Perhaps a clearer approach is to only allow political advertising to be bought using money given by citizens (and limiting the amount each citizen can contribute in each election).
In the case of the US political system, this would probably require an amendment to the constitution, but such an idea is being seriously proposed:
The wisest form of regulation is to assume bad actors from step 1 and try to create systems where the bad actors are encouraged to abide the rules, not out of threats, but because it benefits them in some way. For instance, the EU are aiming to force Netflix (and similar operations) to have 30% of their catalogue sourced from local productions... or else. It's not tough to predict the result. They'll license the premium stuff (which they probably already have) and then just stuff the rest with filler to hit the minimum.
Imagine if instead that Netflix and other companies received a tax deduction which was proportional to the percent of time their customers spent consuming locally sourced material. Now suddenly there is a positive incentive for the good behavior, and Netflix would almost certainly be going out of their way to try to get you to watch locally sourced material. On the other hand people often want to have their cake, and eat it too.
So instead we let all of the players become bad actors without consequence?
> Imagine if instead that Netflix and other companies received a tax deduction which was proportional to the percent of time their customers spent consuming locally sourced material. Now suddenly there is a positive incentive for the good behavior, and Netflix would almost certainly be going out of their way to try to get you to watch locally sourced material. On the other hand people often want to have their cake, and eat it too.
And then reward the bad actors for being bad actors in the first place by depriving society of the taxes they owe?
I think it's safe to assume that the politicians making those deals will be often be bad actors too, and courts rarely let cities and other governments back out of those deals just because the deal makers were corrupt.