[HN Gopher] Mtn Dew Raid Q&A [pdf]
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Mtn Dew Raid Q&A [pdf]
        
       Author : katrinarodri
       Score  : 234 points
       Date   : 2023-12-05 14:35 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.mountaindew.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.mountaindew.com)
        
       | gumballindie wrote:
       | Clever use of opencv and image detection.
        
       | glorygut123 wrote:
       | "PLEASE DRINK VERIFICATION CAN" but even more dystopian
        
         | mminer237 wrote:
         | This is an opt-in promotion they're inviting small streamers to
         | participate in without any actual consumption required.
        
           | ReactiveJelly wrote:
           | The dystopian part is that they're testing a CV feature that
           | has enough capacity to watch tons of streams constantly, and
           | they don't _need_ your permission to run it. One would hope
           | this will put the "haha my FBI agent must be bored I'm not
           | worth it nothing to hide :)" fools in their place
        
             | Double_a_92 wrote:
             | Why would they need a permission to watch something that
             | you are publicly streaming?
        
               | 8organicbits wrote:
               | Consider the difference between noticing someone you
               | happen to pass on the street and following that person
               | with a video camera every time they are outside.
               | Corporation should not continuously monitor people, even
               | in public spaces.
        
               | azinman2 wrote:
               | Everything you do online is tracked. Too late.
        
               | zamadatix wrote:
               | It's never too late to have a stance on something.
               | Actually it's quite difficult to do things the other way
               | around.
        
               | sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
               | This isn't really a very good comparison.
               | 
               | It's difficult to simply live life and never, ever be in
               | a public space.
               | 
               | No one has to publicly stream on Twitch or other
               | services. If someone wants to broadcast video but do it
               | privately, there are ways to do that.
               | 
               | It might be a small stage for a small streamer, but
               | turning that stream on still means you're getting up on a
               | stage, and you are implicitly accepting that you'll be
               | watched. It's a choice to put yourself out there.
        
               | euazOn wrote:
               | Yes. Related to the difference between "available" and
               | "easily accessible" - a lot of information about e.g.
               | politicians may be freely available, but it usually
               | doesn't make a difference unless a journalist makes it
               | easily accessible.
        
               | ribosometronome wrote:
               | Streamers are explicitly broadcasting themselves, though.
               | They are the camera following themselves around.
        
               | verdverm wrote:
               | There is a difference between watching a person in a
               | public space and watching someone who is purposely
               | broadcasting themself to the world
        
               | Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
               | Your comment and many others like it make me wonder if
               | you people even know what Twitch is.
        
             | dingnuts wrote:
             | something scary the "my FBI agent" people probably don't
             | think about is that "their FBI agent" might not even be
             | born yet, because they're putting all this stuff out into
             | the public record to be analyzed who knows, maybe thirty
             | years from now by an unimaginable regime by some "kid"
             | (who's 30, and you're 50 or 60) that doesn't have an
             | inkling of understanding or care for what was socially
             | acceptable 30 years ago
        
               | jdiff wrote:
               | Good thing the FBI isn't in the business of policing
               | social acceptability.
        
               | bobsmith432 wrote:
               | We didn't think the NSA was in the business of
               | international unwarranted surveillance until they were
        
               | jdiff wrote:
               | You could apply that reasoning to any random claim
               | regardless of veracity.
        
             | ericmcer wrote:
             | The AI is just automating something they could hire an army
             | of humans to do though, twitch usually has ~80k streams
             | running, so it would take a few thousand workers but there
             | would be no privacy blockers.
             | 
             | They do have your permission to run it, as soon as you
             | start live streaming yourself you are giving anyone with
             | the internet permission to access that data.
        
         | gosub100 wrote:
         | I think they're playing netizens over this one, because they
         | _know_ this comment will come up and everyone will laugh and
         | associate that feel-good emotion with their brand.
        
           | jdiff wrote:
           | Is it a feel-good emotion if the emotion is "how do I get off
           | this planet"?
        
       | homeless_engi wrote:
       | Is this a joke? It is pretty much exactly the old "please drink
       | verification can" greentext / meme
       | 
       | I suppose life really does imitate art!
        
       | burkaman wrote:
       | > Once you accept, the RAID AI will keep monitoring your stream
       | for the presence of MTN DEW, if you remove your DEW, you'll be
       | prompted to bring it back on camera
       | 
       | This has to be directly inspired by that "drink verification can"
       | 4chan post.
        
         | wongarsu wrote:
         | I assume we are talking about this one, for those not aware:
         | https://i.imgur.com/dgGvgKF.png
        
           | Dig1t wrote:
           | Thank you for linking that, that made me laugh out loud. That
           | should be a scene in Idiocracy.
        
           | lloydatkinson wrote:
           | Change a few words and this feels exactly like the security
           | theatre of the modern login experience, 2FA, MFA, I'm sure
           | they're working on the next insufferable "best practice" to
           | try tie your phone to you even more. Good luck logging into
           | some services if you dare keep your phone in another room for
           | a change.
           | 
           | Flashback to the time I was getting approximately 50
           | Microsoft 2FA SMS's a day. The place I worked then had forced
           | Chrome's homepage to be some crappy SharePoint page. Getting
           | into that required logging into our Microsoft account, and
           | the checkbox to remember our login for five days literally
           | never worked.
           | 
           | So every time I opened a new tab in Chrome, I'd get a SMS.
           | Truly, we are living in the future.
        
