Edit: this is actually a recent campaign, the story says 2023 but some other outlets said it executed this year in 2024.
After all, Google fought very hard and farted out a cashier's check to the US Gov to avoid a jury trial in one of their ad monopoly cases https://apnews.com/article/google-antitrust-ad-tech-virginia...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/health/juul-teens-vaping....
This seems like something that should need to be positively justified by the organization which wants to send salespeo^W representatives to schools, in a way that is publicly auditable.
We do however have studies showing that vaping can be implicated in lung cancer [2].
[1] https://www.moffitt.org/cancers/lung-cancer/faqs/lung-cancer... [2] https://www.news-medical.net/news/20240520/Study-reveals-inc...
Tar as I understand it does break down very slowly over time but many smoke at a greater rate than it can be broken down and smoke itself is a worse irritant than oil vapor.
Thought this was strange, as chewing tobacco is probably more addictive than cigarettes, and the gum's packaging was clearly set at child-height.
I don't think this is a tragic story.
I think this is a rather boring and formulaic plot we're seeing over and over: the story of late-stage capitalism and the application of value-extraction to human social structures resulting in comically terrible outcomes.
"Oops, sorry your brother cut his leg and you had to speed to the hospital, but you better get a second job if you wanna keep your car."
Fuck this shit. Fuck all of it. And fuck all the status quo warriors sitting on the sidelines bleating about "it's just the way it is" because the axe hasn't swung for them yet. You're safe now because the market has more vulnerable people to grind up first, but rest assured, as it churns through them, your time will come too.
Certainly, you need funding, look what happened to Reddit's quest to squeeze community for returns. HN runs lean (two servers in colo, a few mods) and small (less is more), so they can be more flexible in what they're optimizing for. I will argue there is something intangible that exists they are cultivating. More for another thread, but I would be cautious about saying "You cannot speak truth about capitalism failings because YC runs HN and YC is a VC fund." Simplicity is rare, and the evidence does not indicate this forum runs to maximize profit.
If the problem you're referring to is venture capital, I don't work at a VC firm and have no intention to.
If you have evidence that the people who run and moderate HN are doing so with a heavy bias toward projecting some sort of venture-capitalist narrative, please present that evidence. My interactions with dang, at least (reading his comments here, and a few email interactions) suggest quite the opposite.
There's a reason we have these rules, and the problem of better enforcement leading to more application of the rules isn't a late-stage-capitalism problem; it's a "rules require flexibility" problem (but it's not great if the nature of the flexibility is "you didn't get caught").
Firstly, surveilling every person in the world at all times to ensure safety is a gross misapplicaiton of tech that flies in the face of personal freedom and privacy.
Secondly, we're not even talking about authorities surveilling you to prevent safety situations (which would, by itself, already be plenty vile enough). We're talking your insurance company checking on you to make sure your roof doesn't have moss on it, and jacking your price/nuking your policy if they feel your behavior is too "risky," according to a model you (and probably they) don't fully understand how it works.
There's so much wrong with this and if you don't think so I doubt a comment here is going to change your mind. If you place ANY value at all on personal autonomy and privacy, I don't believe it's possible to, at the same time, say your insurance company by virtue of insuring your car, has the right to surveil that car at a time and via a method of their choosing, with no notification, and with no oversight, solely for the purpose of jacking up your price and/or rewriting your contract on the fly. These relationships already heavily, heavily bias in the favor of the corporation. Do they really need YET MORE unearned, unchecked authority in our lives?!
Not at all times, of course.
But if we built the technology to do it whenever someone is operating a multi-ton vehicle on a shared roadway (similar to how we require police to wear body-cams), I wouldn't actually be sad about it or feel unduly watched.
I do concur, however, that routing it through the insurance company is pretty sub-optimal; I'd much prefer a public authority that I could vote out if they screw up.
I look forward to police metadata monitors that identify speeding and dangerous driving.
He paused and responded "yes, but nobody will stand for getting tickets like that."
Fast-forward to the 2020s and I find there are actually plenty of people who would, in fact, stand for that.
Are you referring to the opt-in system of surveillance which insurance companies use to monitor driving (install our app/plug our device into your OBD port)?
Or are they, these days, buying data on your driving from stuff like traffic cams (wouldn't be surprising, sorry if I'm giving them the idea now)?
Not the person you're replying to, but yes, absolutely stuff like that. (I think GP was talking about drone surveillance and stuff like that, but sure, we can talk about this too.)
The problem is that people are being coerced into giving up their privacy and autonomy. In this particular case, the coercion is (as usual) money: you presumably get a discount for letting your insurance company spy on you. I expect, though, that ultimately the insurance companies use these things as justification to charge more on average. Let's face it: most people are not particularly good drivers. That's a problem, certainly, but not one that should or will be solved by a company with a profit motive. Some people will drive within whatever arbitrary, poorly-understood parameters that makes the insurance company's algorithms happy, but most probably will not, and will likely see their premiums go up, but not realize why.
