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Comment by freedomben | Hacker News Reader

Seeing a lot of comments here that are along the lines of, "this is typical marketing aka lying." Just wanted to say (as a marketing major and former marketing guy) these are most assuredly not the same thing, and I think we make a grave error by normalizing the idea that lying == marketing. Lying is not ok. Marketing is perfectly ok. Let's be careful lest we make excuses like, "Oh they're just marketing"

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Marketing is not perfectly ok, at best it alerts us to things we weren't going to buy because we didn't know about them. But most of the time it either 1) encourages us to buy things we weren't already going to buy (like the $20 shit they sell on tv) or 2) attempts to win mindshare/sales over some other competing brand, which is also wasteful because it's ultimately just a product trying to carve itself a larger piece of a relatively fixed-size pie. Or it does some other nefarious stuff like trying to boost PR of some business or sway our political opinion. And many of the methods that marketing uses to accomplish these goals leverage negative human psychology like making us feel ugly/fat/poor/stupid if we don't make that purchase we weren't going to make originally.

Open a magazine/watch tv/disable adblock/look at roadside ads and you'll see that very rarely are ads actually making the world a better place.

I don't agree with your statements that (almost?) all marketing is bad because it tries to promote products. I believe a company has the right to try to get people interested in their product, because if not, how would people get to know about it? Hearing other people talk about it? Those other people should've known about it in the first place (how?) and this is promotion as well. The idea of product promotion at its core is not bad, it's inherent to how our economy works.

> And many of the methods that marketing uses to accomplish these goals leverage negative human psychology like making us feel ugly/fat/poor/stupid if we don't make that purchase we weren't going to make originally.

_This_ is where I agree with you, however. Promotion is one thing, and making the world a better place with every single thing you do is hardly possible (or necessary), but making the world a decidedly worse place is not what we're looking for. The shaming tactic that you describe is something that works in marketing, and it may not even be lying, but it's bad.

You are conflating marketing and advertising. While advertising is part of marketing, marketing involves so much more.

Marketing makes the world a warmer place (planet warming) ... by making us buy stuff we don't need.

When people say marketing is lying, it’s really shorthand for “marketing has a strong incentive to lie, and very little to stop them. Many times the only thing stopping them are the morals of the company (lol) or very rarely applied laws against false advertising”. So you can see that the reputation is there because the incentives and market forces pretty much force marketing in that direction.

It would seem the line between marketing and lying is completely arbitrary and essentially means nothing. Take a look at any fast food commercial for an easy example.

I think the perception is that 90% of marketing is straight up propaganda (which includes lying, obviously). And I think this perception is correct. If there is a difference between marketing and lying, it sure is difficult for the average user to distinguish, hence the perception.

"The Power of Home Depot" - The POWER? Really? Its also the most expensive even though they always claim to have the best deals. "JD Power best in class" - even though the company paid JD power for the "award" Fast food commercials - never mind how the photographs are essentially straight up propaganda, "I'm Lovin' It!"

There are so many examples of this I couldn't list them all if I even tried to.

> normalizing the idea that lying == marketing

I hate to tell you this, but its already been normalized because for the most part that is the truth!

You fail to make a coherent point, because you try to differentiate a set (in)permissible actions only by assigning them different names (lying vs. marketing) without defining them or relating them to examples (of others). As you clearly don't agree with the definitions of other commenters, please construct that system of knowledge yourself, so others can even meaningfully reply.

Lying: marked by or containing untrue statements[1]

Marketing: the process or technique of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service [2]

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lying

[2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/marketing

>Lying: marked by or containing untrue statements[1]

So are we suggesting 4x4 MIMO, 256 QAM, along with some 3GPP Rel 14 features ( such as lower latency ), eLAA, better FDD-MIMO with LTE as 5G being correct and not lying when the industry as well as previously agreed upon 5G standard were starting at 5G phase 1 with 3GPP Rel 15 using NR?

Spec wise, and technically, ( Since we are on HN and talking to Geeks ), this is lying. To consumer, The 3GPP Rel 14, or whatever AT&T is using does actually include many of the 5G improvement.