             | 4ggr0 wrote:
             | to be fair, sounds like the place you worked at
             | misconfigured something, rather than M$.
        
             | apetresc wrote:
             | Tip: if you find that the "remember my login" ticks never
             | seem to work for you, it's likely your browser's "Enhanced
             | Tracking Prevention" or whatever. You should be able to
             | disable it for just the domain that the authentication
             | portal itself is happening on. Helped a lot for me.
        
             | data-ottawa wrote:
             | I always wonder what would happen to most people if there
             | was a house fire and all their phones and laptops burned at
             | once.
             | 
             | It's not clear what the best security plan for that is
             | (safety deposit box or fireproof safe seem like the best
             | options).
        
               | wongarsu wrote:
               | Most places will deactivate your account's 2FA if you can
               | convincingly prove your identity. Of course hackers
               | noticed that too, and might try to disable your 2FA once
               | they have enough private information about you ...
        
               | iforgotpassword wrote:
               | So, not Google.
        
               | eloisius wrote:
               | I stress about getting my shit stolen every time I'm
               | traveling and being completely locked out of everything.
               | I stash an extra phone separate from my main phone every
               | time I travel for that reason.
        
               | lancesells wrote:
               | You have two phones with the same number? I didn't know
               | that was possible.
        
               | eloisius wrote:
               | No, but most SMS-based 2fa is linked to my voip number,
               | which then requires 2fa stored in a password manager.
        
               | lancesells wrote:
               | Makes sense. Thanks.
        
               | whamlastxmas wrote:
               | Many services let you print 2fa codes. Keep them at a
               | friends house
        
             | Kharacternyk wrote:
             | The primary MFA device should be a Yubikey or something
             | similar. Some of such keys are designed to be permanently
             | plugged in. People use phones instead when they don't want
             | to invest into a key or as a backup. EDIT: Or when OTP over
             | SMS is the only MFA method supported as it likely is in
             | your case.
        
               | alpaca128 wrote:
               | Does that also work if Google again randomly decides I
               | have to use a specific one of multiple MFA choices?
               | Recently it forced me to dig out my old phone I hadn't
               | been using for months and boot it just to confirm a popup
               | because it simply wouldn't let me select a different
               | method. I don't know what would have happened if I'd lost
               | the phone instead of just buying a new one after support
               | ended. It didn't even let me enter my printed out backup
               | codes, which kind of defeats the purpose.
               | 
               | And most people aren't even using a free password
               | manager, there's no chance they're going to buy and
               | configure a Yubikey.
        
             | chankstein38 wrote:
             | I once ran over my phone with a mower. Tried to log onto
             | Verizon's site to buy a new one. Please enter the code
             | shown on your phone. No alternative way to sign in.
             | Nothing. I contacted chat support and they wouldn't talk to
             | me until I verified through my phone. Obviously impossible.
             | I ended up chatting with sales support and begging each
             | person to forward me to tech support until one finally took
             | pity on me and forwarded me to someone who was cool enough
             | to actually help me. What the hell.
        
             | Unfrozen0688 wrote:
             | >The place I worked then had forced Chrome's homepage to be
             | some crappy SharePoint page. Getting into that required
             | logging into our Microsoft account, and the checkbox to
             | remember our login for five days literally never worked.
             | 
             | Yes but, usually you are logged into your PC with the same
             | account. So with SSO in Edge and Firefox, it would just log
             | you in.
        
               | lloydatkinson wrote:
               | Except it didn't.
        
           | jw1224 wrote:
           | And thanks to Sony (patent US8246454B2), this might as well
           | be real...
           | 
           | https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/b4/2e/a1/779dd8d.
           | ..
        
             | jjice wrote:
             | This never fails to make me tear up with laughter. The
             | quadrant where he stands up just really gets me.
        
             | jacoblambda wrote:
             | Isn't the greentext in direct response to that patent?
        
               | wongarsu wrote:
               | Patent was granted in 2012, greentext published in 2013.
               | Definitely plausible.
        
               | billfor wrote:
               | https://patents.google.com/patent/US8246454B2/en
        
           | observationist wrote:
           | -wake up feeling sick after a late night of playing video
           | games       -excited to play some halo 2k19       -"xbox on"
           | -...       -"XBOX ON"       -"Please verify that you are
           | "annon332" by saying "Doritos(tm) Dew(tm) it right!"
           | -"Doritos(tm) Dew(tm) it right"       -"ERROR! Please drink a
           | verification can"       -reach into my Doritos(tm) Mountain
           | Dew(tm) Halo 2k19(tm) War Chest       -only a few cans left,
           | needed to verify 14 times last night       -still feeling
           | sick from the 14       -force it down and grumble out "mmmm
           | that really hit the spot"       -xbox does nothing       -i
           | attempt to smile       -"Connecting to verification server"
           | -...       -"Verification complete!"       -finally
           | -boot up halo 2k19       -finding multiplayer match...
           | -"ERROR! User attempting to steal online gameplay!"       -my
           | mother just walked in the room       -"Adding another user to
           | your pass, this will be charged to your credit card. Do you
           | accept?"       -"NO!"       -"Console entering lock state!"
           | -"to unlock drink verification can"       -last can
           | -"WARNING, OUT OF VERIFICATION CANS, an order has been
           | shipped and charged to your credit card"       -drink half
           | the can, oh god im going to be sick       -pour the last half
           | out the window       -"PIRACY DETECTED! PLEASE COMPLETE THIS
           | ADVERTISEMENT TO CONTINUE"       -the mountain dew ad plays
           | -i have to dance for it       -feeling so sick       -makes
           | me sing along       -dancing and singing       -"mountain dew
           | is for me and you"       -throw up on my self       -throw up
           | on my tv and entertainment system       -router shorts
           | -"ERROR NO CONNECTION! XBOX SHUTTING OFF"       -"PLEASE
           | DRINK VERIFICATION CAN TO CONTINUE"
           | 
           | Text for context, source:4chan
        