And even if this did actually result in lower premiums on average (for the people who opt into this dystopia), it's still a problem, because the implication is that only rich people are allowed to have privacy.
We already live in a world where being wealthy can buy you more privacy. The question is only where we put the comfort slider on that fact, not whether it is a fact.
let’s be accurate with statements yes? i was offered one of these devices, refused it, and my rates did not increase. you’re claiming the rates people have been paying are lower than after they refuse the device. This is incorrect.
in reality so long as there still competition and the gov keeps their regulatory noses out of it, then competition alone will take care of it.
Besides, the devices are embedded into cars now so this is entirely a nonissue going forward. Everybody already has one and your driving data is being sent to insurance companies without you even knowing.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40969211
[2] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/712678/broken-code-...
(keep those book recommendations coming)
The resulting reputational damage and future risk to their monopoly revenue has got to make deals like this -EV for the company in the long run, but decision makers at these companies are paid more for short term profits and they know it.
"Craftsman" was originally a store brand used by Sears, under which it sold tools that Sears contracted various third parties to produce.
In 2017, Stanley Black & Decker purchased the "Craftsman" trademark from Sears (Sears Holdings at the time), giving Sears a long-term royalty-free license to continue producing and selling tools under that trademark (I think that license lasts for about another decade at this point? And then there'd be a small royalty payment for using the trademark beyond that point.)
As a result, several different stores now each carry tools all called "Craftsman", they're generally not the same tools; different stores sell different tools produced in different places, and all sell their own versions of the tools under the same "Craftsman" brand name.
This undoubtedly causes absurd levels of consumer confusion. As you say, it's absolutely causing tremendous reputational value for the trademark.
You mean the MBAs. Ban anything related to business administration degrees and fix the problem.
Are people still that interested in trying to join Twitter c. 2024? I'm desperate enough in terms of money to accept if I was just handed an offer, but I sure as hell am not doing anything more than 2 interviews before my interest nosedives.
Sounds like Elon, so it's on-brand.
This being hacker news, I can't help but appreciate the pure evil genius of this. It reminds me of some other cases cunning corporate ingenuity:
- Monsanto and their "terminator" seeds that prevents farmers from planting seeds they harvest, requiring them to purchase new seeds for every planting.[1]
- Volkswagen and how they programmed diesel engines to activate emissions controls only during laboratory emissions testing.[2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto#%22Terminator%22_seed...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal
Kind of misleading to just state it like this if your source points out that Monsanto never sold this, pledged 25 years ago they won’t do this, and according to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_tech... , they also didn’t invent it.
Then Monsanto comes along and wants to sell us a product that gives us better, more consistent yields, even better than our best harvests with the regular seeds. The catch, of course, is that we have to buy new seed from them every year, and can't propagate seed from the prior year's crop.
So my neighbor decides to start buying Monsanto's seeds, but I don't like the terms of the deal, so I don't. My neighbor sees amazing yields, even to the point of surplus. He decides to undercut me by lowering his prices because he has so much to sell, and can still make out better than before, with those lower prices. Nothing's changed for me, so I can't lower my prices. My neighbor's entire inventory sells out, but because of his surplus, only half of my yield gets sold. Fortunately I have some savings to fall back on, so I burn my entire savings feeding my family for the rest of the year, and then grudgingly buy Monsanto seeds for next year.
I'm sure this exact scenario doesn't scale up to the global agricultural system, but I think it's more likely than your naive "no one forces anyone to buy anything; if they buy it, it's because it's worth it" view of economics... things are rarely that simple.
Note that the issue isn't ignoring progress. Neither farmer has an issue with using more sophisticated seeds. The issue is with the deal that goes along with the seeds.
https://investigatemidwest.org/2020/12/04/buy-it-or-else-ins...
https://inthedirt.substack.com/p/when-the-neighbor-kills-you...
in reality though, i’d like to see this farmland so close to another that they can’t accurately spray or sow. there’s fences and access roads between fields, sometimes trees as well.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication
Coercion -> force -> violence
Forcing ads onto kids = violence?
Speaking clearly sometimes means saying things that are uncomfortable to hear.
Non-violent communication isn't at all about manipulation. It's about discussing behaviors and their impact on the person vs attacking and defending in circles that go nowhere.
It's just that in practice I've only seen it used by morons to shut down discussions they don't feel like having.
You can’t make people harmless, but you can force them to innovate different ways to harm others.
It's much darker.
The fact is that exactly the same people who are pushing the idea, are the ones who we would need protection from. And they're not innovating much, it's the same bs over and over and over again.
Perhaps a slightly reductive view, but I see “NVC” as basically saying that when people argue, emotions can sometimes overrule logic.
When people get emotional, they sometimes plug their ears and start screaming into the void.
NVC is then basically a bunch of tactics to circumvent the emotional aspect so that the discussion can get back to logical facts.
It also tries to create a framework where the people arguing have to hear the other side’s arguments before making a counter argument.