From a Carrier perspective, I have yet to see ANY real world testing results which suggest to me 5G NR is actually that much better. Which means they will need time to do lots more testing and tuning before consumer will see the benefits. It is however important for them to bring their customer base to 3GPP-Rel 14 which supports the FDD-MIMO. ( Unlike TD-MIMO which works with 3GPP-Rel 8 if I remember correctly, so Advantage to Sprint ). But most carrier are using FDD spectrum. Moving the customer to FDD-MIMO capable phone vastly improves the Network Capacity and hence better for everybody on the Network.

Another major problem is 5G were far too hyped up, we have seen this far too many times and it seems people never learn anything from it.

The cynical among us have noted a correlation between #1 and #2. Even when marketing doesn't say anything strictly untrue, it makes statements that make you think of untrue things.

The problem is that a lot of people fail to parse statements correctly and interpret them to mean something else than they actually do. It's technically not lying.

As an example, an ISP advertising speeds "up to 1Gbps", when in reality you usually get 20Mbps, rarely 50Mbps, is not lying - the bandwidth never goes over 1Gbps. However, most of us here would be very upset with the reality when compared to the ad.

When securities laws are applied, lying/"marketing" becomes securities fraud and jail time with zero protection from the 1st amendment.

https://www.law.ua.edu/pubs/lrarticles/Volume%2065/Issue%204...

Even outside the securities law context, there are laws against false advertising and against fraud. Such laws are permissible under the First Amendment because false statements of fact are mostly excluded from First Amendment protection [1]; in addition, marketing is considered “commercial speech”, which is given slightly less protection overall than “political, ideological, or artistic speech” [2].

In practice, what that means is that the FTC goes around suing companies for false or misleading advertising. Who knows if they’ll care about this issue: they only have so many resources, and/or they may not see this as crossing the line. Of note, though, the FTC does have an active lawsuit against AT&T regarding an unrelated issue: namely, “unlimited” plans being throttled after reaching a certain level of bandwidth usage.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_statements_of_fact

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_speech

Hey HN slow down let me chime in here, i used to work in the lying profession and i just need you to know that lying is not ok, and that lying is not the same thing as lying

Harry Frankfurt[1] would probably suggest bullshit--as opposed to simply lying--as a proper description.

[1] https://press.princeton.edu/titles/7929.html

Or as Neal Stephenson in his novel Anathem defined: Bulshytt

Speech (typically but not necessarily commercial or political) that employs euphemism, convenient vagueness, numbing repetition, and other such rhetorical subterfuges to create the impression that something has been said.

Isn't that just equivocation by another name?

Which is a synonym for lie.

I do agree that marketing =! lying, but I think the problem most people have is that "typical marketing" == lying.

What the hell does it mean for something to be “ok” and why should I care?

Are there many examples of marketing that are 100% truthful?

Do you actually doubt it? Do you think that, like, the Amazon page for a teapot is likely to contain many lies?

Yes! To pick a random example, I typed "teapot" into Amazon and clicked the first link: https://www.amazon.com/Hiware-Removable-Infuser-Stovetop-Blo...

> This teapot is purely hand crafted, made from heat resistant borosilicate glass, Specially designed with non dripping spout and perfect ergonomic handle for sturdy grip

Probably not.

If fake reviews count as “marketing” then absolutely I do.

Oh, come on. Typical engineering centric view of the world. People don't care or understand that HSPA was just a protocol extension to 3G and therefore didn't deserve to be called 4G. I don't even really care.

Marketing is just marketing. It's the company communicating with customers about their products and services and how they're running their business. If calling these technology improvements 5G helps AT&T invest more in their network, I'm all for that.

I get 200 mbps download speeds on my iPhone in San Francisco, near Fisherman's Wharf (insanely crowded tourist area). I don't know what the technology they're using to get it to work, but if they want to call it 6G or 7G I don't really care, as long as they continue to invest in it and improve it.

For those curious, on the marketing page for their 5G plan, AT&T says these changes to the LTE network are being calling "5Ge":

"How are we doing it? With enhancements like carrier aggregation to add more “lanes” to the highway that data travels on. 4x4 MIMO to double the number of antennas that can send data back and forth. And 256 QAM to make data transmission more efficient. All this adds up to faster speeds for you." https://www.att.com/5g/consumer

Typical marketing bullshit.

