On the public markets, using social sway or inside connections to intentionally up- or downregulate the reputation or market price of another company for personal profit (say, a pump-and-dump scheme) will put you in prison. No question about it; it's unambiguously illegal to do that. You don't get to, for example, spread negative rumors about a company and ruin its reputation because you think you should be able to buy it at a discount.

Investors do the same thing, and it wrecks peoples' careers and makes it hard as hell for people to get started amid that feudalistic reputation economy. The excuse is "well, investors talk".

I say: fuck that and fuck them. If Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are really going to tolerate that shit-- which only hurts them-- instead of agitating for proper laws to be written, then they're a pack of self-hating losers for not knowing how to fight for themselves.