[HN Gopher] Google and Meta struck secret ads deal to target tee...
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Google and Meta struck secret ads deal to target teenagers
Author : ViktorRay
Score : 493 points
Date : 2024-08-08 05:08 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ft.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ft.com)
| achempion wrote:
| unpaywalled:
| https://archive.ph/20240808040427/https://www.ft.com/content...
| smcin wrote:
| https://archive.ph/AVRL9
| adamors wrote:
| Thank you
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| The Instagram campaign deliberately targeted a group of users
| labelled as "unknown" in its advertising system, which Google
| knew skewed towards under-18s, these people said. Meanwhile,
| documents seen by the FT suggest steps were taken to ensure the
| true intent of the campaign was disguised. The project
| disregarded Google's rules that prohibit personalising and
| targeting ads to under-18s, including serving ads based on
| demographics. It also has policies against the circumvention of
| its own guidelines, or "proxy targeting". ...However,
| Google did not deny using the "unknown" loophole, adding: "We'll
| also be taking additional action to reinforce with sales
| representatives that they must not help advertisers or agencies
| run campaigns attempting to work around our policies."
|
| Yup, those crafty sales reps orchestrated a multimillion dollar
| agreement between a chief competitor. While also adapting the
| code to find the gaps and target the desired under 18s.
| alex_suzuki wrote:
| > Meanwhile, documents seen by the FT suggest steps were taken
| to ensure the true intent of the campaign was disguised.
|
| I read the article, but it didn't go into the content of those
| documents. Would be interesting to know.
| LiquidSky wrote:
| As always with these massive corporate failures/crimes it turns
| out no one in any important position knew anything and it was a
| small group of low-level bad actors causing all the trouble.
| How sad that all these companies are plagued with this while
| the leadership is just trying to virtuously do good business!
| sandspar wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if upper level people tend to hire
| reports with discretion, people who let them keep their hands
| clean.
|
| Dictator: "You mentioned a... reeducation project of some
| kind...?"
|
| Minister of Internal Affairs: "Yes sir, it's been taken care
| of already."
| TekMol wrote:
| So this was about ads for Instagram on YouTube, targeting people
| under 18?
|
| I am surprised that this is something that has to be kept secret.
| What is the main problem with it?
| esperent wrote:
| The main problem is that it's targeted advertising of children.
| brainwad wrote:
| So is all the advertising run during morning cartoons, and
| that targets an even younger demo than 13-17 year olds.
| tgv wrote:
| Those ads are bad, but instagram and its ilk are quite
| addictive. If don't think it's ok to turn a large group of
| children into screen zombies because "ads during cartoons".
| kreyenborgi wrote:
| And it's frankly disgusting that some countries allow such
| ads.
| nope1000 wrote:
| Yes
| meiraleal wrote:
| What does wad mean? Dead?
| piva00 wrote:
| Children can't interact with these ads to get into the
| wheel of more ads targeting their specific tastes. Very
| different level, and degree.
| dgellow wrote:
| > The project disregarded Google's rules that prohibit
| personalising and targeting ads to under-18s, including serving
| ads based on demographics. It also has policies against the
| circumvention of its own guidelines, or "proxy targeting".
| Xen9 wrote:
| Aside replying to the eroteme:
|
| I believe one can observe the targeting by only observing the
| children. I ALSO believe this applies to all children in a
| social network where X between 1 out of 100 000 & 9 out of 10
| have access to sites that are the works of the corporate.
|
| The entirely new mechanics seems to be that most humans' will
| run on metaphorical stimulants & steroids on the metaphorical
| Wheel of Status. Humane behaviour (e.g. honor, respect, sincere
| curiosity) will become subject of learned helplessness. Before
| the child realizes that their toys are not the real things and
| the real things may be much more interesting; or before the
| child realizes they don't need to use the toys to satisfy X
| desires, they will have learned that status, EG pretty videos
| of using the toys, gets them what they want EG toys & attention
| from companies, parents & peers alike.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| I'd be very grateful if you could elaborate or link to a
| relevant source as this is rather interesting.
| gU9x3u8XmQNG wrote:
| Second this! Quite interesting. @Xen9 please follow up!
| Xen9 wrote:
| My mind would be the source. This is actually one of my
| least confident comments; I was almost not going to post
| it. I consider putting a text together later.
|
| Regardless--I've observed, to one example, a young girl I
| know wanting to buy horse toys to make YouTube horse
| videos with play & interest in horses being a side
| motive. The adults are proud of her basically being an
| instrument of marketing. On one hand, making your own
| video's at young age is of course something to be proud
| of and encouragement for children sounds healthy.
|
| Yet this behaviour also has no principles outside "status
| games." Even knowing that girls of young age are
| particularly prone to socialization & conformity, one can
| compare this to "cool new toy everyone has" trope to
| notice that this dark evolution would be closer to "being
| a popular advertisement like everyone else" which partly
| the South Park movie Cred portrays aptly.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Re: confidence
|
| > My mind would be the source.
|
| In the coming flood of AI slop and faked "scientific"
| studies I'd say there is no better source. Real science
| always starts with anecdata of n=1, so trust what you
| see. And I'll just add; regardless of the truth of your
| observation, regardless of any supporting work, these
| kind of observations are worthwhile as discussion in
| themselves so do investigate more and write about it,
| please.
|
| FWIW my interest was piqued by your claim that "learned
| helplessness" eclipses humane interpersonal behaviours.
|
| That sounds hard to evaluate, especially in children, but
| I think you may be on to something and that ubiquitous AV
| technology is the cause of a reward "short circuit". Once
| kids get AI servants that simulate their achievements for
| them I think child mental health will implode. (which of
| course is Jonathan Haidt's thesis)
| netsharc wrote:
| I noticed many years ago, if someone is 25 then, they'd
| have grown up with social media, and its trappings of
| social validation through likes and comments. Facebook
| was opened to everyone from 13 years old in 2006.
| Instagram went big in 2012. If you were a teen in late
| 00's/early 10's, you were probably on these networks, and
| didn't experience any time growing up without them...
| netsharc wrote:
| In the same vine, people "doing it for the 'Gram": you go
| to a fancy vacation or restaurant not to enjoy the
| experience, but to enjoy the validation from the thumbs
| up, hearts, comments of your friends social media...
|
| I wonder if that's a valid craving after all, a craving
| for social contact, sadly a craving being answered not by
| real life interaction, but by a mobile client hitting
| some API endpoint called something like
| /post/{$ID}/reaction/heart , ending on your phone pinging
| with the notification "$friend liked your post"...
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > but to enjoy the validation
|
| Absolutely. It makes me think about the things in life
| that don't need "validation".
|
| Maybe it's a cliche but my dad would say about Korea and
| other wars "no pics, no words, you had to be there". So
| that was a teenage trope in the 80s and 90s too for my
| generation, if you were trying to be cool just say "you
| had to be there". It draws a circle around a personal or
| group experience that explicitly does not or cannot be
| shared. I think maybe it somehow earns more respect and
| interest than a photo, and I think with ubiquitous AI
| image manipulation the currency of "pics or it didn't
| happen" and "for the Gram" is going to vanish in a puff
| of incredulity. Now you can just text-prompt for a
| picture of you and some celebrity you "randomly met" in
| front of Buckingham Palace or the Taj Mahal! You can
| probably rent some bots to "auto-like" you on social
| media, right? So who is fooling who now?
| rexf wrote:
| > Maybe it's a cliche but my dad would say about Korea
| and other wars "no pics, no words, you had to be there".
| So that was a teenage trope in the 80s and 90s too for my
| generation, if you were trying to be cool just say "you
| had to be there".
|
| sounds like a partial retroactive justification to me.
| sure, you wouldn't get the full experience via a photo or
| verbal anecdote, but it's not like camera smartphones
| were ubiquitous in the 80s either.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > retroactive justification
|
| Oh I'm not "justifying" it, because I don't need to. This
| isn't that conversation. I'm just remarking on a
| difference of culture over time for those who are
| interested. As you say, there were no cellphones back
| then, so a quite different world.
| cambaceres wrote:
| It's always so easy to spot these people at restaurants.
| tgv wrote:
| Adolescents are particularly sensitive to addiction. And guess
| what instagram tries to do?
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Is it to create a utopia of peace and harmony for those who
| live on this planet?
|
| No? I didn't think so either.
| mrweasel wrote:
| The problem, at least in some countries, is that the laws
| regarding targeting children and teenagers are VERY strict, to
| the point where it almost doesn't make sense to do it.
|
| By having an "unknown" category, you could argue that you had
| no way of knowing that you where targeting children, so you
| can't be responsible. The other party could also easily argue
| that they put those under 18 in that group to protect their
| privacy and age.
|
| If you however DO know that these are primarily children and
| teenagers, then you have to follow the rather strict laws. In
| Denmark for instance, that means that you cannot encourage
| purchasing or even advertise certain products. Take the stupid
| product that is Prime (the drink), health professionals argues
| that it's harmful to children, but their are also the only ones
| who really buy it in any meaningful volume. If you knew that
| you where targeting Prime ads to those under 16 in Denmark, you
| would be breaking the law.
|
| If advertising companies where to follow the laws online
| (technically they have to, but tries to avoid it), you could
| effectively reduce the number of ads you see on social media by
| stating that you're only 16, because you couldn't be targeted
| in the same way.
| tantalor wrote:
| > they put those under 18 in that group to protect their
| privacy and age
|
| That's not how it works!
| a2128 wrote:
| This reads like a tragic story. Once you've collected enough data
| on every internet user out there to group them into different
| advertising cohorts, the remaining ungrouped users, by process of
| elimination (due to privacy or targeted advertising laws), are
| children; and now they can be targeted just as easily.
| throw12347825 wrote:
| A tragic story would be one where folks in positions of power
| in these organizations saw these crises coming from a million
| miles away, tried to avoid disaster, and failed.
|
| I don't think this is a tragic story.
|
| I think this is a rather boring and formulaic plot we're seeing
| over and over: the story of late-stage capitalism and the
| application of value-extraction to human social structures
| resulting in comically terrible outcomes.
| ath3nd wrote:
| Well said!
|
| Capitalism is structured in such a way that we are throwing
| all other values out in the (short term) pursuit of money.
|
| Who needs nature, mental and physical health if you made a
| buck or two? The perverse incentives of capitalism will never
| create good social change, and we are seeing it now more and
| more in late stage capitalism.
| adamc wrote:
| This is a problem that could be solved with serious
| penalties (say, 20 years in prison for executives involved)
| and serious enforcement.
