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Comment by kazinator | Hacker News Reader

The way I see it, they tapped into a widely held belief, rather than fears. It is a popular belief that doing mental work staves off cognitive decline (including age-related). I bet you that everyone at Lumosity actually believes it because their mother told them that when they were kids.

My wife (Japanese) always says "good for older people" about any sort of puzzle. She didn't get this from being deceived by Lumosity.

The FTC is being very heavy-handed here.

It's like someone sold carrots claiming they improve vision, and got thrown in jail.

Testimonials being paid for shills? Like, say it ain't so. Every damed commercial you've ever seen in your life has fake people presenting fake testimonials. It's assumed.

(Claiming that doing puzzles can stave off Alzheimer's is going somewhat far, though. That disease has specific physiological causes which can't be reversed through brain activity.)

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> It's like someone sold carrots claiming they improve vision, and got thrown in jail.

No, it's not. It's like they were appropriately fined for profiting off unproven medical claims.

> Testimonials being paid for shills? Like, say it ain't so. Every damed commercial you've ever seen in your life has fake people presenting fake testimonials. It's assumed.

And they're labelled as an actor representation. Giving them a pass because it's "assumed" is irresponsible and harmful to those who might not otherwise know.

> Giving them a pass because it's "assumed"

...is the law of the land in USA

It's called "puffery"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffery

> In law, puffery is a promotional statement or claim that expresses subjective rather than objective views, which no "reasonable person" would take literally.

US Supreme Court has ruled that lying in ads is protected speech, up to some non-specified boundary:

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100211/0133368126.shtml

I don't see exactly what that has to do with passing off solicited and compensated customer testimonials as unsolicited and uncompensated (as far as I'm aware).

And as the FTC's actions have indicated, making unproven claims of direct medical benefit is not simple puffery.

To add another reason why his analogy was irrelevant and misleading, no one got thrown in jail. Lumosity got fined 0.01% of what some bank fines have been over the past few years.

That is also a good point, though I don't see how the comparison to what banks were fined is relevant or enlightening.

I like to contextualize the real magnitude of 'illions. There are many people who hear "$2M" and think it's a large fine. It's actually relatively modest, and I wanted to provide a point of reference for people to know how modest.

> The order also imposes a $50 million judgment against Lumos Labs, which will be suspended due to its financial condition after the company pays $2 million to the Commission.

The whole piece is pretty unclear about whether they're shutting down Lumosity, or shutting down Lumos Labs while somehow not shutting down Lumosity.

Oh, I guess I misparsed this originally. I understood it as "The order imposes a $50 million judgment against Lumos Labs, and Lumos Labs will be suspended due to its financial condition after paying $2 million".

But, the article as a whole is more intelligible with the meaning "The order imposes a $50 million judgment against Lumos Labs, and the judgment will be suspended due to Lumos Labs' financial condition after it pays $2 million".

I think a better yardstick would be comparison of fines for similar offenses.

Relax, I was just posting a deliberate piece of hyperbole to test whether someone might want to fine me.

Then why the downvote? If I was just falling into your deliberate trap, you shouldn't be taking it out on my karma.

I never simultaneously downvote and reply to something. That shouldn't even be allowed. The downvote can be regarded as a form of reply to something that doesn't deserve the normal reply. Under that view, it is contradictory to apply both.

Why shouldn't that be allowed? I downvote and reply to comments I've downvoted if the comment is worth responding to, ie, I say why I downvoted. I don't downvote to disagree, I downvote because the content of the comment is not constructive or useful to the thread.

In short, I just downvoted you and then replied to you.

Why do you assume you know who downvoted you?

The FTC is doing it's job. You can' make arbitrary medical claims, and not expect to have to prove them.

This is the same sort of thing that a lot of people criticized the FDA over for going after Cheerios for making claims about being healthy for your heart.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB124216077825612187

It's a good thing that there are parts of the government out there making sure you can't just make up whatever you want to sell a product.

> You can' make arbitrary medical claims, and not expect to have to prove them.

Sure you can. You just have to be selling drugs, rather than video games.

I don't quite follow the logic.

Herbalife would beg to differ with your claims.

> The FTC is being very heavy-handed here.

Are you kidding me? A quick Google search turned up revenue of $24 million in 2013. 2014 and 2015 numbers did not come up on my quick search, but I'd imagine based on the amount of advertising they do it's at least held steady. And then there's the many millions of investment dollars they received before that. $2 million is not even a slap on the wrist. It's like blowing in their ear gently.