I think the book has some very useful ideas mixed in with some amount of self-promotion. I think the name “Nonviolent Communication” (which might throw some people off) is part of that self-promotion. Don’t let the name fool you.
We're already at the point where we're almost not supposed to have emotions anymore, turning more into robots every day.
Every single aspect of being human is emotional, every single decision you make is emotional, no matter how hard you work to justify it mentally.
The idea is nice in theory, if it wasn't for all the humans involved it might actually work.
A possible compromise that might work is to protect _good faith_ speech while working against bad faith speech.
"Why It's a Bad Idea to Tell Students Words Are Violence : A claim increasingly heard on campus will make them more anxious and more willing to justify physical harm." (2017)
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/07/why-it...
Until some substantial info of our brains occur, I can't say the ability to make people aware of products is worse than fraud.
Google and Facebook, in the early days, thought they could use copious amounts of data to tailor the ads to the user such that they would only be subjected to those which are likeable, but then the audience got skittish about having that much information collected on them. And so we now just get whatever random ad happens to be in the queue – which, indeed, is statistically unlikely to be in line with what you actually need, and therefore unlikable.
I'll grant you that understandings can be faulty. One may learn that there was no benefit. But that's outside of the ad itself. Invalidating your hypotheseses is an important part of the scientific method.
The advertisements create the misunderstanding. "Lucky Charms are part of a complete breakfast" etc. No normal person under normal circumstances would think that marshmallows or cookies are part of a healthy meal if you asked them directly to think about it.
Who is buying Lucky Charms because they find them disgusting, but somehow see them as being important? Let's be real: People only (continue to, at least – they may buy once just to try) buy Lucky Charms if they like consuming them.
Have... you met a teenager?
I'm failing to see the point of this example, as I don't think I've never met a single person who found their first cigarette enjoyable. Is your experience that people buy their first and second pack out of enjoyment of the taste?
I don't really see the point of the example either, frankly, but it is what we were given. I expect the contextual parent was just desperately trying to come up with something in the absence of having something meaningful to say.
No one in their right mind would ever give their kids Oreos for breakfast, but somehow advertisements make people feel comfortable giving them Oero O's. Any person of sound mind would say that giving that to your kids as a meal is neglect, but people do it, and it's "normal". This is the harm that marketing is capable of.
Cookies are, in fact, not a part of a complete breakfast. Evidently, you can convince people that they are by just repeating the message thousands of times to them. I don't see how the people who are involved in making those ads (or the products) can live with themselves. Convincing people to e.g. set their kids up for a life of obesity and early T2 diabetes from poor dietary habits is pure evil, and that's just one example of horrible (yet completely mundane for them) things marketers do.
Just imagine being a person who wakes up in the morning and thinks about how to best convince children to try ingesting poison[0]:
> Juul Labs, the vaping company that has long insisted it never marketed its products to teenagers, purchased ad space in its early days on numerous youth-focused websites, including those of Nickelodeon, the Cartoon Network, Seventeen magazine and educational sites for middle school and high school students, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday by the Massachusetts attorney general.
Everyone involved in something like that should be put in prison.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/12/health/juul-vaping-lawsui...
Assuming you are going to feed your children Oreos at some point, why not for breakfast?
> Cookies are, in fact, not a part of a complete breakfast.
They could be. If you are going to eat them anyway, why not at breakfast?
> Evidently, you can convince people that they are by just repeating the message thousands of times to them.
Evidently not. Remember, a "complete breakfast" refers to a specific culinary dish that consists of items like bacon, sausages, eggs, baked beans, tomatoes, mushrooms, etc.
Who eats a bowl of cookies in addition to all that? I've certainly never met such a person. I've known people who eat bowls of cookies for breakfast, indeed, but when they do that's approximately the only thing they eat, which violates what is told in the advertisement. The advertisement you point to is abundantly clear that these cookies are only to be eaten with all those other foods.
Evidently people don't pay attention to what is said and will go off and do their own thing.
It's almost like that was the intention. It's weird how the ad doesn't prominently show the eggs, beans, etc. and talk about how great they are, and instead focuses on how you can totally eat cookies for breakfast!
Here's an example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnvHUXssIAo
"Not Candy! Resees Puffs cereal!"
It is candy. Like 1/3 of the mass is added sugar, and the other 2/3 is more carbs. And what's the complete breakfast that goes with it? Two slices of white-bread toast, a glass of milk, and a glass of juice. Even the "complete" breakfast is garbage. The bowl almost certainly has more than the 1 cup serving as well.
The purpose of this commercial is not to inform you about how to use their product as part of a healthy diet (because it isn't a part of a healthy diet). It is to turn your brain off and get you to buy something that you intuitively know is not appropriate. People received the intended message.
Even if they did show their product as a small side (rather than a centerpiece) of an otherwise healthy breakfast, it's still ridiculous to suggest that you should be giving your kids candy with any regularity.