         | bob1029 wrote:
         | I think they're using it as an instruction manual. Looking
         | forward to Doritos deploying their piece.
        
         | dylan604 wrote:
         | Sounds like something out of Idiocracy. It's got what _____
         | crave!
        
         | ranting-moth wrote:
         | How many years until you'll get rewarded extra of your drinking
         | from the can? I'd say 2-3 years.
        
       | polygamous_bat wrote:
       | Oh how I wish today was April 1st. Instead, seems like this is
       | real and we indeed live in a clown world.
       | 
       | What's stopping me from having a "MTN DEW makes you obese" banner
       | on my channel?
        
         | mminer237 wrote:
         | Nothing, but it says they have humans verifying the streams'
         | content too, so presumably they would not choose to include you
         | in the promotion.
        
           | agloe_dreams wrote:
           | ..moooore like Pepsico lawyers would send you some nice fan
           | mail with a C&D.
        
             | mminer237 wrote:
             | I'm pretty sure that such a banner would be squarely
             | protected by the First Amendment as long as you didn't make
             | it look like you were sponsored by Pepsi.
        
         | gosub100 wrote:
         | Crowd fund a popular "family vlogger" (maybe one who does more
         | DIY type projects) to make an episode where they clean a bunch
         | of motor oil, grease, and brake fluid off their driveway with
         | MTN DEW. "Wow, it's so good at penetrating the cement and
         | breaking down that toxic sludge!"
        
       | RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
       | This definitely has a "How do you do fellow kids" vibe to it.
       | 
       | https://amp.knowyourmeme.com/memes/how-do-you-do-fellow-kids
       | 
       | I am seeing more potential for downside than for upside for this
       | campaign.
        
       | perihelions wrote:
       | Counter-proposal: Amazon should prohibit influencing soft drinks
       | on their platform, and use their machine-vision panopticon to
       | punish streamers who promote/advertise them to children.
        
         | shreyshnaccount wrote:
         | Where's the profit margin in that
        
           | shpx wrote:
           | It's a long term play where the pay off is living and raising
           | your children in a slightly nicer world, not expressed
           | directly in a dollar amount.
        
             | judge2020 wrote:
             | So 0 benefit to Amazon which would typically benefit from a
             | more consumerism-focused youth?
        
               | mensetmanusman wrote:
               | Amazon would benefit from future citizens that can walk
               | without wobbling.
        
               | tylersmith wrote:
               | I'm not sure they would. I never used Amazon more than
               | when I was unable to walk.
        
               | scrame wrote:
               | not really, they would benefit from people being stuck in
               | their chairs and needing to order everything online.
        
               | shpx wrote:
               | In the short term maybe. More long term and generally,
               | there are going to be 400 million people living in
               | America, over the lifespan of Amazon the entity, the
               | lifespans of its employees and shareholders, all three
               | will have to interact with those 400 million people, some
               | on the street, a lot (in a small way) in political
               | processes and systems, in art, as future employees, as
               | employees in businesses they partner with, etc.
               | Advertising is mass programming (albeit in a small way)
               | of large swathes of the population.
               | 
               | There's 44 million US Twitch users, so basically you can
               | show a message to 1/10th of the entire youth population
               | of America. In 10 years there is probably some minor
               | difference in society between whether that message was
               | "go drink mountain dew" or "here's how DNA works" or
               | something simpler, or more useful, or different things
               | tailored by age, etc. Now if Amazon makes like 3 cents
               | per ad (a number I made up) * 44 million users compounded
               | by 7% annual interest over 10 years then that's 2.5
               | million dollars of profit. But money is a tiny slice of
               | the entire pie of what is possible in an economy. If
               | instead Amazon "donated" that 2.5 million dollars
               | (actually more if 3 cents per ad is profit not revenue)
               | by using its ad infrastructure to forcefully cram useful
               | knowledge into the children instead of knowledge about a
               | sugar drink brand, it's possible that everything that is
               | possible in society 10 years from now would essentially
               | make all the other money Amazon makes more valuable,
               | because, for example, doctors that Amazon shareholders
               | would want to go to would charge less because they
               | indoctrinated a few more children into an interest in
               | biology instead of Mountain Dew consumption so there was
               | more doctors and less diabetics.
               | 
               | Will it be enough to offset 2.5+ million dollars?
               | Probably not, but we don't have the technology to express
               | that cost/benefit calculation, because the best we have
               | is spreadsheets and demand/supply curves (if you will
               | permit my derisive oversimplification of what economic
               | tools business people use). We have developed computers
               | and mathematics, as well as a system of assigning token
               | counts to people and groups of people (money) that when
               | people and groups of people work hard on increasing their
               | respective token counts seems to correlate quite well
               | with generally improving things and getting things we
               | want. Numbers (bits really) are highly physically stable
               | states and mathematics is operations we can perform of
               | those states that are themselves very stable in time and
               | predictable. We can measure things in the world and
               | record those measurements into bits and then apply
               | operations on those bits and we find that sometimes we're
               | able to build computations that result in a strong
               | correlation between the resulting state and physical
               | reality. We're able to predict the future. However
               | there's still a pretty huge mismatch with what we're able
               | to easily express with simple mathematics on collections
               | of bits and whatever our brains can do, which we
               | experience as intuition/common sense and empathy.
               | 
               | Basically I'm saying it would take a strong willed person
               | with the intuition to see that "if we use our mass
               | population programming tools to increase the competence
               | of our youth we will be better off than if we increase
               | the consumption of Mountain Dew by 13% (or whatever they
               | estimate)" because it's very difficult to truly express
               | that comparison as a spreadsheet of dollar amounts, which
               | is the primary technology businesses have for making
               | decisions. Because a spreadsheet is a Turing machine and
               | typing in data and programs into it is really time
               | consuming whereas a human brain is a very different type
               | of computer that processes input much more efficiently
               | but is more fallible because other brains can't inspect
               | its thought process, which is why we usually prefer
               | spreadsheets.
        