| ssklash wrote:
| It's really not though. All that money goes somewhere,
| and not just in their pockets. Some goes to make sure
| that serious penalties and serious enforcement doesn't
| happen, because that too is another avenue of ensuring
| maximum profit.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| The line has to go up, and the slack has to be taken out of
| every last source of revenue. Like that story that was here
| yesterday about insurance companies monitoring customer's
| insured assets with drones and AI. Every unexploited dollar
| left on the table is slack, and a perfect market leaves no
| dollar unexploited. Therefore a more perfect market can be
| built with more perfect machine-powered decisions to more
| perfectly screw you out of every nickel they can.
|
| "Oops, sorry your brother cut his leg and you had to speed to
| the hospital, but you better get a second job if you wanna
| keep your car."
|
| Fuck this shit. Fuck all of it. And fuck all the status quo
| warriors sitting on the sidelines bleating about "it's just
| the way it is" because the axe hasn't swung for them yet.
| You're safe now because the market has more vulnerable people
| to grind up first, but rest assured, as it churns through
| them, your time will come too.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| You're on a website run by venture capitalists who use this
| platform to increase the value of their portfolios... so
| unless you're an agent provocateur, your comment needs to
| be read as ironic performance art because I hate to break
| it to you - you're also part of the problem
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I operated under this mental model originally as well.
| But, based on all available information, while HN allows
| running ads for YC portfolio companies and uses it for
| other promo purposes (YC applications), I have come to
| the conclusion tha pg, dang, et el are running this place
| as part science project, part public good, funded by YC
| returns (which, while not exact, can be predicted with
| high confidence from public information wrt portfolio
| liquidity events).
|
| Certainly, you need funding, look what happened to
| Reddit's quest to squeeze community for returns. HN runs
| lean (two servers in colo, a few mods) and small (less is
| more), so they can be more flexible in what they're
| optimizing for. I will argue there is something
| intangible that exists they are cultivating. More for
| another thread, but I would be cautious about saying "You
| cannot speak truth about capitalism failings because YC
| runs HN and YC is a VC fund." Simplicity is rare, and the
| evidence does not indicate this forum runs to maximize
| profit.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| If the problem you're referring to is capitalism, it is
| not possible to not participate in capitalism because
| capitalism operates every nation state and every portion
| of the planet.
|
| If the problem you're referring to is venture capital, I
| don't work at a VC firm and have no intention to.
| harimau777 wrote:
| https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1259257-we-should-
| improve-so...
| kelnos wrote:
| Kinda tired of hearing this over and over. By and large,
| most HN readers and commenters are just regular people.
| Certainly we are regular people of a certain demographic,
| but we're not all venture capitalists or startup
| executives or whatever. Not even close.
|
| If you have evidence that the people who run and moderate
| HN are doing so with a heavy bias toward projecting some
| sort of venture-capitalist narrative, please present that
| evidence. My interactions with dang, at least (reading
| his comments here, and a few email interactions) suggest
| quite the opposite.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| And relatedly, I'm sorry that while you were speeding your
| brother to the hospital, you blew through a red light you
| couldn't stop for and caused a three-car pileup that killed
| an elderly woman.
|
| There's a reason we have these rules, and the problem of
| better enforcement leading to more application of the rules
| isn't a late-stage-capitalism problem; it's a "rules
| require flexibility" problem (but it's not great if the
| nature of the flexibility is "you didn't get caught").
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > And relatedly, I'm sorry that while you were speeding
| your brother to the hospital, you blew through a red
| light you couldn't stop for and caused a three-car pileup
| that killed an elderly woman.
|
| Firstly, surveilling every person in the world at all
| times to ensure safety is a gross misapplicaiton of tech
| that flies in the face of personal freedom and privacy.
|
| Secondly, we're not even talking about authorities
| surveilling you to prevent safety situations (which
| would, by itself, already be _plenty vile enough_ ).
| We're talking your insurance company checking on you to
| make sure your roof doesn't have moss on it, and jacking
| your price/nuking your policy if they feel your behavior
| is too "risky," according to a model you (and probably
| they) don't fully understand how it works.
|
| There's so much wrong with this and if you don't think so
| I doubt a comment here is going to change your mind. If
| you place ANY value at all on personal autonomy and
| privacy, I don't believe it's possible to, at the same
| time, say your insurance company by virtue of insuring
| your car, has the right to surveil that car at a time and
| via a method of their choosing, with no notification, and
| with no oversight, solely for the purpose of jacking up
| your price and/or rewriting your contract on the fly.
| These relationships already heavily, heavily bias in the
| favor of the corporation. Do they really need YET MORE
| unearned, unchecked authority in our lives?!
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > surveilling every person in the world at all times to
| ensure safety is a gross misapplicaiton of tech that
| flies in the face of personal freedom and privacy
|
| Not at all times, of course.
|
| But if we built the technology to do it whenever someone
| is operating a multi-ton vehicle on a shared roadway
| (similar to how we require police to wear body-cams), I
| wouldn't actually be sad about it or feel unduly watched.
|
| I do concur, however, that routing it through the
| insurance company is pretty sub-optimal; I'd much prefer
| a public authority that I could vote out if they screw
| up.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| _> Firstly, surveilling every person in the world at all
| times to ensure safety is a gross misapplicaiton of tech
| that flies in the face of personal freedom and privacy._
|
| Are you referring to the opt-in system of surveillance
| which insurance companies use to monitor driving (install
| our app/plug our device into your OBD port)?
|
| Or are they, these days, buying data on your driving from
| stuff like traffic cams (wouldn't be surprising, sorry if
| I'm giving them the idea now)?
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| In the thread I saw yesterday, can't spend the time to
| find it atm, the topic was specifically about an
| insurance company using drones and AI to ascertain that
| someone's roof had moss growing on it. The homeowner
| fully acknowledged that this was a lapse in his upkeep,
| but also, I am incredibly opposed to the notion that a
| company can surveil people as such simply because they
| buy insurance from them.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _Are you referring to the opt-in system of surveillance
| which insurance companies use to monitor driving (install
| our app /plug our device into your OBD port)?_
|
| Not the person you're replying to, but yes, absolutely
| stuff like that. (I think GP was talking about drone
| surveillance and stuff like that, but sure, we can talk
| about this too.)
|
| The problem is that people are being coerced into giving
| up their privacy and autonomy. In this particular case,
| the coercion is (as usual) money: you presumably get a
| discount for letting your insurance company spy on you. I
| expect, though, that ultimately the insurance companies
| use these things as justification to charge _more_ on
| average. Let 's face it: most people are not particularly
| good drivers. That's a problem, certainly, but not one
| that should or will be solved by a company with a profit
| motive. Some people will drive within whatever arbitrary,
| poorly-understood parameters that makes the insurance
| company's algorithms happy, but most probably will not,
| and will likely see their premiums go up, but not realize
| why.
|
| And even if this did actually result in lower premiums on
| average (for the people who opt into this dystopia), it's
| still a problem, because the implication is that only
| rich people are allowed to have privacy.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Actually these days new cars have GPS tracking built in,
| and the manufacturers sell your location data, so it's
| much more fine-grained than traffic cams, and they didn't
| need your help getting the idea.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Someone on HN [1] recommended "Broken Code," [2] a book about
| the various people who tried to fix Facebook/Meta from the
| inside and noped out. Highly recommend having purchased and
| read. "Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy." -- Captain
| G. M. Gilbert
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40969211
|
| [2] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/712678/broken-
| code-...
|
| (keep those book recommendations coming)
| rurp wrote:
| I'm beyond being shocked by this kind of behavior but it is
| still striking to me how some of the most profitable
| companies in history will go out of their way to do shady
| deals for a slight short term increase in their record
| profits.
|
| The resulting reputational damage and future risk to their
| monopoly revenue has got to make deals like this -EV for the
| company in the long run, but decision makers at these
| companies are paid more for short term profits and they know
| it.
| pseudocomposer wrote:
| Reputational damage is pretty easy to limit for companies
| that can control what news a huge majority of people see.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| If the "Craftsman" brand of tools didn't go completely
| out of business despite removing the lifetime warranty
| and just slapping the brand name on cheap chinese tools,
| then "Reputational damage" does not exist.
| cantrevealname wrote:
| > _the remaining ungrouped users, by process of elimination...
| "_
|
| This being _hacker_ news, I can 't help but appreciate the pure
| evil genius of this. It reminds me of some other cases cunning
| corporate ingenuity:
|
| - Monsanto and their "terminator" seeds that prevents farmers
| from planting seeds they harvest, requiring them to purchase
| new seeds for every planting.[1]
|
| - Volkswagen and how they programmed diesel engines to activate
| emissions controls only during laboratory emissions testing.[2]
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto#%22Terminator%22_seed...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal
| echoangle wrote:
| > Monsanto and their "terminator" seeds that prevents farmers
| from planting seeds they harvest, requiring them to purchase
| new seeds for every planting.
|
| Kind of misleading to just state it like this if your source
| points out that Monsanto never sold this, pledged 25 years
| ago they won't do this, and according to https://en.m.wikiped
| ia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_tech... , they also
| didn't invent it.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Monsanto isn't forcing anyone to buy their product. Farmers
| use it because they're better than uncopyeighted seeds.
| harimau777 wrote:
| They are forced in the sense that it's a prisoner's dilemma
| type of thing: Farmers would be better off if none of them
| used exploitative seeds. However since they are competing
| with farmers who are using those seeds then have to do so
| as well in order to stay competitive.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| I dont see how that is the case. How does one farmer
| using monsanto seeds mean another needs to as well? Each
| farmers seed choice has no effect on others choices. If
| the monsanto seeds cost more than they were worth farmers
| wouldnt use them. In fact saying that you need to use
| their seeds to be competitive makes it clear that you
| understand that the seeds are worth it, you just wish
| they were free or cheaper. But in order to create these
| seeds monsanto needs to be paid.
| kelnos wrote:
| My guess would be it's about pricing. Let's imagine a
| world where there are only two farms, mine and my
| neighbor's. We're both using regular seeds, and we do a
| decent job, but it's not wonderful, and some years our
| yield isn't so great.
|
| Then Monsanto comes along and wants to sell us a product
| that gives us better, more consistent yields, even better
| than our best harvests with the regular seeds. The catch,
| of course, is that we have to buy new seed from them
| every year, and can't propagate seed from the prior
| year's crop.
|
| So my neighbor decides to start buying Monsanto's seeds,
| but I don't like the terms of the deal, so I don't. My
| neighbor sees amazing yields, even to the point of
| surplus. He decides to undercut me by lowering his prices
| because he has so much to sell, and can still make out
| better than before, with those lower prices. Nothing's
| changed for me, so I can't lower my prices. My neighbor's
| entire inventory sells out, but because of his surplus,
| only half of my yield gets sold. Fortunately I have some
| savings to fall back on, so I burn my entire savings
| feeding my family for the rest of the year, and then
| grudgingly buy Monsanto seeds for next year.