My oldest kid is 3, and I don't think she has had an Oreo. Will she before she's 18? Probably. Has she had some other treats? Sure. But it's not at all a regular thing. It's certainly not part of a daily diet.
Assuming we watched the same video, the purpose is to inform the offer of a solution to a problem: The problem of parents needing to rush off to work and the kids off to school, without time to prepare a proper healthy breakfast, with the kids crying "I'm hungry" yet turning their nose up at anything that might be even reasonably healthy.
Hell ya I've given my children candy for breakfast on occasion. We seem to both accept that the occasional treat is not the end of the world. Why not at breakfast? I certainly wouldn't want to make it a habit, but I can also say that from a point of relative privilege in time and resources to cater to other choices. While I think we can agree it is not ideal to turn it into a habit, I can empathize with the parent who is trying to cope with a hard situation by resorting to something that solves the immediate problem.
> ...as part of a healthy diet
While this ends up being true, does this caveat not imply that health is the only problem people face? Clearly that is not true.
> It is to turn your brain off and get you to buy something that you intuitively know is not appropriate.
Like you imply, I expect most parents have a pang of guilt when buying breakfast candy for their children, but I expect they also don't know what is a better alternative that fits within their life constraints. If you could market to them something that is at least as equally palatable to the picky child, at least as easy to prepare, and actually healthy, I bet you could destroy the cereal market overnight. But without consumers becoming aware of that better solution...
We don't eat candy for breakfast because candy is not food. Thus the issue of fighting to enforce good habits never arises. Without advertisements undermining us, the idea simply does not exist. If it ever occurred to her, it's easy to say "no, candy is not food" and we don't have a TV telling her otherwise.
Yeah, so did my kids at that age. In fact, if given the choice, they would choose the healthy food over the candy. Get back to us in a few years.
On that note, there is nothing to me that suggests the ad in question is even trying to convince you that your unruly 3 year old that you are rushing to get off to school is a problem. It clearly portrays older children. You appear to be the exact embodiment of the idea that ads are not likeable when they are not applicable.
What does seem applicable to your preferences is healthy food. Would you be this miffed if you were shown an ad in a similar vein about a new food product that tastes great and has proven to be healthy? Or would you be glad to learn about it?
> She doesn't know things like cereal exist.
Without some kind of advertising, she also wouldn't know anything exists – even healthy food. Seems you're trying to go down the same road as the parallel thread of "advertising is only bad if the product is bad".
Which is hard to deny on some kind of superficial level, sure, but seems to conflate a number of ideas that I'm not sure should be conflated.
I don't see why you wouldn't tie those ideas. Sure, ads that remind you to do some push-ups and tell kids how cool it is to be strong would be great, but they don't exist. Talking about decent adverts might as well be talking about how "true" communism hasn't been tried. In the real world, the product generally is somewhere between unnecessary and outright bad. It's obtuse to ignore that.
One of us is talking about hypothetical ads for fantasy products. The other is talking about actual ads.
> Without some kind of advertising, she also wouldn't know anything exists – even healthy food.
Our family didn't see, hear, or read an advertising until myself and siblings were well into our teens .. we were all too far out from cities to get TV, the national broadcasting radio didn't carry ads, etc.
We all knew what healthy food was, the food we grew, raise, and caught. The bulk goods that were ordered.
> Sure, ads that remind you to do some push-ups would be great, but they don't exist.
Sure they do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNjEge3Awl8 the first "ad" campaign series I saw. As a teenager.
Life without advertising is possible, even today - I principally use the internet and haven't seen an add their for decades thanks to sponser blocks and ad blocking.
Wait. Ordered as in you shouted out into the wilderness: "Oh great vast expanse, give me rice!"
Or ordered as in, like, you contacted a business that supplies bulk goods and requested that they fulfill an order? I'm assuming this one, but how did you magically find out about this business without some kind of advertising letting its existence be known?
Hell, even if we believe the former, how did you come to learn that rice (or whatever good it is that you ordered) exists? You (or your parents, or their parents, whatever) were somehow magically born with that knowledge?
Advertising does not necessarily imply paid, but let's go down that road. How do you, and therefore your child, know how to obtain the food that your children eat?
In my case, I go to the grocery store. But I only know that there that grocery store to go to because they spend quite a lot of money to let it be known that they exist. And when in the grocery story, they spent quite a lot on marketing to let it be known what I can buy, healthy or otherwise.
It is advertising all the way down.
> Talking about decent adverts might as well be talking about how "true" communism hasn't been tried.
Well, of course it hasn't been tried. Communism is a work that imagines what life could be like if we achieve post-scarcity. Star-Trek is another adaptation of the same idea. Outside of science fiction, trying either at this juncture is fundamentally impossible. We have not yet succeeded in fulfilling the necessary preconditions that would allow trying.
Yes, indeed, there is hopeful progress towards that goal. We have, according to the UN, achieved post-scarcity in the area of food. It is quite possible that we will get all the way there some day. But not yet. Its time has not yet come.