         | Taylor_OD wrote:
         | Paid for by... The Moms Against Mountain Dew? I want to live in
         | a world where the healthy option is the financially profitable
         | one, but until we do, the advertisers/sugar pushers will
         | continue to win.
        
           | verdverm wrote:
           | Just wait for Mothers Against Generative AI
        
           | make3 wrote:
           | profit is not the only morality
        
         | sbarre wrote:
         | Ehh we have enough with the nanny state, we don't need the
         | nanny corps as well.
        
         | jeroenhd wrote:
         | Ethically: yes, totally.
         | 
         | Too bad it's never going to happen, because selling healthy
         | things to children is a lot harder than selling sugar water.
        
         | schleck8 wrote:
         | Yeah. Sweets are one thing when consumed moderately but
         | Mountain Dew is toxic waste. Looks like it's radioactive and
         | contains the appropriate ingredients.
        
           | paradox460 wrote:
           | My grandfather tried it once and said "that tastes like Daisy
           | May's piss"
        
       | prakhar897 wrote:
       | > MTN DEW RAID will be providing streamers at all levels - from
       | casual gamers to the pros - with the chance to supe up their
       | audiences - that's the prize! However, in order to spread the
       | word MTN DEW is partnering with influencers, as well as existing
       | brand partners, to showcase the RAID program and encourage their
       | followers to join the RAID.
       | 
       | Paying with exposure Wow. and wtf does "supe" even mean here?
        
         | ReactiveJelly wrote:
         | Phonetic spelling of "Soup up" I guess.
         | 
         | https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/soup%20up
         | 
         | > These examples are programmatically compiled from various
         | online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'soup
         | up.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent
         | those of Merriam-Webster or its editors
         | 
         | If you trust AI.
        
         | myself248 wrote:
         | Basically "supercharge" but in a use not specific to the
         | literal raising of intake manifold pressure and flow. To "supe
         | up", also spelled "soup up" (which makes no sense to me as
         | there's no broth involved), has been a common term in
         | motorsports since at least the 1960s.
        
           | inkcapmushroom wrote:
           | The term is actually soup up, supe up is incorrect. It comes
           | from horse racing back in the 1920's, the slang for
           | performance enhancing drugs given to your horses was soup.
           | 
           | https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/soup%20up#word-
           | hi...
        
         | Kon-Peki wrote:
         | > and wtf does "supe" even mean here?
         | 
         | Perhaps it's a common expression in "Puerta Rico":
         | 
         | > While MTN DEW RAID is live, anyone streaming under the
         | "Games" category on Twitch that is +18 years old (19+ in AL &
         | NE), actively live streaming, based in the USA, Puerta Rico, or
         | Guam, and has MTN DEW visible on camera is eligible to
         | participate.
        
           | willcipriano wrote:
           | It's an Albany expression.
        
             | Kon-Peki wrote:
             | I really love my steamed hams
        
         | danShumway wrote:
         | Also, what exposure?
         | 
         | Is anyone here thinking, "you know what, I need to hop onto the
         | official Mountain Dew Twitch channel so I can see exactly 10
         | minutes of a 6 simultaneous streams, chosen randomly with the
         | only similarity between them being that a beverage is visible
         | in each stream. That is definitely the way I'm going to find my
         | new favorite streamer."?
         | 
         | I can't imagine that this is an effective way for a streamer to
         | get discovered by an audience.
        
           | vitaflo wrote:
           | And yet here we are talking about Mountain Dew.
        