The definition of 5G is steered by a globally recognized technical authority, and when they issue press releases[1] which are in turn reissued by media agencies informing the general public of what to expect, AT&T doesn't do anyone other than themselves a favor by introducing "5Ge" marketing bullshit knowing very well that average Joe User will simply dismiss the deemphasized "e", and doesn't have the technical means of independent verification in any case.

The problem is AT&T wants to have their cake and eat it too: they're trying to normalize an ignorant public to 4G tech by obfuscating the market with a false perception that their networks are on the bleeding edge of standards integration. Through my eyes, the confusion such practices illicit are not unlike the damage caused by trademark infringement.

[1] https://www.itu.int/en/mediacentre/Pages/2017-PR04.aspx

ITU doesn't make the standards, why should they get to decide what's "4G" and "5G" etc.? "5Ge" is a label for a real thing in wireless technology--a parallel evolution of LTE that overlaps in technology and speed with 3GPP's 5G-NR standard. 3GPP (the folks that actually make the standards) are pushing a parallel evolution of LTE and 5G-NR into the "5G era." LTE will get technologies that will also show up in 5G-NR: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_Advanced_Pro.

Because they're the overarching publisher of a international telecom performance specification for which 3GPP's 5G NR is a prospective candidate. Your question strikes me as akin to justifying why organizations like ANSI, DIN, et al exist. That "5Ge" is a label for a real thing (however way you've chosen to define that) doesn't make it technically unencumbered. That we're quoting "5Ge" speaks for itself; I'd imagine an objective of ITU specifications would be to eliminate such marketing bullshit and public misdirection.

ITU’s “performance specifications” mean nothing. They’re aspirational targets. (ITU publishes a lot of real standards, but the value of saying how fast “4G” should be, while 3GPP develops the actual technology, is thin.) Imagine if ITU published standards for how fast different “generations” of CPUs have to be. Would anyone care? Would they lambast Intel for releasing “Ninth Generation Core” chips that are warmed over Skylale?

So meaningless and aspirationly uncommitted that 3GPP is actively pursuing ITU's blessing of their own standards? While we're at it, why don't we dismiss acquisition efforts across the globe since those guys don't develop the actual tech?

FDA doesn't make drugs, but they establish the baseline criteria for its safety that commercial manufacturers are beholden to. USDA doesn't raise cattle, but I can go to a grocery store and pay a premium for Porterhouse without questioning if I was overcharged for a T-bone. I'm sure you see the pattern.

That's fine if they exist in a world all by themselves.

But if that was true they wouldn't need to mislead anyone, because they'd be in charge of the names.

The problems come when you need to make a comparison between different networks.

"4G" means something. "5G" means something else. If you want to represent incremental improvement between the two, use a number between 4 and 5.

Especially when "4G" was already being stretched down to talk about lower performance than it should have been.

> "4G" means something. "5G" means something else.

Except it's not that simple. LTE and 5G-NR (New Radio) are continuing on parallel development tracks, with important features getting "backported" into LTE. You could build an LTE Advanced Pro network with all the fixings that would be faster than a barebones 5G-NR network. If you want to be technically precise, refer to whatever 3GPP release you mean. Once you're using "4G" and "5G" you're already in fuzzy marketing land.

It reminds me of the days of CDROM speeds: 2X, 3X, 4X, etc. At one point the number before the X was related to the device’s actual data throughput, until the marketers took over, and they changed what it meant, and then it just turned into a number arms race. I think I remember seeing something labeled 72X.

Most customers don’t know what a G is or why he wants 4 or 5 of them. They think a “bar” is a unit of signal strength measurement. Since there is no regulatory reason to be truthful, it’s inevitable that companies are going to start inflating the numbers.

The X was always the [maximum] speed you could read a drive, not a fake number. Drives went up to 56x by spinning the disc over twenty times faster than a CD player. (With the outer edge being 2.5 times faster than the inner edge.)

The 72x drive had especially interesting tech, using 7 beams so that it only had to spin 5-10 times faster. It also had a significantly better minimum speed of about 44x.

> but if they want to call it 6G or 7G I don't really care,

As someone who never buys phones from their carrier, I _do_ actually care. Accurate labeling of your standards is a requirement in this marketplace, I feel.

> AT&T says these changes to the LTE network are being calling "5Ge":

Which is, to me, intentionally dishonest. It's 4G+, if anything.

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