So what purpose would a "Star-Trek hasn't been tried!" ad actually serve? Just to state the obvious? Perhaps you see it as some kind of gorilla marketing tactic to convince people to watch Star-Trek, or to what you really said, read about the imagined world of communism, because you find it to be entertaining and think others will too?
> One of us is talking about hypothetical ads for fantasy products. The other is talking about actual ads.
And then there is what the rest of us are talking about. What is not clear is who the second player is. Do you have a split personality, by chance?
You know, there is this thing called a “map” that you can use to find places without having them advertize themselves to you. And of course grocery stores show you the food they sell, how else would they sell it?
A blank map will reveal business destinations? Methinks you've not thought this through.
> And of course grocery stores show you the food they sell, how else would they sell it?
It is not unheard of to see counter service, with the food hidden away in the back. Presenting the food can be deferred until after the sale is made. Ordering online for pickup (or perhaps delivery, although that is less common around here) has also become quite popular, which definitely means you aren't seeing the food beforehand. Most grocery stores try to go for the wholesale experience nowadays because it is a great way to advertise the products, sure, but it is not a strict requirement. Methinks you've not thought this through.
> Without some kind of advertising, she also wouldn't know anything exists – even healthy food.
Do you actually believe that before the 1900s and the invention of advertising, nobody knew about food?
I don't see how you can make such a big claim without resorting to "well, daddy telling you to eat cucumber is a form of advertising".
Is there something we are supposed to convince you of?
> Do you actually believe that before the 1900s and the invention of advertising, nobody knew about food?
1900s? Even what is considered "modern" advertising dates back to the 17th century – i.e. the 1600s.
> I don't see how you can make such a big claim without resorting to "well, daddy telling you to eat cucumber is a form of advertising".
Okay, but unless "daddy" hales from Mesopotamia, then he didn't really stumble upon one in nature by happenstance. The rest of world only came to learn of the existence of cucumbers through advertising.
Just a definition would be nice. Thanks.
If you want a definition, pick a definition – come up with something on the spot, even. It makes no difference to me.
it's grains either way, even if some grains have sugar on them (we have a lot of stuff with too much sugar/salt for taste or preservative purposes. Fresh food every day is sadly a luxury). This seems overly dramatic to the point of dismissing your whole point. Giving "bad breakfast cereal" is neglect? Really?
You're free to only give your kid soylent 3 times a day if you want to minmax health, but you seem to be missing a core point that humans also desire pleasurable senses.
On the contrary, it's the hyper targetting of ads, nested in content algorithmically maximixed for engagement, that I object to.
I've worked in the ad industry, so I've certainly heard and appreciate the whole "we're just educating consumers about products they might be interested in" angle. That's fine, academically speaking, if that's all advertising was. However, advertising more often than not attempts to pray on people's emotions to generate demand for a product. And when we know exactly who someone is, it's SO much easier to do that.
As a perfect example, I woke up last Saturday, started scrolling IG, and saw an ad with a photo of a miserable looking middle aged man lying in bed, asking "Are you tired of feeling like a horrible father because of your drinking problems? Try Reframe!" (No idea what the exact phrasing was, but close enough to that.)
Yes, I'd in fact had drinks with friends the night before. And yes, I'm a middle aged dad. I thought the targetting was pretty hilarious, so I laughed and shared it with my wife and friends. But also, Reframe is praying on my feelings of guilt and shame in an attempt to sell me their shitty app.
I can laugh it off, but I'm not so sure your typical teenager could.
You're not going to feel guilt or shame unless you already are under the understanding that you're not, in this case, being then parent you wish to become. Anyone who takes an interest in this ad will do so only because they actually want to make their life better by becoming a better parent and drinking less, and are seeking solutions to see that through.
It seems the only problem here is that the app is shitty.
However, I think you may be missing the point that the advertisement is specifically meant to elicit, or create, those feelings of guilt or shame. Maybe I feel just fine about the amount I drink, but the wording of the ads subtely implied I should feel guilty about my drinking. If the question was "Do you feel like you could use help with your drinking? Then try Reframe.", then I'd agree with your point more.
But maybe a bad example, because in that case perhaps the end result of the targetted ad could in fact be a better outcome for everyone, as you point out. To pick a bit of a hyperbolic example, what if instead the ad had instead said "Tired of being the the ugliest girl in your class? Try BetterMakeup!" (with all the appropriate imagery the targetting provides). Is advertisement like that truly good for anyone but the seller?
As a bit of a side note, everyone knows ads are targetted now, so there's an implicit assumption on the viewers part that the seller must know something about them. And now advertisers are using that to their advantage.
I think the larger point though is that many of us simply do not think its ethical or healthy to give companies the tools to manipulate our emotions and tap into our insecurities in the pursuit of profit. The seller doesn't care about the buyer, they only care about convincing the buyer to buy their product, even if that means making them feel shitty about themselves.