             | danShumway wrote:
             | Name recognition/publicity definitely matters for tiny
             | companies, but I don't think "all press is good press"
             | holds true for giant companies. Every single person on HN
             | knows that Mountain Dew exists, they're past the point of
             | needing brand recognition.
             | 
             | My suspicion is that after a certain threshold of
             | recognition, I think it starts to matter whether the people
             | talking about a company are talking positively or are
             | trashing it.
        
       | LegitShady wrote:
       | >Are there any prizes or perks for participating in MTN DEW RAID?
       | 
       | >Definitely! Participating streamers will have the chance to be
       | featured on the MTN DEW Gaming Twitch Channel, the MTN DEW RAID
       | branded shelf on the Twitch home page, and the Twitch homepage
       | hero carousel. Streamers will also have a chance to receive a 1:1
       | coaching session with a professional streamer/content creator
       | 
       | If you volunteer to advertise their product, you have a chance to
       | win exposure on mountain dew's twitch gaming channel, which
       | nobody should care about. They're not even paying you. This is
       | for people who sell out before they even see a dollar.
        
         | c0pium wrote:
         | Since it seems like you don't understand how streaming on
         | twitch works, here's the tl;dr. They're paying you in exposure
         | for giving them exposure. This is one of the few places where
         | "for the exposure" is actually meaningful and not a meme. If
         | you're trying to get a channel off the ground as a career, this
         | is not a terrible deal.
        
           | LegitShady wrote:
           | If entering to win into a contest that may maybe get you
           | exposure on mountain dew's 15k subscriber channel is what you
           | call "getting a channel off the ground" you've already lost.
           | It's a terrible deal. If you feature brands on your channel
           | get paid for it, or stop doing it. Doing it for a chance to
           | win exposure on a 15k sub channel, none of whom are there to
           | watch you because thats not why they subbed to it, is selling
           | out for nothing. Less than nothing. A chance at nothing, with
           | nothing guaranteed.
        
       | Geee wrote:
       | Brought to you by Carl's Jr! [0]
       | 
       | [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQPU_BiT25w
        
         | ravenstine wrote:
         | _F*** you, I 'm eating!_
        
       | 1-6 wrote:
       | This is an interesting method to advertise. I can't say I like it
       | or hate it but certainly, it's better that advertisers are being
       | more proactive.
        
         | corobo wrote:
         | The timing was terrible for me lol.
         | 
         | All the ads on Twitch had pushed me into paying for Turbo.. and
         | now they're advertising in chat and embedded in people's
         | streams
        
           | nemacol wrote:
           | This is why I won't pay for youtube premium. It only removes
           | part of the ads.
        
             | dcow wrote:
             | Which ones doesn't it remove?
        
               | nemacol wrote:
               | The ones put in by the content creators themselves.
        
               | herpderperator wrote:
               | Because that's not YouTube's ad?
        
               | cool_scatter wrote:
               | Any opportunity to plug SponsorBlock:
               | https://sponsor.ajay.app/
        
               | Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
               | You mean the ones you can easily fast forward through?
        
             | c0pium wrote:
             | It removes all of the YouTube ads. If you don't like ads
             | embedded in videos, don't watch videos from creators who
             | take sponsorships.
        
               | joecool1029 wrote:
               | >If you don't like ads embedded in videos, don't watch
               | videos from creators who take sponsorships.
               | 
               | Or just use SponsorBlock?
        
             | shadedtriangle wrote:
             | J, K, and L are keyboard shortcuts for "skip back 10s",
             | "toggle pause", and "skip forward 10s". Left and right
             | arrow keys do the same skipping. On mobile a double tap on
             | either side of the screen again skips forward/back. A
             | double tap with two fingers skips a chapter. Makes hopping
             | around in a video a breeze.
        
         | pavel_lishin wrote:
         | > _it's better that advertisers are being more proactive._
         | 
         | Is it? Why?
        
       | jrockway wrote:
       | It will be interesting to see whether the AI recognizes olde
       | timey mountain dew logos, and whether or not it recognizes a "DO
       | NOT DRINK THIS" sign above a mountain dew logo. I suppose no
       | publicity is bad publicity, so they probably don't care.
        
         | corobo wrote:
         | As well as obvious bait like the attached, it's also reacting a
         | lot to false positives, going into channels that don't even
         | have a camera on or any green at all on the screen
         | 
         | https://twitter.com/_Yarts_/status/1731083331893391683?ref=t...
        
         | jimbob45 wrote:
         | That was my first thought as well. Maybe it reads all text but
         | will it know if I have a Hitler head drinking MD in the
         | background? I can get pretty obscure with dictators such that
         | the AI isn't likely to be able to detect what I put out there.
        
           | paradox460 wrote:
           | Or the Mtn. Dew renaming campaign back in the 00s where 4chan
           | stuffed the ballot boxes with a rather offensive name
        
       | skizm wrote:
       | Now they should add the option for _viewers_ to opt in to this
       | and the streamer can give them channel points (or whatever) every
       | time the viewer drinks a mtn dew can in front of their camera
       | (verified by the AI)! The AI will also randomly occasionally
       | select a viewer 's clip of them drinking a can to show on stream
       | in a small-ish box on the side similar to the automated reading
       | of donation comments!
       | 
       | (this is sarcastic, but it's also the next logical step for this
       | kind of marketing)
        
       | corobo wrote:
       | ZachBussey (a popular streamer in the category of streamer news)
       | listed the issues wrong with this campaign on Reddit.
       | 
       | Notably the false positive rates and the fact that the method
       | used is basically spam, except Twitch got paid to allow it.
       | 
       | https://www.reddit.com/r/LivestreamFail/comments/188of4y/com...
       | 
       | Any other bots doing what the mtn dew bot is doing would likely
       | catch a sitewide ban..
       | 
       | E: There's a more structured argument on X, with screenshots of
       | the bot's messaging too
       | https://twitter.com/zachbussey/status/1730742056899805377
        
         | explaininjs wrote:
         | Is there anything at all interesting or controversial about
         | paying to have more access to a provider's services? It's
         | basically the businesses model for everything for all of time.
        