As far as Lumosity believing their own claims, first this is not a mom and pop store. They have the resources to know for sure whether or not it's true, and they have a duty to find that out before making claims. Second, I don't buy it. Anybody with half a brain knows it's baloney.

Lastly, as far as I can see they're not being forced to make amends to the customers they ripped off, nor to make public apologies for false claims AND if they can gin up some bullshit study to support their claims (shouldn't be hard with their resources), they can continue making them.

Also the whole time this lawsuit has been going on, I've been hearing claims that don't differ much from the ones in violation on NPR constantly. Just enough to skirt the law.

Heavy handed my left foot.

$24 million revenue isn't net income after all the expenses and taxes.

2/24 is 8%. How would you like to be fined 8% of your yearly salary?

Make $100k as a developer? $8k please!

Good thing I'm not blowing gently in your other ear; that would be 16 thou.

> Make $100k as a developer? $8k please!

If my career was based on a bunch of lies I would expect a lot worse. That's kind of my whole point. If I sold a website to somebody based on claims that it would do something it doesn't do, I would expect them to sue me for 100% of their money back plus damages, not just 8%.

And keep in mind with Lumosity, $24 mil is the revenue for 2013 that I could find, who knows what they actually made in 2014 and 2015. If we assume it was just flat that's $72 mil, which makes the $2 mil fine 2.7%.

And one would have to assume that a company operating in this gray area would have some inclination that they would eventually be fined/sued and set up a fund of some sort to cover it.

It would be like making $100k as a developer, but using some shady quasi-legal loopholes on your taxes to save a bunch of money. Presumably you would set some aside in case it ever turned out that what you were doing was not considered proper by the IRS. My point is that the eventuality of this couldn't have come as a surprise to the company.

> If my career was based on a bunch of lies I would expect a lot worse.

That is irrelevant to the question whether or not 8% of your yearly income is significant. I was only countering the opinion that that $2m is nothing to a company with a $24m yearly revenue (regardless of why it is taken away).

I'm sure people who drive after a night of heavy drinking don't like having their vehicle impounded, their license taken away, and being thrown in jail. But what do percentages or likability have to do with the application of law?

I disagree wrt. carrots and shills. We already tolerate too much lying to people, but there have to be some limits. Common misconceptions are one thing. People trying to defraud you (and let's call a spade a spade - if you're lying to me to take my money, you're defrauding me) by turning common misconception into what looks like a scientific fact? That's way out of line.

They are just selling fun puzzles. What you see is what you get. Even if you wrongly believe that puzzles have some benefit they do not, you don't have to buy puzzle from them; the false belief applies to all puzzles you can get anywhere, including free sources: Internet, library books, ...

There seems to be evidence that mental activity saves off cognitive decline --- just not that it can cure Alzheimer's and such.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100302151242.ht...

http://healthland.time.com/2013/04/15/mental-exercises-are-m...

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201403... (#6 - brain training games)

http://www.newsmax.com/Health/Health-News/mental-activity-de...

http://www.healthcentral.com/alzheimers/c/42/151976/exercisi...

They are not just selling fun puzzles, that's the point. If they just said "Buy our fun puzzles!" we wouldn't be here.

> The FTC is being very heavy-handed here.

It might be done to make an example out of them. Also imo a more accurate comparison would be Dr. Oz and the "wonder powder" he advertises

Are you sure the FTC wouldn't go after a carrot company marketing carrots as improving vision? I've never seen them try, have you?

> The way I see it, they tapped into a widely held belief, rather than fears.

Yes, and they trumpeted it several times per day in a variety of advertising channels

While the belief may exist, they had deceptive ads turned to 11. You don't see puzzles or similar product being advertised almost 24/7 on tv.

I think the FTC is not being heavy handed at all

From experience using lumocity games, I am sure people who develop these games don't use them - there were annoyances and blockers which are too obvious and constantly present during the game process. If they were playing themselves they would fix it I think.

Also their approach to metrics was too unscientific.

The FTC went after POM Wonderful for overstating the health benefits of their pomegranate juice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POM_Wonderful

"It's like someone sold carrots claiming they improve vision"

I assume that you know that there is no evidence for carrots improving vision.

> It's like someone sold carrots claiming they improve vision, and got thrown in jail.

Exactly. Want to tell carrots? Go ahead. Want to sell carrots by telling people with failing sight that it will improve their vision, and talk them into a monthly fee for carrot delivery? You'd better have some research to back that up.

If someone sold carrots labelled as "Said to be good for your eyes" - or some other variation, then no problems.

However, if they state that there are medical studies showing that carrots improve your vision, then those claims should be checked out and action taken if not true.

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