I'm not sure that was missed, but, as before, you cannot elicit or create feelings where there isn't already an understanding of what the feelings reflect. The particular ad no doubt does elicit feelings in those who already see themselves as not being the parent they want to be. It's not going to elicit any particular feelings in someone who is childless, though. They lack the necessary understanding.
And if you do have concern about the way you are parenting, wouldn't you want to improve upon that?
> what if instead the ad had instead said "Tired of being the the ugliest girl in your class? Try BetterMakeup!" (with all the appropriate imagery the targetting provides). Is advertisement like that truly good for anyone but the seller?
Sure, it is also good for the person who has an understanding that they are ugly and no longer want to be, again, assuming the product works. We do again have the potential problem of where the product might not work as expected. Indeed, that can be a problem, but I'm not sure that's a problem with advertising in and of itself. We should be careful to not conflate different ideas.
On the assumption that "BetterMakeup" actually makes a person more beautiful, someone wants to become more beautiful, and the ad gave awareness to the person that there is a solution to their apparent problem, is that not a win for the consumer?
> I think the larger point though is that many of us simply do not think its ethical or healthy to give companies the tools to manipulate our emotions and tap into our insecurities in the pursuit of profit.
If all products magically solved the problems they purport to solve, would you still have the same concern? As before, trying to convince a childless person that they are a bad parent isn't going to work. This only works when you are presenting a solution to someone who already understands that they have a problem.
If the product is shitty, thereby not solving the problem, then I can definitely understand your overall concern. Although I am not sure you have made clear why advertising is to blame for shitty products. If we are imagining ways to change the world, why place product evaluation in the advertising band at all? Perhaps these shitty products don't need to be allowed on the market in the first place?
> Let's assume, for the sake of discussion, that this Reframe is some miracle app that will truly do what you think it claims to.
Reading this discussion, I remain unconvinced. Unless I lost the plot somewhere along the way (admittedly, that's a possibility), it sounds like the context is that of someone advertising a product in a probably dishonest way and it's justified because people want the thing that's being advertised, even though it's not necessarily the thing that's being sold.
> Although I am not sure you have made clear why advertising is to blame for shitty products.
Put another way: what if the product in question was literally snake oil? Is that still justifiable as marketing because they're making a promise about it which someone wants to hear? Maybe it's more than just a shitty product.
Was there something we were supposed to convince you of?
> what if the product in question was literally snake oil? Is that still justifiable as marketing because they're making a promise about it which someone wants to hear?
The discussion is about advertising preying on insecurities, not marketing in general. If we assume snake oil were to be advertised, is there some reason to prefer: "Snake Oil: The miracle cure-all!" over "Your bad breath is scaring off the girl of your dreams. Cure it with Snake Oil!"?
If yes, why is the latter less preferable? Is it because it calls attention to a real problem someone might want to solve? Does that continue to hold if we assume snake oil truly is a miracle cure-all that eliminates bad breath?
(I appreciate your questions. I had to think about that one.)
Yes, but that is true in both cases. A miracle cure-all, if there were such a thing, would, indeed, solve your halitosis and girl troubles.
If I am to infer something here, it is that you didn't realize what a "cure-all" can do. It took more precise language to get you thinking about specific problems and how to solve them.
So, let's assume for a minute that snake oil is well and truly a magical cure-all. It seems that by the first ad you wouldn't recognize that fact and would end up not being able to benefit from is miracle properties. Perhaps the second ad would actually be preferable?
I think I can see where you're coming from with this but it's still not how I read it. The second advertisement is telling me that the product will cure my bad breath and therefore my girl problems but my girl problems are not necessarily related to my bad breath. It's the same as the drinking father example; a person's parenting can be good or bad irrespective of their drinking habits. (Maybe it fixes my girl problems independently from curing my bad breath but the advertisement seems to be telling me that it will solve my girl problems by means of curing my bad breath. Same as the given drinking father real-world example.)
Can you think of a non-cure-all example for which this argument holds?
Right. Which also demonstrates why the latter type of ad tends to be much more effective, even though both technically say the same thing.
So, it seems to me that we have two different discussions trying to compete here:
- The acceptability of false advertising.
- The acceptability of advertising that attempts to evoke emotions.
While you are not wrong in noticing that these examples also exhibit false advertising, that is staring to move away from the original discussion, which was about preying on insecurities.
> Can you think of a non-cure-all example for which this argument holds?
How about we turn to the ad that shows up on just about every HN page? It will be well-familiar to everyone here. Here are two variants on one of those ads (with a little paraphrasing on my part):
- "Rust: It will protect your memory!"
- "Still programming in C like it is 1972? The hackers are going to get you. Secure your programs with Rust!"
My understanding from earlier in the thread is that only the first example should be allowed according to the beliefs of those who participated. But, I must say, I'm far more compelled by the latter. It addresses problems I understand deep down when programming in C and then offers a solution. The "It will protect your memory" doesn't tell me much. Why do I need my memory protected? Next.