|
| I'm sure this exact scenario doesn't scale up to the
| global agricultural system, but I think it's more likely
| than your naive "no one forces anyone to buy anything; if
| they buy it, it's because it's worth it" view of
| economics... things are rarely that simple.
| Manabu-eo wrote:
| If you neighbor uses monsanto seeds, he also sprays
| pesticides that might kill your crops or make them have
| too much pesticides to be edible. It's also basically
| impossible to do organic farming besides such a farm.
|
| https://investigatemidwest.org/2020/12/04/buy-it-or-else-
| ins...
|
| https://inthedirt.substack.com/p/when-the-neighbor-kills-
| you...
| snowpid wrote:
| " nce you've collected enough data on every internet user " I
| guess by legal I can force companies not to collect data from
| me. (I am not a kid). I just happen not to live in the US. But
| this article reads more like a US problem.
| Zambyte wrote:
| We could also make it illegal to advertise to children at all.
| Wouldn't that be funny if all of us started clicking "I am
| below 18" :D
| mattacular wrote:
| Dream bigger? We could make it illegal to advertise period.
| hn72774 wrote:
| Tax ad revenue as a vice like at alcohol and tobacco
| levels, or higher.
| guerrilla wrote:
| It's not an abused substance, it's violence.
| immibis wrote:
| This is not the first time I'm hearing someone say free
| speech is violence, but it is the first time they
| actually meant it about free speech and weren't covering
| up something else by calling it that.
| hn72774 wrote:
| Not who shared that but there's a concept of non-violent
| communication that they may be referring to.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication
|
| Coercion -> force -> violence
|
| Forcing ads onto kids = violence?
| codr7 wrote:
| From my experience, that concept is mostly used as weapon
| and shield by the worst kind of people, to let them get
| away with their manipulative bs.
|
| Speaking clearly sometimes means saying things that are
| uncomfortable to hear.
| hn72774 wrote:
| That sounds more like gaslighting.
|
| Non-violent communication isn't at all about
| manipulation. It's about discussing behaviors and their
| impact on the person vs attacking and defending in
| circles that go nowhere.
| codr7 wrote:
| Yeah, I get the potential, and I'm not saying it's a bad
| idea.
|
| It's just that in practice I've only seen it used by
| morons to shut down discussions they don't feel like
| having.
| whythre wrote:
| One can couch their words in the language of nonviolence
| and still be manipulative, cruel or discriminatory. It
| can and does act as a form of social camouflage, because
| humans are shitty and a method of communication will not
| safeguard against predators.
|
| You can't make people harmless, but you _can_ force them
| to innovate different ways to harm others.
| codr7 wrote:
| Yeah, but that isn't it at all, I'm afraid.
|
| It's much darker.
|
| The fact is that exactly the same people who are pushing
| the idea, are the ones who we would need protection from.
| And they're not innovating much, it's the same bs over
| and over and over again.
| comfysocks wrote:
| I don't think the dynamic you are talking about has much
| to do with Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication.
|
| Perhaps a slightly reductive view, but I see "NVC" as
| basically saying that when people argue, emotions can
| sometimes overrule logic.
|
| When people get emotional, they sometimes plug their ears
| and start screaming into the void.
|
| NVC is then basically a bunch of tactics to circumvent
| the emotional aspect so that the discussion can get back
| to logical facts.
|
| It also tries to create a framework where the people
| arguing have to hear the other side's arguments before
| making a counter argument.
|
| I think the book has some very useful ideas mixed in with
| some amount of self-promotion. I think the name
| "Nonviolent Communication" (which might throw some people
| off) is part of that self-promotion. Don't let the name
| fool you.
| codr7 wrote:
| I don't think eliminating emotions from human interaction
| is a very smart thing to do, and certainly not the only
| alternative to screaming into the void.
|
| We're already at the point where we're almost not
| supposed to have emotions anymore, turning more into
| robots every day.
|
| Every single aspect of being human is emotional, every
| single decision you make is emotional, no matter how hard
| you work to justify it mentally.
|
| The idea is nice in theory, if it wasn't for all the
| humans involved it might actually work.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Exactly this.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Why is free speech free? If you think people (and by
| extension businesses) should be allowed to express
| themselves that's one thing, but advertising is
| importantly distinct from that. It's protected speech in
| most of the Anglosphere to say you don't like some person
| or group, but not to maliciously damage someone's
| reputation or incite hatred. I can imagine an analogous
| situation where you're free to express that you think
| your product is good, but not to incite irrational desire
| in consumers or try so place information about your
| product in places that are difficult to avoid, like
| public billboards.
| CuriousSkeptic wrote:
| On free speech vs violent acts of speech (if we want to
| keep using that term)
|
| A possible compromise that might work is to protect _good
| faith_ speech while working against bad faith speech.
| smcin wrote:
| Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff have been attacking
| that trope as factually incorrect and unhelpful for
| almost a decade now:
|
| _" Why It's a Bad Idea to Tell Students Words Are
| Violence : A claim increasingly heard on campus will make
| them more anxious and more willing to justify physical
| harm." (2017)_
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/07/why
| -it...
| spunker540 wrote:
| You do a disservice to anyone actually exposed to real
| violence. I'm sure they'd prefer advertising to violence
| any day
| ssklash wrote:
| Maybe not violence, but what word more accurately
| describes the non-consensual exploitation of human
| psychology for massive profit?
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Fraud is closer but still a massive reach.
| kelnos wrote:
| IMO advertising is worse than fraud. At least with fraud
| the impact is usually fairly clear, and not buried in our
| broken, manipulated, subconscious minds.
| snapcaster wrote:
| I hate ads, but this is not a winning argument. Instead
| of winning people over to the sympathetic cause (nobody
| really LIKES ads besides google and meta employees) you
| alienate people
| sithlord wrote:
| I would hazard a guess that no one likes ads except the
| likes of google and meta SHAREHOLDERS).
| brigadier132 wrote:
| I was incredulous but many normal people actually enjoy
| ads.
| dwayne_dibley wrote:
| I mean they can often be useful.
| ssklash wrote:
| Many people have also never experienced a world where ads
| do not exist. I use so many layers of adblocking that
| whenever I use a vanilla VM or devices, I'm stunned at
| how shockingly bad the internet experience is for most
| people.
| randomdata wrote:
| Ads can be likeable under the right conditions. Who
| doesn't want to learn about something that will actually
| improve their life? Which is also ideal for advertisers.
| Who wants to pay to advertise to an audience that doesn't
| want their product?
|
| Google and Facebook, in the early days, thought they
| could use copious amounts of data to tailor the ads to
| the user such that they would only be subjected to those
| which are likeable, but then the audience got skittish
| about having that much information collected on them. And
| so we now just get whatever random ad happens to be in
| the queue - which, indeed, is statistically unlikely to
| be in line with what you actually need, and therefore
| unlikable.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| There's a subtle error in your beliefs about the
| motivations of FB and Google. They are incentivized not
| to give users useful ads, but effective ones. The goal
| isn't to improve your life. For example, something you
| buy because its marketed very well, but then never use,
| is a success for FB or Google and a loss for you. You
| should frame them less positively as a consequence. I
| also want to point out that it's not skittishness;
| skittishness implies animalistic irrationality. People
| are right to be afraid of the control that a powerful
| actor can exert over them if it knows everything they do.
| randomdata wrote:
| Nobody would buy something without an understanding of it
| being beneficial.
|
| I'll grant you that understandings can be faulty. One may
| learn that there was no benefit. But that's outside of
| the ad itself. Invalidating your hypotheseses is an
| important part of the scientific method.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Explain sugar cereals, soda, cigarettes, alcohol, drugs,
| gambling, etc.
|
| The advertisements _create_ the misunderstanding. "Lucky
| Charms are part of a complete breakfast" etc. No normal
| person under normal circumstances would think that
| marshmallows or cookies are part of a healthy meal if you
| asked them directly to think about it.
| randomdata wrote:
| What's to explain? They feel good when consumed, and thus
| improve one's life, even if only for a fleeting moment.
|
| Who is buying Lucky Charms because they find them
| disgusting, but somehow see them as being important?
| Let's be real: People only (continue to, at least - they
| may buy once just to try) buy Lucky Charms if they like
| consuming them.
| sebastiennight wrote:
| > Who is buying Lucky Charms because they find them
| disgusting, but somehow see them as being important?
|
| Have... you met a teenager?
|
| I'm failing to see the point of this example, as I don't
| think I've never met a single person who found their
| first cigarette enjoyable. Is your experience that people
| buy their first and second pack out of enjoyment of the
| taste?
| randomdata wrote:
| I have never met a teenager who is concerned about eating
| a "whole" breakfast, no, _especially_ if that "whole"
| breakfast requires eating something that is otherwise
| unpleasant. Even if this so-called whole breakfast was
| some scientific truth, proven to improve health outcomes,
| what teenager would care? Have... _you_ met a teenager?
|
| I don't really see the point of the example either,
| frankly, but it is what we were given. I expect the
| contextual parent was just desperately trying to come up
| with something in the absence of having something
| meaningful to say.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| The point of the example is that there are plenty of
| things that have no benefit at all, and in fact have
| obvious downsides that everyone knows about. However,
| there is an immense amount of marketing around those
| things to try to make them seem "cool" and minimize their
| perceived harm. People get addicted to these things, and
| struggle to stop consuming them even when they know
| they're literally dying from it.
|
| No one in their right mind would ever give their kids
| Oreos for breakfast, but somehow advertisements make
| people feel comfortable giving them Oero O's. Any person
| of sound mind would say that giving that to your kids as
| a meal is neglect, but people do it, and it's "normal".
| This is the harm that marketing is capable of.
|
| Cookies are, in fact, not a part of a complete breakfast.
| Evidently, you can convince people that they are by just
| repeating the message thousands of times to them. I don't
| see how the people who are involved in making those ads
| (or the products) can live with themselves. Convincing
| people to e.g. set their kids up for a life of obesity
| and early T2 diabetes from poor dietary habits is pure
| evil, and that's just one example of horrible (yet
| completely mundane for them) things marketers do.
|
| Just imagine being a person who wakes up in the morning
| and thinks about how to best convince children to try
| ingesting poison[0]:
|
| > Juul Labs, the vaping company that has long insisted it
| never marketed its products to teenagers, purchased ad
| space in its early days on numerous youth-focused
| websites, including those of Nickelodeon, the Cartoon
| Network, Seventeen magazine and educational sites for
| middle school and high school students, according to a
| lawsuit filed Wednesday by the Massachusetts attorney
| general.
|
| Everyone involved in something like that should be put in
| prison.
