(relatively low stakes, as in like not 9/11 or JFK level)
Mine: plastic straw (and now plastic cutlery) ban initiatives are directly funded by petrochemical companies. Plastic straws are one of the most common and useful types of disposable plastic an average American encounters every day, so banning them causes people a huge inconvenience and tarnishes the idea of other green initiatives (that might have actual teeth) as more nanny state "not allowed to have this"-ery (also has the side effect of making gullible libs think they're actually doing something to help the planet by using a reusable straw while they get their plastic container of meat products)
But it's not a conspiracy, it's standard, publically available operating procedure that you learn day 1. If anything it's out of date info. Current methodologies are to priming what a weak willow bark tea is to pharmaceutical grade morphine.
It's like saying cars are secretly not run by steam engines or tiny demons on hamster wheels at all, but by a nefarious "internal combustion engine" in order to benefit petroleum companies. Yeah, it's not wrong.
If you go to any marketing manager, no matter how junior, in the entire world and ask them if they do this (or the equivalent in their sub field), they will go "Yeah, Duh", we started doing this in the 1930s.
For a marketing conspiracy, try...Google operates its services in such a way that businesses that funnel ad dollars to Google (and are in the same tight tech bubble as Google execs) prosper the most and in turn capture the lion's share of consumer money, without the algorithm ever actually being biased in any direct way towards these companies, and with each individual weighting decision seeming entirely reasonable.
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