regulated, and even the ones where regulating will have impact to markets and consumers.

And I agree -- effective advertising targeting necessitates "reward hacking" in that I can get you to buy something if I prey on your insecurities or otherwise manipulate you in a way that goes beyond "oh I know what watwut would love as a birthday gift".

But you really should be aware that effective advertising really does disproportionately benefit smaller businesses and this is generally a Good Thing. Really my only point here is that there is a baby in this bathwater and we should be careful.