           | s1artibartfast wrote:
           | nothing interesting or controversial at the conceptual level.
           | This one strikes a lot of people as distasteful with respect
           | to implementation.
           | 
           | Interesting or noteworthy is up to the observer.
        
           | corobo wrote:
           | Well it bypasses Twitch's ad-free offering Turbo, it doesn't
           | pay the content creators in any way, and any other bot doing
           | this sort of thing would catch a sitewide ban for spamming
           | pretty rapidly.
           | 
           | Imagine Google was taking payments to allow mail to bypass
           | Gmail's spam filters, along those lines.
        
             | ImPostingOnHN wrote:
             | Google is paid to insert spam into email, it sounds
             | analagous
        
               | corobo wrote:
               | Oh god let's not get too deep into the "it's actually
               | like" that happens with every analogy used on the
               | internet, haha
               | 
               | Twitch already has adverts and banners, which are closer
               | to what you're comparing to. This would be injecting text
               | ads into the middle of your emails if we're correcting
               | our analogies
               | 
               | E: Unless you mean Google actually does allow companies
               | to pay to bypass spam filters? That's probably something
               | that needs posting to HN itself if so lol
        
               | nightpool wrote:
               | Yes, Google displays ads in the "Promotions" tab that
               | look like emails. It's not really "bypassing the spam
               | filter" per se, but it's arguably much better than that.
        
               | greiskul wrote:
               | So you are complaining about the design of their ad
               | banner. It really is NOT the same thing as allowing
               | people to bypass spam. They don't accumulate in your
               | inbox like unfilted spam does. They are not serviced if
               | you use other systems to interact with your inbox.
        
           | ben_jones wrote:
           | Companies are probing the boundaries of what is and isn't
           | acceptable for AI. Sports illustrated recently used AI
           | generated avatars to publish AI written articles as if they
           | were written by real people. They didn't announce it they
           | just did it and got caught. ESPN took a TNT video from
           | several years ago and used AI to fabricate key details and
           | appear as if it was under the ESPN brand. They didn't
           | announce it they just did it and got caught.
           | 
           | While this particular usage is less about a specific AI act
           | and yes buying increased access on social media (where most
           | users naively assume fair access) isnt new - I personally and
           | fucking terrified of where we'll be at just a year from now.
           | 
           | [1]: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/economy/sports-
           | illustrated-...
           | 
           | [2]: https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/nba/bucks/2023/10/
           | 28/e...
        
           | wpm wrote:
           | Spamming advertising in chat is a bannable offense. Chat is a
           | space free of ads, because there is no way to opt out without
           | closing chat, and if I do that, I have literally no reason to
           | watch the streamer on Twitch, since I can probably catch
           | their VOD on YouTube the next day. If I want to watch the
           | streamer on Twitch ad free, I subscribe, which kicks 50% or
           | 30% over to Twitch to pay to keep the lights on. The comments
           | by this bot announcing this campaign probably got it flagged
           | to Twitch by thousands of viewers and banned in thousands of
           | channels, because it's the same behavior seen by other bots
           | trying to entice you with "free gaming gear" or "hot singles
           | in your area".
           | 
           | The AI scanning as part of this campaign is happening whether
           | someone opts in or not. And what the streamer opts into is
           | nothing more than being used as an advertising vessel for bad
           | sugar water for free.
           | 
           | Pepsico is free to issue Twitch bounties for certain things
           | or buy normal ad slots for pre-rolls or mid-stream ads if
           | they want to remind everyone that their neon green slop
           | exists.
        
             | Spivak wrote:
             | > Spamming advertising in chat [without paying Twitch] is a
             | bannable offense.
             | 
             | The reason the rule exists is because you don't get to
             | advertise on Twitch without paying them, but they're paying
             | them so :/
        
             | cqqxo4zV46cp wrote:
             | That sounds inconvenient for you, but it doesn't sound
             | controversial.
        
           | contravariant wrote:
           | I guess it shows who's really in power. Which shouldn't
           | really come as a surprise to anyone, but keeps tripping
           | people up.
           | 
           | Same way that people keep forgetting youtube videos aren't
           | free or public, or that social media have no obligation to be
           | impartial or protect freedom of spreech.
        
       | sigmar wrote:
       | This seems really scummy, like they're trying to circumvent the
       | FTC rules on the disclosure of paid product placements by doing
       | this in a automated way (even with the chat message opt-in).
       | Seems to me like the company promoting someone and sending more
       | viewers their way (by featuring the streamer "on the MTN DEW
       | Gaming Twitch Channel") constitutes the product placement being
       | an "advertisement" that should be disclosed by streamers.
        