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/12/health/juul-
| vaping-lawsui...
| randomdata wrote:
| _> No one in their right mind would ever give their kids
| Oreos for breakfast_
|
| Assuming you are going to feed your children Oreos at
| some point, why not for breakfast?
|
| _> Cookies are, in fact, not a part of a complete
| breakfast._
|
| They could be. If you are going to eat them anyway, why
| not at breakfast?
|
| _> Evidently, you can convince people that they are by
| just repeating the message thousands of times to them._
|
| Evidently not. Remember, a "complete breakfast" refers to
| a specific culinary dish that consists of items like
| bacon, sausages, eggs, baked beans, tomatoes, mushrooms,
| etc.
|
| Who eats a bowl of cookies _in addition_ to all that? I
| 've certainly never met such a person. I've known people
| who eat bowls of cookies for breakfast, indeed, but when
| they do that's approximately the only thing they eat,
| which violates what is told in the advertisement. The
| advertisement you point to is abundantly clear that these
| cookies are only to be eaten with all those other foods.
|
| Evidently people don't pay attention to what is said and
| will go off and do their own thing.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| > Evidently people don't pay attention to what is said
| and will go off and do their own thing.
|
| It's almost like that was the intention. It's weird how
| the ad doesn't prominently show the eggs, beans, etc. and
| talk about how great they are, and instead focuses on how
| you can totally eat cookies for breakfast!
|
| Here's an example:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnvHUXssIAo
|
| "Not Candy! Resees Puffs cereal!"
|
| It is candy. Like 1/3 of the mass is added sugar, and the
| other 2/3 is more carbs. And what's the complete
| breakfast that goes with it? Two slices of white-bread
| toast, a glass of milk, and a glass of juice. Even the
| "complete" breakfast is garbage. The bowl almost
| certainly has more than the 1 cup serving as well.
|
| The purpose of this commercial is not to inform you about
| how to use their product as part of a healthy diet
| (because it isn't a part of a healthy diet). It is to
| turn your brain off and get you to buy something that you
| intuitively know is not appropriate. People received the
| intended message.
|
| Even if they _did_ show their product as a small side
| (rather than a centerpiece) of an otherwise healthy
| breakfast, it 's _still_ ridiculous to suggest that you
| should be giving your kids candy with any regularity.
|
| My oldest kid is 3, and I don't think she has had an
| Oreo. Will she before she's 18? Probably. Has she had
| some other treats? Sure. But it's not at all a regular
| thing. It's certainly not part of a daily diet.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> The purpose of this commercial is not to inform you
| about how to use their product_
|
| Assuming we watched the same video, the purpose is to
| inform the offer of a solution to a problem: The problem
| of parents needing to rush off to work and the kids off
| school, without time to prepare a proper healthy
| breakfast, with the kids crying "I'm hungry" yet turning
| their nose up at anything that might be even reasonably
| healthy.
|
| Hell ya I've given my children candy for breakfast on
| occasion. We seem to both accept that the occasional
| treat is not the end of the world. Why not at breakfast?
| I certainly wouldn't want to make it a habit, but I can
| also say that from a point of relative privilege in time
| and resources to cater to other choices. While I think we
| can agree it is not ideal to turn it into a habit, I can
| empathize with the parent who is trying to cope with a
| hard situation by resorting to something that solves the
| immediate problem.
|
| _> ...as part of a healthy diet_
|
| While this ends up being true, does this caveat not imply
| that health is the only problem people face? Clearly that
| is not true.
|
| _> It is to turn your brain off and get you to buy
| something that you intuitively know is not appropriate._
|
| Like you imply, I expect most parents have a pang of
| guilt when buying breakfast candy for their children, but
| I expect they also don't know what is a better
| alternative that fits within their life constraints. If
| you could market to them something that is at least as
| equally palatable to the picky child, at least as easy to
| prepare, and actually healthy, I bet you could destroy
| the cereal market overnight. But without consumers
| becoming aware of that better solution...
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Even if it's something you want, if there is competition
| in the space, then since Internet ads work on a real-time
| auction system, you can expect that the winning bidder is
| the entity that has the most available margin to make.
| i.e. it is the worst possible deal for you the customer.
| So e.g. when you search for something on Amazon and see
| sponsored results, you can expect that those are the
| worst possible deal.
| bitbuilder wrote:
| I don't think it's the random ads that bother me and
| others so much, those are easy to tune out. Nobody cares
| about billboards. Random junk ads on websites are
| annoying, but I don't think they're doing much societal
| harm.
|
| On the contrary, it's the hyper targetting of ads, nested
| in content algorithmically maximixed for engagement, that
| I object to.
|
| I've worked in the ad industry, so I've certainly heard
| and appreciate the whole "we're just educating consumers
| about products they might be interested in" angle. That's
| fine, academically speaking, if that's all advertising
| was. However, advertising more often than not attempts to
| pray on people's emotions to generate demand for a
| product. And when we know exactly who someone is, it's SO
| much easier to do that.
|
| As a perfect example, I woke up last Saturday, started
| scrolling IG, and saw an ad with a photo of a miserable
| looking middle aged man lying in bed, asking "Are you
| tired of feeling like a horrible father because of your
| drinking problems? Try Reframe!" (No idea what the exact
| phrasing was, but close enough to that.)
|
| Yes, I'd in fact had drinks with friends the night
| before. And yes, I'm a middle aged dad. I thought the
| targetting was pretty hilarious, so I laughed and shared
| it with my wife and friends. But also, Reframe is praying
| on my feelings of guilt and shame in an attempt to sell
| me their shitty app.
|
| I can laugh it off, but I'm not so sure your typical
| teenager could.
| randomdata wrote:
| Let's assume, for the sake of discussion, that this
| Reframe is some miracle app that will truly do what you
| think it claims to. Would that not be an ideal way to get
| the solution into your hands if you have that problem?
|
| You're not going to feel guilt or shame unless you
| already are under the understanding that you're not, in
| this case, being then parent you wish to become. Anyone
| who takes an interest in this ad will do so only because
| they actually want to make their life better by becoming
| a better parent and drinking less, and are seeking
| solutions to see that through.
|
| It seems the only problem here is that the app is shitty.
| bitbuilder wrote:
| That's a valid way to look at this, and I appreciate that
| perspective.
|
| However, I think you may be missing the point that the
| advertisement is specifically meant to elicit, or create,
| those feelings of guilt or shame. Maybe I feel just fine
| about the amount I drink, but the wording of the ads
| subtely implied I _should_ feel guilty about my drinking.
| If the question was "Do you feel like you could use help
| with your drinking? Then try Reframe.", then I'd agree
| with your point more.
|
| But maybe a bad example, because in that case perhaps the
| end result of the targetted ad could in fact be a better
| outcome for everyone, as you point out. To pick a bit of
| a hyperbolic example, what if instead the ad had instead
| said "Tired of being the the ugliest girl in your class?
| Try BetterMakeup!" (with all the appropriate imagery the
| targetting provides). Is advertisement like that truly
| good for anyone but the seller?
|
| As a bit of a side note, everyone knows ads are targetted
| now, so there's an implicit assumption on the viewers
| part that the seller must know something about them. And
| now advertisers are using that to their advantage.
|
| I think the larger point though is that many of us simply
| do not think its ethical or healthy to give companies the
| tools to manipulate our emotions and tap into our
| insecurities in the pursuit of profit. The seller doesn't
| care about the buyer, they only care about convincing the
| buyer to buy their product, even if that means making
| them feel shitty about themselves.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> I think you may be missing the point that the
| advertisement is specifically meant to elicit, or create,
| those feelings of guilt or shame._
|
| I'm not sure that was missed, but, as before, you cannot
| elicit or create feelings where there isn't already an
| understanding of what the feelings reflect. The
| particular ad no doubt does elicit feelings in those who
| already see themselves as not being the parent they want
| to be. It's not going to elicit any particular feelings
| in someone who is childless, though. They lack the
| necessary understanding.
|
| And if you do have concern about the way you are
| parenting, wouldn't you want to improve upon that?
|
| _> what if instead the ad had instead said "Tired of
| being the the ugliest girl in your class? Try
| BetterMakeup!" (with all the appropriate imagery the
| targetting provides). Is advertisement like that truly
| good for anyone but the seller?_
|
| Sure, it is also good for the person who has an
| understanding that they are ugly and no longer want to
| be, again, assuming the product works. We do again have
| the potential problem of where the product might not work
| as expected. Indeed, that can be a problem, but I'm not
| sure that's a problem with advertising in and of itself.
| We should be careful to not conflate different ideas.
|
| On the assumption that "BetterMakeup" actually makes a
| person more beautiful, someone wants to become more
| beautiful, and the ad gave awareness to the person that
| there is a solution to their apparent problem, is that
| not a win for the consumer?
|
| _> I think the larger point though is that many of us
| simply do not think its ethical or healthy to give
| companies the tools to manipulate our emotions and tap
| into our insecurities in the pursuit of profit._
|
| If all products magically solved the problems they
| purport to solve, would you still have the same concern?
| As before, trying to convince a childless person that
| they are a bad parent isn't going to work. This only
| works when you are presenting a solution to someone who
| already understands that they have a problem.
|
| If the product is shitty, thereby not solving the
| problem, then I can definitely understand your overall
| concern. Although I am not sure you have made clear why
| advertising is to blame for shitty products. If we are
| imagining ways to change the world, why place product
| evaluation in the advertising band at all? Perhaps these
| shitty products don't need to be allowed on the market in
| the first place?
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > And if you do have concern about the way you are
| parenting, wouldn't you want to improve upon that?
|
| > Let's assume, for the sake of discussion, that this
| Reframe is some miracle app that will truly do what you
| think it claims to.
|
| Reading this discussion, I remain unconvinced. Unless I
| lost the plot somewhere along the way (admittedly, that's
| a possibility), it sounds like the context is that of
| someone advertising a product in a probably dishonest way
| and it's justified because people want the thing that's
| being advertised, even though it's not necessarily the
| thing that's being sold.
|
| > Although I am not sure you have made clear why
| advertising is to blame for shitty products.
|
| Put another way: what if the product in question was
| literally snake oil? Is that still justifiable as
| marketing because they're making a promise about it which
| someone wants to hear? Maybe it's more than just a shitty
| product.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> I remain unconvinced._
|
| Was there something we were supposed to convince you of?
|
| _> what if the product in question was literally snake
| oil? Is that still justifiable as marketing because they
| 're making a promise about it which someone wants to
| hear?_
|
| The discussion is about advertising preying on
| insecurities, not marketing in general. If we assume
| snake oil were to be advertised, is there some reason to
| prefer: _" Snake Oil: The miracle cure-all!"_ over _"
| Your bad breath is scaring off the girl of your dreams.
| Cure it with Snake Oil!"_?
|
| If yes, why is the latter less preferable? Is it because
| it calls attention to a real problem someone might want
| to solve? Does that continue to hold if we assume snake
| oil truly is a miracle cure-all that eliminates bad
| breath?
