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I've been fascinated for a long time by how scams work, and perhaps the most revealing observation I've made is that the manipulation and deception involved is virtually *identical* to what the shadier side of the marketing industry (eg. microtransactions) does legally, the only difference is whether on paper you've gotten something for your money
A separate but related point: the shittier companies are allowed to be, the more susceptible people will be to scams.
Because how do you expect people to distinguish between the scams that are state-sanctioned, and the ones that are not?
Also, I want to emphasize that shady shit in the marketing industry is so widespread that "the shadier side" doesn't refer to just a few companies; it refers to the shadier side that almost *every single* company in the marketing space has, ethical companies are vanishingly rare and the whole industry is Like This