         | MeetingsBrowser wrote:
         | > to circumvent the FTC rules on the disclosure of paid product
         | placements
         | 
         | Is it paid product placement if no one is getting paid?
         | 
         | Sounds like the only benefit is a chance at being featured in a
         | "MTN DEW official" ad.
         | 
         | Unless exposure counts as payment, it doesn't seem like this
         | would count as paid product placement. But I'm not a lawyer.
        
       | fassssst wrote:
       | AI algorithms getting people to drink MTN DEW, not even Black
       | Mirror thought of that one.
        
       | kridsdale1 wrote:
       | THANK YOU FOR DRINKING YOUR VERIFICATION CAN
        
       | CSMastermind wrote:
       | So my question is who writes this code for them?
       | 
       | Like I'm way more fascinated by the corporate structure -
       | presumably it's not someone working at Pepsi that comes up with
       | this. So did some third party build it then pitch Pepsi's
       | marketing?
       | 
       | How did this come about?
        
         | foobarian wrote:
         | B2B team at OpenAI? :-)
        
         | make3 wrote:
         | why not? Pepsi is basically a marketing company as they're not
         | exactly developing new space faring vehicles, or new flavors,
         | even
        
         | corobo wrote:
         | Ad company Unit9 going by an AdAge article.
         | 
         | https://adage.com/article/digital-marketing-ad-tech-news/mtn...
         | 
         | (Archive: https://archive.ph/NGrwn)
         | 
         | Also notable is that Doritos recently did an AI advert that
         | removes the crunch sounds in streams and voice comms. Maybe
         | someone in PepsiCo marketing is on a bit of an AI kick :)
        
           | CSMastermind wrote:
           | Very cool, thank you!
           | 
           | Entirely different kind of company that I've never thought
           | about before.
        
           | morley wrote:
           | My first job out of college was at an ad agency. The level 1
           | playbook of all agencies is to find the "hot new things" in
           | the zeitgeist and figure out how to turn it into advertising.
        
         | cqqxo4zV46cp wrote:
         | That aspect of it is hardly interesting or unusual. "Company
         | hires ad agency to develop / execute campaign", and "ad agency
         | either has in-house, or outsources, implementation" is
         | just...how things work. It just happens that for this campaign,
         | among the many professionals required, one of them had to write
         | code.
        
       | luc_ wrote:
       | Idiocracy becoming real
        
         | artursapek wrote:
         | Error. Please drink a verification can.
        
       | colpabar wrote:
       | I hope this ends with something similar to the time they "let the
       | fans decide" on a name for their new flavor.
        
       | danShumway wrote:
       | > Will the RAID AI crawl a stream without the streamer's
       | permission?
       | 
       | > The MTN DEW RAID AI will begin crawling all concurrent Gaming
       | livestreams from December 1 - December 8, but that doesn't mean
       | the AI is watching your streams or keeping any data.
       | 
       | What the #$&@X are you talking about? If an image-recognition
       | algorithm is crawling livestreams and verifying objects inside of
       | them, that does mean you are watching the streams and keeping
       | data. This is not how words work, you can't just change
       | definitions like this, you are writing a FAQ not a post-modernist
       | art essay.
       | 
       | Mountain Dew is watching the stream and is keeping data: at the
       | very least it's storing data about which streams had Mountain Dew
       | in them and which streamers have opted in and out. And all of
       | that data processing is happening serverside so I'm gonna go out
       | on a limb here and say there's probably other metadata being
       | preserved too. And sure, streams are public and Mountain Dew can
       | crawl them and they could have given an answer of "yes, we are,
       | they're public". But how little do you have to think of your
       | target audience to instead decide to give an answer that is this
       | blatantly a lie and to think that it will fool people?
       | 
       | I am going to sneak into the house of whatever advertiser wrote
       | this and put spiders in their bed. But that doesn't mean I'll be
       | _trespassing_ , because apparently words mean nothing at all and
       | I can say anything I want.
        
         | sonicanatidae wrote:
         | They are using intentionally misleading terms to obfuscate
         | something they don't want to bother explaining and if they did
         | explain it, non-tech users wouldn't get it.
         | 
         | I have a bag of Brown Recluse spiders I was going to throw at
         | the ceiling fan during Christmas dinner to liven things up a
         | bit, but I think you're idea is a better use case.
        
         | gabeio wrote:
         | >This is not how words work, you can't just change definitions
         | like this, you are writing a FAQ not a post-modernist art
         | essay.
         | 
         | You're assuming this FAQ wasn't written by an AI also.
        
           | danShumway wrote:
           | <j>I don't know, I think only a real human advertiser would
           | have the required lack of shame or self-awareness necessary
           | to tell streamers that instead of being compensated, they
           | were instead going to be given the opportunity to "supe"
           | their viewers. We have to assume that even jailbroken ChatGPT
           | would still have refused to write something quite that
           | cringey.</j>
        
         | myself248 wrote:
         | I interpreted that as "pulling a list of all streams, then
         | comparing it to the list of participants, and watching only
         | those".
         | 
         | They could certainly be more clear about it.
        