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Because the advertisement inappropriately calls the
| product a solution to an unrelated problem. The
| manufacturer can demonstrate that it will eliminate my
| halitosis but not that it will get me laid. Using the
| initial example, I might be less addicted to alcohol but
| that doesn't necessarily make me a better parent; the
| advertisement sold me on being a better parent.
|
| (I appreciate your questions. I had to think about that
| one.)
| randomdata wrote:
| _> Because the advertisement inappropriately calls the
| product a solution to an unrelated problem._
|
| Yes, but that is true in both cases. A miracle cure-all,
| if there were such a thing, would, indeed, solve your
| halitosis and girl troubles.
|
| If I am to infer something here, it is that you didn't
| realize what a "cure-all" can do. It took more precise
| language to get you thinking about specific problems and
| how to solve them.
|
| So, let's assume for a minute that snake oil is well and
| truly a magical cure-all. It seems that by the first ad
| you wouldn't recognize that fact and would end up not
| being able to benefit from is miracle properties. Perhaps
| the second ad would actually be preferable?
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > Yes, but that is true in both cases.
|
| I think I can see where you're coming from with this but
| it's still not how I read it. The second advertisement is
| telling me that the product will cure my bad breath and
| therefore my girl problems but my girl problems are not
| necessarily related to my bad breath. It's the same as
| the drinking father example; a person's parenting can be
| good or bad irrespective of their drinking habits. (Maybe
| it fixes my girl problems independently from curing my
| bad breath but the advertisement seems to be telling me
| that it will solve my girl problems by means of curing my
| bad breath. Same as the given drinking father real-world
| example.)
|
| Can you think of a non-cure-all example for which this
| argument holds?
| kelnos wrote:
| > _Who doesn 't want to learn about something that will
| actually improve their life?_
|
| I don't, honestly. If I've decided I want something, I'll
| seek it out. If I've identified an area where I feel like
| my life is lacking, I might look for a product to help
| fix that. If I don't even know about something that I
| might want, I'm fine not having it.
|
| The problem is that I don't really trust anyone else to
| determine what kind of ad passes the test of "will
| improve people's lives". There's really no objective way
| to approve or reject an ad based on this kind of
| criterion.
|
| I'd rather we just ban all forms of advertising.
|
| > _Google and Facebook, in the early days, thought they
| could use copious amounts of data to tailor the ads to
| the user such that they would only be subjected to those
| which are likeable_
|
| No, they wanted to give people ads they thought would be
| _effective_. Google 's plan was to make ads unobtrusive,
| mostly text-only, and thought that they would be likeable
| enough to be effective. But that's the key: they didn't
| do this because they were being nice and wanted to make
| the web a better place. They did it because they thought
| the ads would actually _work_ better.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Limit advertising budgets to some percentage of reported
| (and taxed) income.
|
| Solve multiple problems at once :)
| briandear wrote:
| So the big companies can spend more and the startups
| wouldn't be able to advertise at all. That's not solving
| anything.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| That is overly simplistic. Advertising is a great way to
| make people aware of things they may find useful. Without a
| good method to spread the news no one could sell their
| innovations.
|
| But i do agree that most ads are annoying.
| briandear wrote:
| A ridiculous concept -- the only people that win in that
| are the incumbent producers.
|
| "I make a better widget at a lower price than BigCorp" --
| yet nobody will ever find out about it because advertising
| that fact would be illegal. Journalists would become
| supremely powerful and (more) supremely corrupt. Just like
| radio DJs in the 20th century determined what music sold
| (and were often bribed accordingly,) the same thing will
| happen for literally everything. Journalism would become
| even more like advertising but people wouldn't be able to
| tell the difference. I don't want the equivalent of radio
| DJs determining what products and services win.
|
| Many professional sports would disappear, Motorsports,
| soccer, many olympic sports would cease to exist at the
| highest level. The Olympics themselves would no longer be
| broadcast (who would pay for it?) Kid's little league teams
| would lose local business sponsors. Everything would be
| pay-per-view assuming the economics worked at all.
| Newspapers would all shut down. TV stations would
| disappear. Radio would be limited to small amateur stations
| -- if that because the moment the host mentions a product,
| service, song, they'd be sued (wrongly or rightly) for
| potentially advertising. New restaurants would never
| survive (how will anyone know you exist: Signage and logos
| are all advertising.)
|
| Basically it would be North Korea with people shopping for
| inferior state-produced goods at inferior state run
| supermarkets reading state-approved messages about the
| greatness of the Dear Leader and his progeny.
|
| Even word of mouth referrals would be subject to lawsuits
| "can you prove you didn't get a free cookie in exchange for
| saying something to your friends about this bakery?"
|
| An absolutely dystopian nightmare.
|
| And if there were an advertising ban, you can bet
| politicians would exempt themselves from such a ban.
| Terr_ wrote:
| There may be some more-creative options out there too.
|
| For example, in Washington State there isn't a blanket
| prohibition on signs advertising to people on the highway,
| _but_ anything advertised must be available for purchase on
| the property. So far, that 's been enough to curb companies
| from lining the highways with walls of giant billboards.
|
| So--just spitballing here--imagine if people had a legal
| right to use and sell software that blocks ads or
| objectionable material from their view or on devices they
| own, and how that could lead to ad-ecosystem changes.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Or you can do like a few different states have done and
| just fucking ban billboards, and the world doesn't end,
| and the economy doesn't crash, and the world is an
| explicitly better place.
|
| So much stupid nonsense just to not make the world a
| better place and I don't understand it. You don't need to
| be creative.
|
| Speaking of which, at this point it's only a matter of
| time before some big name attempts to put a satellite in
| orbit that is also a billboard, so you can ALWAYS see
| their advertising in the nights sky, because it is not
| currently being used for advertising so, you know, they
| want to fix that. If we don't ban it now, we WILL have
| our night sky blocked out by advertising at some point.
| Companies already use big drone displays to do this.
|
| And I guarantee you people will insist "It's not a big
| deal, we need advertising, we don't need to block all of
| it"
| kelnos wrote:
| That really is my dream. Advertising is a blight on
| humanity.
|
| Of course, this would break capitalism. We live in a
| society where the foundation of the economy requires that
| people keep buying things, even things they don't really
| need and don't really want.
|
| I happen to think breaking capitalism a bit could be a good
| thing, but it would likely also cause a period of economic
| instability that would crush people who are marginal
| financially.
| mhx1138 wrote:
| We could make it illegal for minors to use the internet at
| all. It is too dangerous. Similar to driving. That would
| solve so many current problems.
| Zambyte wrote:
| I think it's more interesting when you scope it to mass
| media system. I think kids using the internet to
| communicate directly with their peers and family makes a
| lot of sense. Kids consuming an infinite amount of media
| and trying to broadcast themselves to the whole world is
| very often unhealthy.
|
| I think this is also true if adults, but I think kids are
| particularly susceptible to unhealthy habits / addictions
| around mass media systems.
| cacois wrote:
| Respectfully disagree - their peers often make an
| unhealthy environment on the internet. Kids need in-
| person communication and interactions, its necessary for
| healthy development. The internet looks like it provides
| social interaction, but it actually does not provide what
| kids need. They should interact with their peers
| elsewhere, synchronously.
| fwip wrote:
| I feel like interacting with a moderate-sized set of real
| peers is workable - like chat rooms on AIM with the kids
| you know from school. Kids have always had unsupervised
| time with their peers.
|
| Where it breaks down, is when you get a whole ecosystem
| populated entirely by kids and those trying to make money
| off of them.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| No, most of the problem with internet interaction is how
| the human brain considers the username saying things to
| you on AIM is NOT the same as the dude you hang out with
| every day in real life, and more importantly, the
| usernames you don't know in real life are just vague
| spirits your brain is much more willing to demonize. This
| exact same effect is the main cause of roadrage and why
| everyone is such an asshole when you put them in steel
| boxes and have them interact on the road.
|
| It is NOT SOCIALIZATION to talk to people on the
| internet. Your brain simply does not treat it the same
| way.
|
| Kids are fine interacting in person at school and other
| public places. They don't need this social media
| bullshit, and even private messaging systems like AIM or
| MSN aren't really that great.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Are you joking? Peer communication is the most toxic,
| Lord Of The Flies things there is. Notice how much office
| politics is high school bullshit? That is what happens
| when you have norms set by an isolated incestuous prison-
| mimicking subset of society cut off from experience and
| wisdom.
|
| Consuming an infinite amount of media is positively
| wholesome by comparison.
| Zambyte wrote:
| Your high school and work experience sounds completely
| different from mine. I grew up in a very rural area. My
| options outside of school and sports (both not accounting
| for the whole year for me) were to talk to my friends on
| the internet, talk to strangers on the internet, consume
| infinite media from the internet, or isolating myself. I
| spend a very large portion of my free time either talking
| to my friends, or talking to strangers and my friends at
| the same time. I don't think you'll be able to convince
| me that I would have been better off choosing any other
| options.
|
| As for work, I have had a hard time leaving jobs, because
| to me that also means leaving the people I work with. I
| guess my office life is similar to my high school life in
| the sense that I actually like(d) the people around me.
| brightlancer wrote:
| In the US, minors can get a driver's license at 16 in most
| places, and at 15 in a few I've seen.
|
| And a person of any age can drive a car on private
| property.
| novia wrote:
| People at age 12, maybe even age 10, are ready to use the
| internet.
|
| This might be an unpopular take, but I remember being that
| age and having to jump through so many hoops to access the
| sites I wanted to access, and I swore to myself I would
| defend children's right to exist online. I'm 35 now. My
| opinion hasn't changed.
|
| The regulations ask websites not to target advertising to
| children. Websites don't like that because advertising is
| their main means of profiting or breaking even, so they try
| to pull their site offline for minors, and limit their
| ability to communicate with others. COPPA doesn't require
| that you limit the ability for minors to communicate with
| others, but websites err on the side of caution because of
| the very real threat of pedophiles.
|
| Children age 12-ish are bored out of their minds, and a lot
| of them are really smart and would contribute to the
| internet in a positive way. See the story of Aaron Swartz.
| He contributed so much to open software before he was even
| 16.
| the1thatgb wrote:
| There should be operating systems just for minkrs that are
| devoid of tracking and using software for kids like the
| kiddle search engine and social media for kids (not the one
| we all know of)
| rolph wrote:
| the number of websites that would complain such OS and
| browser is unsupported, is skyrocketing. thats a blight
| that requires mitigation any time soon.
| maeil wrote:
| This is already the case for e.g. gambling ads in certain
| countries. Recently I saw the first website that was
| basically begging the user to "please be honest" on the age
| popup, indicating a good number of people have caught on to
| just clicking "under 21". Of course I still clicked "under
| 21".
| quotemstr wrote:
| Heaven forbid someone being shown ads for things that interest
| him. All this hand-wringing about privacy seems to me to be
| producing a lot of noise for minimal practical benefit. I don't
| see harms in ad targeting.
| consteval wrote:
| The harms, in my opinion, is that hyper-consumerism is an
| addiction. These methods are intended as a way to get
| impressionable and vulnerable groups hooked on various
| products, for the benefit of the manufacturer.
|
| Children cannot make good decisions (generally) and they
| often have poor impulse control. Building the habit of
| spending money on random sparkly shit they don't need ensure
| that, as adults, they will be good consumers. And by that I
| mean materialistic and poorer than they have to be.
|
| It's no surprise that these ads play into the most intrinsic
| human emotions for manipulation. They target social status,
| perception of self, pleasure. I see it as no different than
| sparkling lights on a slot machine. A way to manipulate the
| mind and build a money-burning addiction.
| burningChrome wrote:
| This sounds eerily familiar with how big tobacco targeted
| underage kids to get them hooked on their products in the 60's
| and 70's.
| supertofu wrote:
| You don't even have to go that far back. Remember Juul in the
| 2010s?
