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Comment by localplume | Hacker News Reader

You touched on a disturbing point. People like to imagine that some govt will wield to indoctrinate the populace, but it is more likely this kind of tool would be used for marketing or advertisement. look at how many people gladly work for FANG/whatever companies and develop tools just to supercharge advertisement but see no moral issues with it. as long as they're making money, and a lot of money, who cares right?

I mean advertisements already are basically brainwashing right? quirky jingles or catch phrases associated with some food or product, that stick in your head.

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> You touched on a disturbing point. People like to imagine that some govt will wield to indoctrinate the populace, but it is more likely this kind of tool would be used for marketing or advertisement.

Many people imagine companies indoctrinating the population but we are brushed off with "the first amendment only applies to the government" and nonsense about how companies and platforms don't have to uphold free speech because they're not the government, they don't owe you anything, and if you don't like it find another company to do business with.

It's definitely disturbing how people will give corporations leeway to inflict harm upon society because they're not the government.

My point with this comment is that companies already use censorship to create a false narrative of the public opinion so it shouldn't surprise us that they'll use AI on top of that to achieve the same goals. They won't even have to censor people if they can create an infinite on-demand stream of content that supports the narrative they want to push.

If you google Paris and you get an ad for a hotel, that isn't brainwashing. It's fun to be radical but let's stay grounded here.

Come on, we all know that marketing goes further than that. Very simple example to disprove your thought-ending comment:

I am a hypothetical gun shop owner and want to increase sales, so I put up ads that talk about the need to defend against high crime rates onto any search that might be related to the local area, anything about security, anything for new renters and owners. Without telling people that the area has a high crime rate, people will start to believe that it does, and that they need to protect themselves.

Ah, but if you Google Paris in the first place, that is an outcome of marketing - which is for all intents and purposes brainwashing. Bernays, who invented modern advertising, said as much himself in “Propaganda”.

So: Why google Paris? Why even Paris as an example? Hell - why Paris, period?

Examine your answer carefully, and you’ll see the non-sequiturs in our reality that we usually happily ignore.

Instead of answering your question, I will answer a related question. "Did you pick Paris as an example because of FAANG advertisements?", as FAANG ads was the original topic here. And the answer to that is no.

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