Comment by deathhand | Hacker News Reader

Comment by deathhand | Hacker News Reader

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It is interesting as he is quoted saying [1]

"“For instance, by selling the Thai baht short in January 1997, the Quantum Fund managed by my investment company sent a market signal that the baht may be overvalued. Had the authorities responded to the depletion of their reserves, the adjustment would have occurred sooner and been less painful. But the authorities allowed their reserves to run down; the break, when it came, was catastrophic.""

Vs. What Facebook said getting Rick Scott re-elected in 2011 [2]

"Facebook Ads provided us with unique targeting capabilities to look beyond broad demographics and specifically target messages in English and Spanish to specific groups of Cuban, Puerto Rican and other descent," he said, according to Facebook's page. "This allowed us to reach different sub-groups of Hispanic voters in ways that were simply not feasible on TV and radio."

How about we just agree that the human condition does not scale properly and will always lead to abuse?

[1]- https://www.businessinsider.com/how-george-soros-broke-the-b...

[2]https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-admitted-it-impacte...

> "This allowed us to reach different sub-groups of Hispanic voters in ways that were simply not feasible on TV and radio."

This ability to craft your narrative in a more granular fashion that's not observable to anyone outside the target demographic is possibly the most trouble part of internet advertising.

Basically, as long as you can keep your lies straight and your demographics don't communicate, you can tell everyone a different story. Like when that family member tells everyone a different lie to excuse a behavior because they know there isn't one universal story they'd all accept.

> This ability to craft your narrative in a more granular fashion that's not observable to anyone outside the target demographic

This is not in any way new. That private remarks would get broadcast all over the place because of cell phone recordings is a historical aberration, not the norm. People have been tailoring and modifying their communication based on the audience since the beginning of time. It's why gossip exists (as a countermeasure).

Gossip as a countermeasure is an interesting observation.

I still think the targeted advertising online is much more private and harder to observe as an outsider than anything we've ever faced though. The speed at which a message can be communicated also far outpaces anything else and any attempts to thwart it.

Wait. People used to complain that putting everyone in the same bucket was bad because of “homogenization” and targeting stereotypical aspects. Now targeted advertising is bad too?

The word you are looking for is manipulation. Step back and try to see what the point of the comment is.

That was considered a problem, now we find that the alternative also has a hidden problem. The common denominator is that a small group of people are using a systematic and omnipresent media assault to shift public thought at industrial scale. Advertising is a stain on society by its very nature.

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