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| Juul sent representatives to schools who told kids that
| Juuls weren't addictive.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/health/juul-teens-
| vaping....
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > sent representatives to schools
|
| This seems like something that should need to be
| positively justified by the organization which wants to
| send salespeo^W _representatives_ to schools, in a way
| that is publicly auditable.
| burningChrome wrote:
| I remember a ton of vaping threads extoling the idea
| vaping was totally safe on Reddit. When people brought up
| the possible negative side effects of vaping they were
| routinely downvoted into oblivion. Nobody wanted to
| believe vaping was dangerous are could have harmful side
| effects.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| Tobacco companies have always targeted kids. In the early
| 20th century most baseball cards were produced by sweets and
| tobacco manufacturers
| belter wrote:
| Looking at the stories here in the last two days, lots in HN
| are more worried with the location of Twitter headquarters...(
| Will never mention that letter...)
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Don't want to go too off topic, but I legitmately don't
| understand the fuss. It went from California to California.
| If there's any forced moves to SoCal, my condolances, but I
| didn't get that vibe from that thread that there were a bunch
| of disgruntled workers.
|
| Are people still that interested in trying to join Twitter c.
| 2024? I'm desperate enough in terms of money to accept if I
| was just handed an offer, but I sure as hell am not doing
| anything more than 2 interviews before my interest nosedives.
| fragmede wrote:
| For all the speculation about the move, the reason is simple.
| Twitter is going to launch a payments system, San Francisco
| has a tax on gross receipts, which is so unfair to payments
| processing companies that several others - square, stripe,
| and block - moved out of SF to avoid paying that tax, and
| Twitter is simply following suite. it's too inside baseball
| for the average reader to follow, so we're left with baseless
| speculation and conspiracy theories on why they're moving HQ
| when it's a subplot business decision that has made made by
| others already.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > we're left with baseless speculation and conspiracy
| theories on why they're moving
|
| Sounds like Elon, so it's on-brand.
| choppaface wrote:
| Google has yet to experience significant penalties due to their
| Jedi Blue price-fixing scheme (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue ). Perhaps this story
| covers some other set of claims that will be broken out of the
| larger Jedi Blue case.
|
| Edit: this is actually a recent campaign, the story says 2023
| but some other outlets said it executed this year in 2024.
|
| After all, Google fought very hard and farted out a cashier's
| check to the US Gov to avoid a jury trial in one of their ad
| monopoly cases https://apnews.com/article/google-antitrust-ad-
| tech-virginia...
| miki123211 wrote:
| Funnily enough, this is one case where contextual advertising
| would actually work better than what we have now.
|
| With contextual advertising, you could very easily target
| children with very specific interests and/or in specific age
| groups by targeting the ads at the videos they most often watch.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| > this is one case where contextual advertising would actually
| work better than what we have now.
|
| No. No. No. That a) would involve tracking and b) what we have
| now are ads based on what you bought/ have looked at. I already
| have an 'x', why would i want more ads for it...or ads for what
| some algorithm thinks i might be interested in, related to it.
| Unless I _choose_ to.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Contextual ads wouldn't require tracking as it's just
| advertising based on the page context, ie a video about a
| videogame will have different ads than an article about
| remortgaging.
|
| There should probably be laws in place to prevent advertising
| targeting children though, regardless of the advertising
| mechanism.
| tantalor wrote:
| This might violate the policy against "proxy targeting"
| miki123211 wrote:
| > There should probably be laws in place to prevent
| advertising targeting children though, regardless of the
| advertising mechanism
|
| How would you even implement that? Do you mean no ads on TV
| channels for children and websites that are rarely
| frequented by adults?
| Terretta wrote:
| > _No. No. No. That a) would involve tracking and b) what we
| have now are ads based on what you bought / have looked at._
|
| Contextual advertising is what's in print magazines. Audience
| ads next to articles, topical ads mid-story, or category ads
| grouped with like ads.
| edpichler wrote:
| Market data science is tragically fascinating. It's a superpower,
| capable of being used for eithger good or bad.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| What would it look like when it is being used for good? Not
| being a smartass implying its existence, legitimately
| wondering.
| polotics wrote:
| From what I hear the chinese Tik-Tok equivalent Douyin does
| manage to educate and raise STEM interest and help... https:/
| /www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/10i4gks/tiktok_in_c...
| gretch wrote:
| There's lots of products that people really need and could
| help improve their lives, but they don't know about the
| existence of the problem/solution.
|
| For example
|
| "Hey do you have hip pain when walking down the stairs? Turns
| out this is extremely common and we solved it with this
| special walking stick. Click here to buy the walking stick"
|
| "Were you an Iraq war veteran who served between 2004 and
| 2006? Turns out the government owes you money. Click here to
| get it"
|
| "Do you like Blink 182? Turns out they are actually touring
| again and they are in your city next weekend. Buy tickets
| now"
|
| There's tons of stuff out there that would be a win-win
| transaction, if only ppl knew about it.
| rchaud wrote:
| > Hey do you have hip pain when walking down the stairs?
| Turns out this is extremely common and we solved it with
| this special walking stick. Click here to buy the walking
| stick"
|
| This is where a forward thinking marketer would say "we
| have a database of email addresses of people reporting hip
| problems, how much will you pay me for access to them?",
| aka what Google did.
| meiraleal wrote:
| By good you mean profit?
| fergonco wrote:
| Since I got kids I realized how they are the weakest link in the
| chain and are targeted by everyone. From tobacco (at the end
| nobody starts smoking at 30), to "free" cartoons (peppa pig
| backpack is not free, though), school book sellers. Heck, even
| the school this year pressured to put my kid in their social
| media.
|
| There is a whole world of people making their living out of your
| kids.
|
| Sorry for the rant. This is just another two. Does not surprise
| me.
| Unbefleckt wrote:
| Also sugary sweets are aimed at children, for whom a dose of
| sugar probably hits much harder. As someone who managed to quit
| sugar, it was like a drug addiction.
| walleeee wrote:
| Yes, indeed it _is_ a drug addiction.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| It is worse than a drug addiction because drugs aren't
| basic biochemical building blocks. Going cold turkey on all
| carbs isn't exactly mainstream nutrition.
| pickledoyster wrote:
| > This is just another two.
|
| These two control around half of the online ad industry, though
| lnsru wrote:
| Yes. And as parent one must fight against multiple multibillion
| dollar industries. Starting with food ending with toys, games,
| influencers and everything in between.
|
| I was neutral when I started working in cellphone industry and
| kids were small. Now when I see how teens siting in the corner
| watching worthless stupid YouTube videos on the phone for hours
| I don't feel well. Luckily I quit that industry and think it's
| a cousin of big tobacco at the end despite advertisements
| telling some other things.
| leosanchez wrote:
| > even the school this year pressured to put my kid in their
| social media.
|
| Wow
| imiric wrote:
| "We're sorry."
|
| This is not surprising. Google has a history violating the
| privacy of and targetting ads to not only teenagers, but
| children:
|
| - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/23/business/youtube-ads-kids...
|
| - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/09/business/media/youtube-ki...
|
| - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/20/business/media/google-you...
|
| - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/04/technology/google-youtube...
|
| - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/17/technology/youtube-google...
|
| When will governments wake up and put a stop to this? Their
| inaction is simply a sign of complicity. Absolutely disgraceful
| and criminal behavior.
|
| Everyone working at these companies: you're partly to blame,
| whether you're directly involved or not. Reconsider the behavior
| you're supporting, and quit.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Not allowing advertising to children I think isn't the correct
| route for society.
|
| Instead we should prevent children having money. Until you're
| 16, you may not handle money. You may not buy things for money.
| You may not sell things. You may not enter into contracts to
| exchange money.
|
| Your parents however can do all of those things on your behalf.
|
| At that point, advertising to children no longer is relevant -
| the children cannot buy the advertised things.
| throw12347825 wrote:
| Yep, drawing red lines around age of consent has worked _so
| well_ in the past, I think this is the way.
|
| I'm so glad we have simple and effective solutions like this.
| Otherwise can you imagine the kinds of problems we'd have
| with kids vaping, buying lootboxes and scrolling social media
| designed to hijack their not-yet-fully-developed-brains?
| throw12347825 wrote:
| ... And by "age of consent" I meant "minimum legal age
| recognized to make decisions pertaining to topic X". Is
| there a proper term for that, so I don't sound so stupid in
| future?
| azornathogron wrote:
| You perhaps want the term "age of majority".
