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That's a great critique of my definition. I don't think people are manipulative by withholding private or personal information. Withholding relevant information

That's a great critique of my definition. I don't think people are manipulative by withholding private or personal information. Withholding relevant information isn't manipulative in certain contexts either: i.e. those where all parties agree that there is no expectation of transparency. So, we could either argue that 1) deception implies that there is a reasonable expectation of disclosure, or 2) update the definition to explicitly say "...withheld information when there is a reasonable expectation of disclosure..." For example, if I invest in a publicly traded company, I expect the company to be honest on their quarterly filings, but I don't expect to have access to all of their financials. If a company withholds pertinent information because they don't want to impact the stock price, that is manipulation. If they withhold the same information honestly believing it isn't significant to the stock price, that's not manipulation (though it may be incompetence). Another example: If I target financially illiterate people with predatory loans, that is often manipulative. I'm deliberately targeting people who I wouldn't expect to be able to analyze repercussions of the loan, and I'm lying when I say it will be positive. If I target financially illiterate people and give them credit cards that I believe are within their means, then I'm not being manipulative - even if some of those folks default or their lives are made worse by the loan.

abecedarius 5y ago
(Sorry for the late reply.) Yeah, I think this is reasonable. IANAL but I have the impression that manipulations like these would go under "fraud" -- most debatably the last couple. The OP was about pressures to establish laws and norms that are more open to interpretations: > we also seem to include some more flexible offenses, such as “brainwashing”, “propaganda”, “manipulation”, “deception”, “misinformation”, “harassment”, and “gaslighting”. Again the key is that these tend to be defined less in terms of what exactly was done wrong, and more in terms of a disliked result. so I just wanted to object to a claim in this context that "manipulation" actually is open-and-shut. If I'm right that your last couple of examples are where "manipulation" leaves more discretion to enforcement than the "fraud" standard, then I don't think you're disagreeing much with the OP on this point (though probably you are on whether this discretion is excessive).

abecedarius 5y ago

(Sorry for the late reply.) Yeah, I think this is reasonable. IANAL but I have the impression that manipulations like these would go under "fraud" -- most debatably the last couple. The OP was about pressures to establish laws and norms that are more open to interpretations: > we also seem to include some more flexible offenses, such as “brainwashing”, “propaganda”, “manipulation”, “deception”, “misinformation”, “harassment”, and “gaslighting”. Again the key is that these tend to be defined less in terms of what exactly was done wrong, and more in terms of a disliked result. so I just wanted to object to a claim in this context that "manipulation" actually is open-and-shut. If I'm right that your last couple of examples are where "manipulation" leaves more discretion to enforcement than the "fraud" standard, then I don't think you're disagreeing much with the OP on this point (though probably you are on whether this discretion is excessive).