           | danShumway wrote:
           | I understand why you would think that streamers were actively
           | opting in before their streams were scanned, because you're
           | probably a normal human being and you're probably having a
           | normal human reaction like, "obviously streamers just sign
           | up, how else would you even design a program like this? It's
           | not complicated, you just put a form online."
           | 
           | But that would be the sensible way to do it.
           | 
           | In actuality the way they determine the participants is by
           | doing object recognition on everyone's streams to try and
           | figure out if a stream is already displaying Mountain Dew,
           | and if it is then the bot sends spam messages to the
           | streamers to ask them if they want to participate, and the
           | only way streamers can opt out of all of that is "don't
           | stream in the games category."
        
         | mathgradthrow wrote:
         | mountain dew advertising is a post-modern art essay.
        
         | c0pium wrote:
         | > you can't just change definitions like this
         | 
         | Of course you can, don't be obtuse. Words can literally mean
         | anything the speaker wants them to, language evolves.
         | 
         | This whole conversation is weird and unhinged. We're talking
         | about streams which are deliberately created to be public. From
         | that perspective, if they're not storing it the details about
         | the stream then their target audience would agree that they're
         | not watching and storing data. This question is asking if the
         | AI (ugh) is skynet (ugh) and is learning about streaming, and
         | then saying "nope, just looking for a logo".
         | 
         | Nobody cares about this "well actually" about metadata. English
         | is a terrible medium for communicating technical information,
         | and it's doubly bad when the target audience neither knows nor
         | cares about technical details.
        
           | danShumway wrote:
           | > language evolves
           | 
           | Language evolves organically through public usage, not via
           | soda FAQs. If you asked pretty much anyone on the street in
           | any context "an AI is going to scan a video and locate on
           | object, is it 'watching' the video" -- they would say yes.
           | This is not a niche interpretation of what it means to watch
           | a video. The visual data from the video output is being piped
           | into an image recognition engine; the vast majority of the
           | general public would call that "watching".
           | 
           | Maybe in the future that will change, but unless Mountain Dew
           | has a time machine hidden in their office, "language evolves"
           | is not an excuse.
           | 
           | > if they're not storing it the details about the stream then
           | their target audience would agree that they're not watching
           | and storing data.
           | 
           | They are storing details about the stream, they have to or
           | else the system doesn't work. They have to store information
           | about which streams they've checked, haven't checked, which
           | streams have opted in, which streams have opted out, when
           | they last messaged the stream or spammed in chat. The FAQ
           | also implies that they are storing frequency information
           | about how often the logo appears, so it's not even accurate
           | to say they're not storing data that relates to the actual
           | contents of the stream.
           | 
           | That's not nitpicking, it's not a technicality, we're not
           | debating whether or not a proxy service counts as storage or
           | talking about where data is at rest. They are just straight
           | up lying -- there is stream and content metadata being stored
           | on their servers and being used for the project.
           | 
           | > and it's doubly bad when the target audience neither knows
           | nor cares about technical details.
           | 
           | "Are you storing information about me"
           | 
           | "None that you would understand"
           | 
           | is a _terrible_ answer for a FAQ and belittles the reader.
           | The streams are intended to be public, they could just say,
           | "yes we are scanning public streams and collecting metadata."
           | People know what metadata is, it's not that complicated.
           | There are so many simple answers they could give to this
           | question that would be honest to what they're doing without
           | risking confusion.
           | 
           | "The public would be confused" is not an excuse to outright
           | lie about what information a company is and isn't storing.
           | Obviously it's not an excuse, this is Facebook levels of
           | weirdness to suggest, to say "the public doesn't understand
           | what we're storing so we don't have to inform them about it."
        
       | NotYourLawyer wrote:
       | I thought we'd have flying cars and a cure for cancer by now, but
       | instead a whole generation of intelligent people decided to work
       | on... shit like this.
       | 
       | Drink a verification can indeed.
        
       | basilgohar wrote:
       | It's finally happened. You literally have to drink an
       | authentication can on camera to stay in their program and get
       | paid.
        
         | salad-tycoon wrote:
         | For the uninitiated this was a 4chan post from over a decade
         | ago envisioning what the future dystopian online world would be
         | like. In order to play future halo games you would have to
         | watch ads, repeat slogans, and drink authentication cans of
         | mntn dew. You can read the rest of the post here, worth it:
         | https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/632877-halo-4/66477630
        
           | kipchak wrote:
           | Sony has a patent for the repeat slogans part. (Say McDonalds
           | to end commercial, fig. 9)
           | https://patents.google.com/patent/US8246454B2/en
        
       | dimatura wrote:
       | This reminds me of something I noticed on this year's "Summer of
       | Baja Blast" promotion - to make an entry, all you had to do was
       | take a picture of a bottle with your phone - it wasn't scanning
       | any barcodes or QR codes. I thought this was a bit strange (and
       | possibly open to cheating by reusing bottles, although there was
       | a limit of one entry per day). Maybe this was a scheme to get
       | image training data?
        
       | lordfrito wrote:
       | ... brought to you by Carl's Jr.
        
       | swagmoney1606 wrote:
       | THEY MADE PLEASE DRINK VERIFICATION CAN REAL? WHAT THE FUCK
        
       | Animats wrote:
       | So somebody actually implemented authentication by drinking a
       | can. That used to be a joke.
        
       | PierceJoy wrote:
       | Ozempic couldn't have come along at a better time.
        
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