Assuming only the latter ad catches my attention, which I think is a decent assumption based on what we've seen in this very thread and around ad response behaviour in general, is it possible that the consumer actually benefits from the latter?
The consumer may still ultimately benefit from this advertisement which evokes emotions in such a personal way, especially if we assume the efficacy of the product to be as advertised. The advertisement might also cause a mentally unhealthy individual to become worse as such. The negativity of the emotions might push someone into a worse spot or into learning self-harming or abusive behaviors.
As much as advertisers A/B test their advertisements, I don’t get the feeling they measure the effect they have on national suicide rates. Do you think they’d publish those numbers if they had them?
Admittedly, I dragged this away from OP’s point a bit but I think I brought it back. One person might laugh it off while another abuses their family. It’s really hard to say that the advertisement is not evil, even if it can be demonstrated to be a net good for some.
That there is a division between personal emotions and professional emotions is a new idea to me. What is the difference?
> It’s really hard to say that the advertisement is not evil, even if it can be demonstrated to be a net good for some.
If we assume that advertisements can be evil, how are we certain the type that doesn't go after insecurities aren't the evil ones? Like you say, there doesn't seem to be much data published to back up which and which ads aren't evil.
The emotions are all personal but some topics evoke emotions of lesser or greater intensity than others; the topic of one’s parenting will likely be more emotionally intense than the topic of their tech stack at work. Most people in relevant situations will be far more invested in the former than the latter.
> If we assume that advertisements can be evil, how are we certain the type that doesn't go after insecurities aren't the evil ones? Like you say, there doesn't seem to be much data published to back up which and which ads aren't evil.
It’s a personal belief that this behavior is evil; indeed, that seems a necessary component of calling anything evil. I also wouldn’t distinguish between advertisements which play on emotions and those which don’t -- they all play on emotions. The important distinction for me is in the specific topic being exploited. (There was also the distraction I brought up of false advertising but I think that’s more uncontroversially “evil”.)
Where does "Are you tired of feeling like a horrible father because you are spending more time tracking down error cases you forgot to handle than with your children? Try Rust!" fall?
> I also wouldn’t distinguish between advertisements which play on emotions and those which don’t -- they all play on emotions.
You kind of have to distinguish between them in order to meaningfully participate in this discussion. That there is no difference follows my point made initially, so I can certainly appreciate your position in a vacuum, but we moved long past that to explore the idea that there is a difference. If you cannot speak to a difference then there is only nonsense.
Perhaps I misunderstand?
I think that's where the algorithm matters more than the ad. e.g. if it was some random traveling saelesman going door to door and they researched this neighborhood having 30 year old dads, it wouldn't feel that bad to happen upon a convinient solution.
When you know some company sold your data (with dubious consent) to a bidder who can then pay another company who has your data to say "yeah, give this ad to 30 year old dads", then start starts to feel overly invasive. Not because the product is bad per se, but because two different conglomerations exploited your data.
and for the absurd, "optimal" solution: if this company had government surveillance about your private life up to your recent daily activity, and used that to directly text your spouse or older kid about how your spouse/dad needs this to get over his drinking problem, that'd go way over the line.
I don't, honestly. If I've decided I want something, I'll seek it out. If I've identified an area where I feel like my life is lacking, I might look for a product to help fix that. If I don't even know about something that I might want, I'm fine not having it.
The problem is that I don't really trust anyone else to determine what kind of ad passes the test of "will improve people's lives". There's really no objective way to approve or reject an ad based on this kind of criterion.
I'd rather we just ban all forms of advertising.
> Google and Facebook, in the early days, thought they could use copious amounts of data to tailor the ads to the user such that they would only be subjected to those which are likeable
No, they wanted to give people ads they thought would be effective. Google's plan was to make ads unobtrusive, mostly text-only, and thought that they would be likeable enough to be effective. But that's the key: they didn't do this because they were being nice and wanted to make the web a better place. They did it because they thought the ads would actually work better.
you dont know what you don't know. I wouldn't have even been aware of tech if I didn't randomly bumble into a robotics club in high school. Would I have been fine likely making much less in a field I'm less paasoinate about? Maybe, but that seems to be a big sacrifice just so your life is "ad-free" (an odd ideal, if possible at all).
if you hadn’t joined the robotics club, chances are very high you would tripped over robotics on your way off of the stage when graduating. it’s that prevalent these days. if not then you would’ve seen one of the many youtube videos convincing you to join some company. had you seen an ad for robot building school, most would consider it a scam and move on.
Solve multiple problems at once :)
Ads really are a negative externality, and they should really be treated as such.
a less complex solution, let companies like apple do what they do and allow ad blockers and develop an AI feature for removing them.
people still seeing ads these days are doing so by choice.
Hey, you might not know, but there exists this place called "the outside", where there are no adblockers, no AI, but A LOT of ads.
Severly limiting ads would solve that too. Adblocks wouldn't.
But i do agree that most ads are annoying.
