

Ideally, children would be educated and trained better to think critically; making people harder to manipulate through emotion. But, pragmatically, yeah, marketing/propaganda strategies are useful and even necessary for progress.
Your article made me wonder if there were any theories about ethically appealing to emotion, and I found this (psychological/political) theory interesting: https://semihcakir.com/blog/the-affective-intelligence-theory/. As I understand it, it posits that when people have low anxiety, their thinking is just habitual, but when they experience anxiety, they open themselves up to new information.
I used Swappa to buy my last phone. Not certified, but much cheaper. The condition of phones is “graded,” and the sellers have an incentive to keep their reputation on the platform high. I had good luck, the one time I used it, at least.