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Comment by idle_zealot | Hacker News Reader

Would it matter if the bets were real and they picked the 0.00001% big winners to feature in the ad? Would that be less fraudulent in any meaningful sense, would it have a different impact on the world?

Is the real crime here that they were too lazy to lie with selective facts?

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In the US, the FTC is very clear that faking or purchasing testimonials is illegal. Fabricating, purchasing, or misrepresenting customer experience is deceptive advertising and is a form of fraud. On the other hand, selecting and advertising specific real testimonials is fine. A customer described their actual experience that way, and presumably the consumers understand that advertisers will select especially positive individual testimonials for their advertisements. I can't believe I'm actually trying to explain this, but fake testimonials are illegal because the consumer has no way to know that they are made up. Real testimonials are not "lying with statistics", they're not statistics at all, and are legal because consumers can understand that it's not the median customer experience.

If picking real winners and real winnings to feature in the ad was just as good, they could do that. If not, then yes, it makes an impact on the world to mislead people with that marketing.

Somehow there's a difference between things that happened and didn't happen, and that's a good place to draw a line in the sand of what you're allowed to advertise and not.

> Fabricating, purchasing, or misrepresenting customer experience is deceptive advertising and is a form of fraud.

Doesn’t this make every ad fraud? It’s an actor pretending to enjoy drinking Coca Cola, every ad is the same.

How do you know the actor is merely pretending ? Maybe they actually it?

Not GP, but here is how I know. Messi and Steve Carell did an ad for local chips brand, (market size < 10 million people). There is no way that brand could afford them. Searched online and found the same ad for Lay's. Turns out Pepsi owns a lot of local snack brands. They'll buy local brand and if it's popular they will keep the brand (instead of replacing it with global brand like Lay's). Ad is recorded for all brands at once, they just replace bag of Lay's with bag of whatever is the local chips they own.

The actual verbiage is narrower.

First result with a summary of 16 CFR Part 465: Trade Regulation Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials: https://www.goodwinlaw.com/en/insights/publications/2024/09/...

Believe it or not, the laws don't say verbatim "Fabricating, purchasing, or misrepresenting customer experience is deceptive advertising...". I can't really believe that this is a real question and that I'm trying to explain this, either. The actual laws are more specific, and combined with how the courts interpret them, cover a lot of different situations and try to do so in a reasonable way.

If you actually want to understand why "an actor pretending to enjoy drinking Coca Cola" is okay while other kinds of endorsements are not, in the US at least, you could start with the FTC "Truth in Advertising" website, and "Advertising Endorsements" specifically, or other resources on that page.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/topics/truth-advertising

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/topics/truth-advertising/adv...

Laws are for poor people.

> Would that be less fraudulent…

Is this even a question? Yes, it would be less fraudulent.

I question your definitions. In what sense is it legally or morally useful to discriminate between lying with statistics and lying without them? It's an academically useful distinction, but why does it matter in practice? People are misled, the misleading is intentional, but if you hire a statistician to do it for you instead of an actor then you're A-Okay?

"Someone won" is truthful.

"Celebrity X won" was not.

I am not a fan of gambling, nor gambling advertisements, but this was outright fraud, and a violation of FTC rules (https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/ftcs-endorse...) on disclosure.

It's useful because honesty and dishonesty are strongly self-correlated. Someone who works hard to ensure their advertising is technically true will likely work hard towards technically satisfying other goals and rules we set for them; someone who's comfortable outright lying in their ads will likely also lie about other things.

Is fraud "more fraudulent" than non-fraud? Yes. Wtf man?

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