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Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

Surprised that causing physical or psychological harm (in any way) wasn't already prohibited.

Isn't this just language to make the law more explicit?

Directly causing harm is always illegal, but you can't outlaw all indirect ways to cause harm since it is unclear if it is the suffers fault or not. In this case this law argues that people shouldn't be expected to learn to cope with these practices and instead tech companies should stop doing these things.

Then can't we extend this to all forms of psychological manipulation? Like coercing people into buying stuff they don't need?

Try defining that, because you can't. If I go into the store and buy something I didn't go in there for, was I manipulated by seeing it on the shelf? Are promo videos on an online game store "psychological manipulation" because they can make you buy a game you didn't need?

A/B testing to the rescue!

    A (control): rate of purchases of the item WITHOUT the ad present.
    B (experiment): rate of purchases of the item WITH the ad present.

If A and B differ significantly then by definition the ad manipulates purchasers. And we all know companies track exactly these metrics, ripe for subpoena.

(Separate question is whether this practice is bad for consumers; I'd argue "not all ads are bad" and "no ads is never bad" so to minimize harm, we should adopt "ads are bad until proven otherwise.")

Yes, that works with ads, but the person I replied to was referencing any form of manipulation. Because what counts as manipulation? I referenced two examples of things that average consumers do, but generally wouldn't say they've been "manipulated" to do so.

And that's before you even get into the question of "what is an ad?" and "are all ads bad?" (which you mention) Because promo videos for things such as video games are common, but I wouldn't call them ads (per se). Are music singles ads for the whole album? Historically, music videos were called "promo videos" because their intent was: "we air this on MTV or the FM radio so that people will buy the album." Am I being advertised to there? Maybe? But what if I end up finding a new band I like?

You can't define this cleanly.

Manipulation requires intent and action:

    "I believe they won't do B unless I do A, so I do A."

"I believe they won't do B unless I do A" on its own is harmless—there's no action.

"I do A" on its own is unintentional. Does anyone really act without intent?

Legal systems have (imperfect) ways to ascertain intent (AKA premeditation), causality, and harm, so they can deal with the concept of manipulation.

This would outlaw advertising that is effective then, since the entire goal of an advertisement is to maximize the difference between A and B. So to do any advertising you'd have to prove it wasn't very effective? Sounds similar to types of proposed gun regulation: "your guns can kill people, just not too many too fast too effectively"

Not that that means it's necessarily a bad approach, just never heard of marketing being limited by its effectiveness. Similar to having to put those gross pictures on cigarette packages now.

Not quite: effective (AKA manipulative) advertisement would be fine if you can show the behavior the advertisement causes isn't detrimental. Advertising a new treatment for some disease is a net positive; advertising cigarettes is not.

I'm really just suggesting we flip the burden of proof from harmed consumers to advertising companies.

Nice approach. To extend on this, I wish we could scientifically determine how much overconsumption is caused by advertising, and hence how much unnecessary damage to the planet.

“All” is probably too broad as it would include changing anyone’s mind ever for any reason, but I hope that particularly vulnerable people and known particularly potent forms of distortive manipulation would be.

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