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_majority
| pacija wrote:
| I guess you don't have children.
| tgv wrote:
| But e.g. getting children hooked on instagram will pay off
| later.
| cnity wrote:
| I think this is exactly the opposite of how it should be.
| Teach children to engage in trade and sensible use of money
| and currency early, but shield them from the immense leverage
| that corporate advertising has on the developing mind. I want
| well rounded children who are good independent critical
| thinkers, not brain-hijacked and inept with money.
| pndy wrote:
| Speaking of the corporate advertising, I just saw an ad
| today that basically grooms kids into credit card concept.
| This bank has a prepaid card and app that's being managed
| by parents.
|
| The ad story is _" charming"_: busy parents forgot to pack
| his son properly for a summer camp, so he calls them and
| says he misses item x that is crucial. So they both leave
| their jobs and in a rush through city they're trying to
| save their boy. While he just orders stuff online with a
| help of a card, app and smartphone. And with "plastic
| money" little guy saves the day on his own.
|
| Sure, its 21st century, we're living in the 20s and you
| can't avoid technology in banking, finances and pocket
| money for your kids but this barely teaches any
| responsibility - that ad deep between the lines sells the
| idea that money are magically "there". Just go for the
| limit, next month daddy and mommy will charge the card
| again.
| cnity wrote:
| I have seen an ad for that, and I felt mixed about it. I
| think such a "children's learning" type card which
| actually allows real purchases is a good idea for
| financial responsibility, but you'd have to be really
| cognisant of perverse incentives set up by a financial
| institution that can profit in this space.
| stephenr wrote:
| Ah yes, why let children learn about money and
| responsibility, much better to treat them like pets so that
| advertising scumbags don't have a reason to target them.
|
| The mental gymnastics people will do to avoid having to admit
| that daddy Google is a creepy advertising company never
| ceases to astound me.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| There are so many things wrong with your post!! In your
| spirit, we should be able to sell heroin to kids, just not
| give them money, only the first free dose (that's that all
| the blinking and sounds on the ads do to their brains). I had
| a colleague once that said exactly that (and he effing meant
| it) "if selling heroin to kids was legal, I would be outside
| a school right now - it's their parents' problem" (yes he has
| kids)(at the time he was a IT contractor making GBP 1200 per
| day - and that was 8 years ago)(there are scum and scum.. and
| then there was him).
|
| Anyway.. we (should) protect kids as much as possible from as
| many possible risks and threats (old and new).
|
| (also, go see a therapist, you need help)
| GuB-42 wrote:
| It is already the case, more or less. Parents manage their
| children assets, including money, and children abilities to
| enter into contract is very limited. They can manipulate
| money, but only if they parents let them, and they usually
| do, because it would be crazy not to.
|
| It changes nothing to the situation with ads. Ads for
| children actually target the parents, manipulating children
| so that they can in turn manipulate their parents. It can be
| terrible, for example by advertising for something
| fashionable to wear at school, too expensive for the child
| allowance, they expect their parents to buy it, because if
| they don't their kids may get bullied. Not giving children
| access to money won't solve this problem, quite the opposite
| actually, if it was their money, they could realize how
| overpriced the thing is and how much they could do by
| spending it elsewhere.
| netsharc wrote:
| I remember when I was a kid (a long time ago now...), Dr.
| Martens shoes were the fashion, that my school forbade
| them. We had uniforms, but the rule with shoes was just
| that they had to be black. I think the ban was on the
| technicality that the stiching was yellow, so they're not
| black shoes. And a student tried to loophole the loophole
| by coloring the yellow stitching black.
|
| I wonder if some brands give out free stuff to "child
| influencers" so other kids would moan to their parents
| about buying the items...
| agmater wrote:
| > I wonder if some brands give out free stuff to "child
| influencers" so other kids would moan to their parents
| about buying the items...
|
| See Ryan's World on Youtube for example, it's a huge
| industry.
| lupire wrote:
| They are called brand ambassadors and they go back to to
| before Internet.
|
| The best looking person at your college didn't pay for
| their iBook.
| x3ro wrote:
| Ah yes, don't give children _any_ responsibility with money
| until they are 16, and then just throw them into cold water
| and expect them to know how to manage spending.. Sorry for
| being sarcastic here, and I know how to raise children is a
| divisive topic, but this sounds like a recipe for disaster.
|
| Let's give children responsibility and agency as early as
| possible, so they can learn to make decisions.
| lm28469 wrote:
| You can still get brainwashed by ads without spending a cent
| pfdietz wrote:
| Having ads targeted at children can be seen as a _good_
| thing: it trains the children in what advertising is like,
| about how they can be manipulated and exploited. It 's good
| for them to get this experience while young when the stakes
| are low.
|
| Of course, this might also train children to be the
| exploiters and manipulators. Maybe their parents would think
| that's a good thing too, at least in the long run.
| thfuran wrote:
| Wouldn't it be better to remove exploitation and
| manipulation than to subject children to it in the hopes
| that it somehow makes them resistant to more of it later?
| pfdietz wrote:
| I don't see how that would work.
| thfuran wrote:
| If the reason that you think it's good to allow
| advertising to children, despite it being bad in and of
| itself, is that it prepares them to be subjected to ads
| as an adult, wouldn't it be better to instead remove the
| ads for adults as well?
| pfdietz wrote:
| Ads serve a useful function, particularly if one can
| filter out deception.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| To be frank thus sounds like a replay of purity idealism
| about shielding kids from anything even remotely
| connected to sex. Not being capable of manipulation or
| exploitation or dealing with them would be rightfully
| classified as a severe social disability.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Personally, I plan to prepare my kids by keeping them away
| from as many sources of advertising as possible and
| teaching them how to do the same when they're older. e.g.
| they're completely unaware of the existence of anything
| Disney-related.
| rendaw wrote:
| In case anyone replies with "well all companies are bad in some
| way"... scale is also a factor here. Even if Google does the
| same things as a small family owned business, they have
| significantly greater ability to inflict harm.
|
| And I'm not sure I buy that all companies are bad. A lot of
| companies are earnest and customer-focused when they're smaller
| and desperate for more users. And I've worked at many companies
| which were bumbling but not really manipulative or malicious.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| It's like saying all gov are bad in some way. But Spain gov
| and North Korea gov are definitely not bad in the same way.
| pyrale wrote:
| > In case anyone replies with "well all companies are bad in
| some way"... scale is also a factor here.
|
| Even disregarding scale, plenty of large companies providing
| critical service struggle to find good people to do their
| job.
|
| Sure, they don't pay as well. But if the rebuttal is that you
| can't find a honest company that pays equivalent salaries,
| maybe we should call that wage-gap corruption money.
| o_1 wrote:
| remind me, why was "do no evil" scrubbed from the mission
| statement?
| brightlancer wrote:
| There's always going to be a lot of money/profit in amoral
| behavior that's legal -- while being moral means passing on
| that behavior and money. It's possible to run a business
| morally and successfully, but rarely as successfully as
| someone who runs one amorally.
|
| IME, most people in the US will happily take a job with the
| extra money at an amoral company, even if the lesser paying
| job at a moral company would still be enough for a
| comfortable life. (Folks in the US are very price
| conscious; I don't know how that compares to other
| cultures/ societies.)
| lupire wrote:
| Why are you quoting "We're sorry."? Who apologized?
|
| "I didn't do it. Nobody saw me do it. You can't prove
| anything." is not "I'm sorry."
| alex7734 wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiL2AjOtjZI
| jay-barronville wrote:
| > Everyone working at these companies: you're partly to blame,
| whether you're directly involved or not. Reconsider the
| behavior you're supporting, and quit.
|
| I used to think like this, until I got married and started a
| family.
|
| I'm no longer so quick to judge folks for not doing what I
| believe to be the most ideal (or even ethical) thing in these
| types of circumstances.
|
| For many of us who have families, our top priority is making
| sure we can continue to take care of our households and not
| risking that in any way unless absolutely necessary.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| This is also true of people with chronic medical conditions
| or disabilities. I don't know if the next company's insurance
| will cover my doctors or my medication.
|
| Getting a job while having an obvious disability puts you at
| a disadvantage, regardless of discrimination being illegal.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| There are tons of tech jobs out there. That excuse doesn't
| work so well when you're in one of the most lucrative careers
| there is. Creating a dystopia where everyone is spied upon
| 24/7 is also not something someone with kids should want to
| do.
| dartos wrote:
| There _were_ tons of tech jobs.
|
| Much harder to jump ship nowadays since layoffs have flood
| the market with high skilled job seekers and borrowing
| money is no longer free for tech firms.
|
| Life is complicated, employees can be just as much locked
| in to their jobs at Google as most people are to their
| products.
| jay-barronville wrote:
| Exactly. I was about to respond with something similar,
| but you did it for me!
|
| Not only are folks getting laid off left and right,
| salaries have gone down significantly and it's very
| difficult to secure a new job in this market (no matter
| your skills, experience, etc.).
| ndriscoll wrote:
| There are still tons of jobs. They might not pay as well,
| but "I need to provide for my kids" might mean you take a
| crappy IT job that pays 60k, not that you build global
| surveillance/propaganda systems to be used against them
| and their peers. This isn't the depression.
|
| And up until recently, there were tons of really good
| jobs. What's the excuse there?
|
| If you have kids, you're presumably a few years into your
| career. Do you not have savings? My oldest is 3 and I
| wouldn't really have to start worrying for years if I
| lost my job.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Forgetting about pay, are those jobs intellectually
| stimulating? Do straight conventional E commerce compared
| to testing infrastructure for video conferencing
| software? A lot of the appeal of a FAANG is the
| interesting work you can do at one. The only thing better
| would be a less secure startup working on something
| really novel.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| So now instead of "I need to do it for my family to
| survive", it's "I enjoy building panopticons"?
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| hmmm, hopefully you can find a job that does both? Feed
| the family and is something that is fun to do.
|
| If you are a social justice warrior, you might prioritize
| that instead. To each their own.
| vel0city wrote:
| > I enjoy building panopticons
|
| > hopefully you can find a job that does both?
|
| Hopefully we quit building panopticons?
| vel0city wrote:
| > testing infrastructure for video conferencing software
|
| There's lots of companies out there that aren't
| Meta/Alphabet/etc. that also do things like video
| conferencing software if that's your jam. Smaller
| companies like BigBlueButton, Whereby, and ClickMeeting;
| more mid-sized ones like and Zoho Meeting, and the larger
| players like Webex and GoToMeeting and what not. And this
| isn't an exhaustive list of non-FAANG video conferencing
| systems.
|
| Its not like the only "tech" (software?) jobs out there
| are small mom and pop e-commerce sites or FAANG
| companies.
| fedeb95 wrote:
| That's why we need regulations. Against people actually to
| blame, but also against ourselves. Basically, just so that
| being unethical isn't profitable for anyone.
| mattmcknight wrote:
| Isn't putting ads on children's programming, as has been done
| since the dawn of television, "targeting children"? This seems
| like bullshit targeting of the competition to me.
| volleygman180 wrote:
| Are commercials during saturday morning cartoons _not_ ads
| targeted at children?
|
| When I was growing up at least, it was all for candy, toys, and
| sugary cereal, and often had kids or cartoon characters
| featured in the commercial.
| fedeb95 wrote:
| it's a matter of threshold. There's a point up to which
| targeted advertising doesn't cause harm, after that, it does.
| Ads on smartphones cross that threshold. Doesn't matter if TV
| also does: if it does, it should be limited too, otherwise,
| it doesn't matter.