“I make a better widget at a lower price than BigCorp” — yet nobody will ever find out about it because advertising that fact would be illegal. Journalists would become supremely powerful and (more) supremely corrupt. Just like radio DJs in the 20th century determined what music sold (and were often bribed accordingly,) the same thing will happen for literally everything. Journalism would become even more like advertising but people wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. I don’t want the equivalent of radio DJs determining what products and services win.
Many professional sports would disappear, Motorsports, soccer, many olympic sports would cease to exist at the highest level. The Olympics themselves would no longer be broadcast (who would pay for it?) Kid’s little league teams would lose local business sponsors. Everything would be pay-per-view assuming the economics worked at all. Newspapers would all shut down. TV stations would disappear. Radio would be limited to small amateur stations — if that because the moment the host mentions a product, service, song, they’d be sued (wrongly or rightly) for potentially advertising. New restaurants would never survive (how will anyone know you exist: Signage and logos are all advertising.)
Basically it would be North Korea with people shopping for inferior state-produced goods at inferior state run supermarkets reading state-approved messages about the greatness of the Dear Leader and his progeny.
Even word of mouth referrals would be subject to lawsuits “can you prove you didn’t get a free cookie in exchange for saying something to your friends about this bakery?”
An absolutely dystopian nightmare.
And if there were an advertising ban, you can bet politicians would exempt themselves from such a ban.
For example, in Washington State there isn't a blanket prohibition on signs advertising to people on the highway, but anything advertised must be available for purchase on the property. So far, that's been enough to curb companies from lining the highways with walls of giant billboards.
So--just spitballing here--imagine if people had a legal right to use and sell software that blocks ads or objectionable material from their view or on devices they own, and how that could lead to ad-ecosystem changes.
So much stupid nonsense just to not make the world a better place and I don't understand it. You don't need to be creative.
Speaking of which, at this point it's only a matter of time before some big name attempts to put a satellite in orbit that is also a billboard, so you can ALWAYS see their advertising in the nights sky, because it is not currently being used for advertising so, you know, they want to fix that. If we don't ban it now, we WILL have our night sky blocked out by advertising at some point. Companies already use big drone displays to do this.
And I guarantee you people will insist "It's not a big deal, we need advertising, we don't need to block all of it"
I feel this "just do X" formula is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting. Will you force most gas stations dismantle their price-signs? Will "garage sale here" signs become illegal? What zones are or aren't covered?
Vehemence is unfortunately not a substitute for planning or clear rules.
Why are you so insistent on this? We figured it out decades ago! Don't make up BS reasons to avoid reality, just go read the existing rules.
https://legislature.maine.gov/statutes/23/title23sec1908.htm... Click the buttons at the top of the page to navigate this section of law.
Maine has had this all on the internet since the 90s. It's a solved problem.
Of course, this would break capitalism. We live in a society where the foundation of the economy requires that people keep buying things, even things they don't really need and don't really want.
I happen to think breaking capitalism a bit could be a good thing, but it would likely also cause a period of economic instability that would crush people who are marginal financially.
I think this is also true if adults, but I think kids are particularly susceptible to unhealthy habits / addictions around mass media systems.
Where it breaks down, is when you get a whole ecosystem populated entirely by kids and those trying to make money off of them.
It is NOT SOCIALIZATION to talk to people on the internet. Your brain simply does not treat it the same way.
Kids are fine interacting in person at school and other public places. They don't need this social media bullshit, and even private messaging systems like AIM or MSN aren't really that great.
However, social media ever since feeds and the "like" button are an entirely different beast which is addicting, dehumanizing, and antisocial - preventing kids from developing socially.
Consuming an infinite amount of media is positively wholesome by comparison.
As for work, I have had a hard time leaving jobs, because to me that also means leaving the people I work with. I guess my office life is similar to my high school life in the sense that I actually like(d) the people around me.
And a person of any age can drive a car on private property.
This might be an unpopular take, but I remember being that age and having to jump through so many hoops to access the sites I wanted to access, and I swore to myself I would defend children's right to exist online. I'm 35 now. My opinion hasn't changed.
The regulations ask websites not to target advertising to children. Websites don't like that because advertising is their main means of profiting or breaking even, so they try to pull their site offline for minors, and limit their ability to communicate with others. COPPA doesn't require that you limit the ability for minors to communicate with others, but websites err on the side of caution because of the very real threat of pedophiles.
Children age 12-ish are bored out of their minds, and a lot of them are really smart and would contribute to the internet in a positive way. See the story of Aaron Swartz. He contributed so much to open software before he was even 16.
Children cannot make good decisions (generally) and they often have poor impulse control. Building the habit of spending money on random sparkly shit they don't need ensure that, as adults, they will be good consumers. And by that I mean materialistic and poorer than they have to be.
It's no surprise that these ads play into the most intrinsic human emotions for manipulation. They target social status, perception of self, pleasure. I see it as no different than sparkling lights on a slot machine. A way to manipulate the mind and build a money-burning addiction.