|
| Why smartphones and related software cross that threshold?
| They're specifically designed to increase use time, i.e. to
| be addictive. It's a drug.
| signatoremo wrote:
| What are the thresholds for tv and the web? Does FCC have
| any specific guidelines? How about other countries?
| ndriscoll wrote:
| The fact that companies making sugary cereals haven't gone
| out of business and the current obesity crisis suggest to
| me that those TV commercials are also quite harmful.
| Something causes people to switch off their brains and feed
| their kids cookies and marshmallows for breakfast as long
| as the TV says it's okay and normal.
| pyrale wrote:
| There's a difference between placing a sports shoes ad in
| front of a gym, and getting to know the history and habits of
| every person that ever entered that gym, and showing each a
| different ad.
|
| I mean, 30 years ago, we were horrified by the extent to
| which Stasi spied on their own people. Now, we'd call them
| amateurs.
| mattmcknight wrote:
| People were horrified because of what they did with the
| data. This is why it is different when there is a person
| listening, as their interests get involved. If it is just
| something telling me the shoes I looked at last week are on
| discount, instead of some random ad, who cares?
|
| I used to get a long distance phone bill in the mail with
| the list of every number I called so I could verify the
| charges. Was it wrong for MCI to have this data?
| acdha wrote:
| MCI retaining your phone call records for billing
| purposes has a legitimate use: they need to be able to
| justify charging you.
|
| Where it gets controversial is retention time and reuse:
| ten years from now, there's no billing justification but
| you might not want President Donner to demand they turn
| over the list of everyone who called a political rival.
| Similarly, you might not care if they have that data but
| still object to them sharing it with marketing partners
| (they called LL Bean, you can advertise your outdoors
| wear to them!) or making it available to other companies
| who can use it to look up your interests when you are on
| the phone or applying to something. This can be deeply
| personal: your car insurance company would definitely pay
| to know who calls alcohol addiction treatment numbers, an
| employer of a certain vein might be interested in calls
| to adult services, etc. Once that data is out, there's no
| way to un-breach it.
| pyrale wrote:
| Of course, Google would never give this data to a
| government that engages in targeted killing, Meta would
| never help out a junta repress their population, etc.
|
| The extent of the data collected and systemic
| consolidation between different sources is the problem,
| because we've seen again and again any data collection is
| dangerous regardless of the original intent.
| mattmcknight wrote:
| Absolutely, pretending like this is some Google/Meta only
| thing.
|
| Newspapers filled their for kids sections with advertising
| targeted at children. Comic books featured scammy ads
| targeted at kids.
| izacus wrote:
| Some of the most popular nostalgic shows were outright
| blatant toy advertisements (see: Transformers). This is
| absolutely not a new problem and its sad to see it hasn't
| really been addressed.
| burkaman wrote:
| Yes those are also bad and should not be allowed.
| zo1 wrote:
| I honestly don't think our current "implementation" of
| government has the required momentum to do anything to stop
| this or enable the will of the people to be enacted on such
| large corporations. Our government is a highly-reactive machine
| that's no longer driven by humans, but rather the internal
| algorithms and processes (bureaucracy).
|
| Just look at the sheer number of "congressional" and "senate"
| hearings we've seen into everything from AI, to border
| crossings, to privacy breaches, to antisemitism in
| universities, to data breaches, etc. Pretty much 0 effect
| happens anywhere in response, despite us all (including the
| media) seeing the internals and the problems. You would think
| some of these problems are pretty easy to solve or at least get
| consensus on, but you'd be wrong. We've co-evolved our public
| discourse and media with government such that nothing can
| happen. If I wasn't so anti-left, I'd say the amount of
| partisanship in existence is precisely because it disarms us
| against this government automaton.
| xlii wrote:
| I think that nowadays industry flavored joke of "you either die a
| hero or live long enough to become..." should end with
| Google/Meta.
|
| What a dirtbags.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| Funny enough, fireship had a good take on it just the other
| day. "As a tech company you either go bankrupt as a hero or
| live long enough to become an illegal monoply"
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jx2dDV2eWBM
| anal_reactor wrote:
| Remember when everyone cheered when Google was winning lawsuits
| because they were the small guys?
| joemaller1 wrote:
| Yes. How gray is your beard?
|
| "Don't be evil."
| okdood64 wrote:
| There's plenty of marketing targeted towards children outside
| of Big Tech. What's the difference when they do it?
| Nasrudith wrote:
| They aren't new players with potential electoral influence,
| and the old media players are in decline.
| rchaud wrote:
| TV, radio and newspaper ads are regulated by the FTC.
| Advertising on these mediums is limited (24 hours in a day, X
| number of pages in a paper) and illegal content can be easily
| tracked and archived, and prosecuted.
|
| Big Tech serves an ungodly number of ads from all kinds of
| scrupulous and unscrupulous parties. Ad content is almost
| impossible to track and monitor. Big Tech says "let us self-
| regulate" while also saying "it's not possible to ensure thaf
| every single ad we serve complies with the law, we're doing
| our best".
| jl6 wrote:
| Teenage mental health crisis is web scale!
| andrepd wrote:
| "How we scaled depressify.js to over 100 million consumers"
| aeurielesn wrote:
| Nothing will change as long as C-suite roles keep breaking the
| law and walking away scott free. Also goes for the investors
| promoting this behavior at startup level.
| andrepd wrote:
| It's all a natural consequence of capitalism. Heavy regulation
| is needed for even a semblance of a healthy society, but
| unfortunately capitalism's incentives themselves make
| regulation an uphill battle.
|
| A mixed economy with strong regulation seems to be the best
| system we've come up with so far. Unfortunately it's a tough
| sell because we're obsessed about GDP numbers and making like
| go up instead of actually improving our lives. We prefer having
| a couple trillion-$ companies wreaking havoc on our societies
| and especially on teenagers and children than not having those
| companies.
| riedel wrote:
| This seems to be the motivation of EU regulators. However,
| regulation also needs to be enforcible in a global setting.
| Also one needs to understand collateral damage to smaller
| enterprises (recent EU regulations only tries to target large
| platforms) and economy as a whole by leaving large legal
| uncertainties. In the end also with heavy regulations often
| the most ignorant players will survive. We should rather make
| sure try that taxes are paid where the potential damages
| occur.
| andrepd wrote:
| The "big company clauses" as you say do solve most of those
| issues: they avoid burdening small enterprises with
| unreasonable amounts of regulation, but they ensure (very)
| big companies with huge influence which act for all
| purposes as public platforms, and not merely as "normal"
| companies which happen to be very big, _do_ have extra
| impositions.
| kgbcia wrote:
| Still waiting for cookies to be removed
| wslh wrote:
| When I was a child, the conspiracy theory among kids was that
| Coca-Cola inserted subliminal ads by interlacing a can of Coke
| within TV series or movies. I cannot believe reality surpasses
| all those fantasies without scrutiny.
|
| Even political propaganda between left and right wings, 1984, and
| other similar scenarios sound like satire.
| Terretta wrote:
| > _When I was a child, the conspiracy theory among kids was
| that Coca-Cola inserted subliminal ads by interlacing a can of
| Coke within TV series or movies. I cannot believe reality
| surpasses all those fantasies._
|
| Reader: Yeah, _that_ happened...
|
| Narrator: It did: https://www.businessinsider.com/subliminal-
| ads-2011-5
| crazygringo wrote:
| No, the idea that you can insert a single frame into standard
| video formats and have it subliminally influence you is an
| urban legend.
|
| You can try it with any video editing software. A single
| frame at 30 or 60 fps is _extremely_ visible. It 's not
| passing by your conscious awareness undetected. The flash is
| obvious and you can easily read a word of text or recognize a
| logo or someone's face.
| wslh wrote:
| Yes, scientific source "Beyond Vicary's fantasies: The
| impact of subliminal priming and brand choice" [1].
|
| [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S
| 00221...
| crazygringo wrote:
| That link literally starts by describing how the idea of
| flashing a frame of Coca-Cola _was a hoax_. It completely
| supports what I said.
|
| Like I said, test it yourself in a video editor. You'll
| immediately see how implausible it is.
| wslh wrote:
| Yes, I agree and added a reference. That's why I told my
| story.
| resource_waste wrote:
| Wait... Nintendo and Disney targets children, including those too
| young to know what Ads are.
|
| Why are these different ethics?
|
| (They are not, both of those companies have created literal
| fanatics by adulthood. Even I cannot avoid beating each Zelda
| game despite not enjoying a single Zelda game since WW)
| quotemstr wrote:
| Should they show adult ads to children instead?
| impossiblefork wrote:
| Here in Sweden it's illegal to do so and you only find
| advertisements directed at children on stations operating from
| abroad.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| I live in an area where advertising is not allowed to target
| children directly.
|
| As a result, the adverts don't show children playing with the
| toys, but present the toys in a bland setting as potential
| gifts for adults to buy. They will show an adult happy with a
| purchase. In short, they simply cannot address children
| directly through television. However, it's a fine line and you
| hardly ever see advertisements for toys unless there's a clear
| educational value. That's my understanding at least.
|
| Most Nintendo adverts show young adults playing on a sofa or on
| the go in a train.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Wow, that's really interesting.
|
| Having grown up on cartons filled with ads for toys showing
| kids playing with the toys, it literally never even crossed
| my mind that anyone would consider that objectionable, let
| alone pass laws against it.
|
| At most parents would be annoyed because their kid would
| pester them for a toy, but I've literally never heard anyone
| suggest that the advertising should be banned.
|
| (Advertising alcohol or tobacco of course is today
| different.)
|
| You've definitely made me wonder how childhood might be
| different without ads for children. On the other hand, when I
| grew up you couldn't avoid commercials. Now kids watch
| everything through streaming where you can generally
| eliminate the commercials anyways.
| bondarchuk wrote:
| I have definitely heard it from parents, some kids get
| really insufferable during holiday season with all the
| frantic toy ads on tv (back when they still watched tv, I
| guess).
| neilv wrote:
| > _"We'll also be taking additional action to reinforce with
| sales representatives that they must not help advertisers or
| agencies run campaigns attempting to work around our policies."_
|
| Useful would be a chronology of when:
|
| * Individuals learned/knew about the rule violations.
|
| * Individuals were arguably rewarded.
|
| * Individuals were disciplined.
|
| That might give a sense of how bad the infection is, and whether
| their immune system is on top of it.
| dwighttk wrote:
| If the executives figure out a way to actually guarantee no ads
| targeting children, Mr Beast will be crushed.
| unshammer wrote:
| Let's call the practice "pedomarketing". Half of the US, you know
| which half, would be soon voting for a ban on it.
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