Here is an important difference. A century ago, the predator (seller) and the prey (buyer) were on equal evolutionary terms. Each generation of humans on either side of the transaction came into the world, learned to convince, learned to resist, then passed, and some balance was maintained. In this century, corporations and algorithms don't die, but the targets do. This means that the non-human seller is continuously, even immortally, learning, adapting and perfecting how to manipulate. The target, be it adult, adolescent, or child, is, and will be ever increasingly, at a severe disadvantage.
Ah yes because trade secrets were never a thing at any of these companies. The companies always shut down when it's founding members died wiping out all the knowledge it had built up.
That is to say organizations have always had this edge on individuals.
Right, because we know that parents never pass down useful skills or life tips to their children, like skepticism of propaganda and advertising, and instead send their children into the world like sheep into a lion's den.
There might come a day when advertising is too flawless for a human mind to resist it, but we're not there yet.
Most of everybody thinks their behaviors and decisions are not meaningfully influenced by advertising. Companies spend literally trillions of dollars running ads. One side is right, one side is wrong.
And advertising largely relies on this ignorance of its effects, or otherwise most of everybody would go to much greater lengths to limit their exposures to such, and governments would be more inclined to regulate the ad industry as a goal in and of itself.
No, this take is crazy. If ads were able to brainwash people Coca-Cola would still be the most popular drink in America.
The problem with "meaningfully influenced" is that a 1% bump in sales is massive for a company, but normally only represents a very minor shift in customer behavior.
US spending on advertising is, in total, about $1200/person-year. If you believe that advertisers are rapacious capitalists who will take as much as they possibly can, then they only believe that they can capture about that much extra per person by advertising to them.
That's not nothing, but it's not very much either. Ads are extremely overblown as a threat to society; you only need to look as far as eye-tracking studies of web browsers and the prevalence of ad blockers to see pretty good proof that people do just ignore them most of the time.
I'm firmly in the camp of "I'm not influenced by ads (or so I think)" / "not convinced that ads are actually a net positive". But even so, I don't fully agree with your take.
I think that it's very possible to think we aren't influenced, yet still be. My reasoning is that basically no one admits to being influenced. Yet you can definitely see the effects of ads on people: whenever there's a strong campaign for something, little after you'll see everyone buying it. Maybe they just try to "follow trends" or whatever, but that's just a form of advertising, isn't it? I only very rarely watch TV and have ad blockers everywhere, yet I can still detect when all of a sudden everybody has the same bag or same jacket or whatever. My bags last years and years. I doubt it's simply a coincidence and they all needed new bags right at the same time.
> Ads are extremely overblown as a threat to society; you only need to look as far as eye-tracking studies of web browsers and the prevalence of ad blockers to see pretty good proof that people do just ignore them most of the time.
I think that many people don't know about ad-blockers and try to ignore the ads while reading a website or scrolling some app. But that doesn't imply they aren't influenced. In my case, I'm fairly convinced that I'm not influenced by my instagram's feed's ads, since they try to sell me pregnant women's garments, of which I have 0 use as a single, childless male. But there can be other factors of which I don't have conscience, like seeing people use the same brand camera or whatever. Call it advertising-by-proxy.
However, take a look at people's screens when taking the metro or whatever. Many do watch the ads instead of just scrolling past. This is what I actually have a hard time understanding: people would spend a comparable amount of time on what looks like ads and what looks like their friends' stuff, as if it was the same thing. Which, granted, isn't a very long time. In my case, I only follow photographers and would spend a fair amount of time on people's pictures but scroll right through anything that looks like an ad (text or video of any kind).
Advertising is just companies saying "This is what you can purchase from me - it's awesome - please consider purchasing it". I have managed hundreds of millions in ad spend for major brands. None of them rely on weird ad magic to persuade people secretly - just showing off different aspects of the product or service.
> Advertising is just companies saying "This is what you can purchase from me - it's awesome - please consider purchasing it".
This is such a naive view of advertising that if you're really this unaware of how manipulative ads are, you can't possibly have defenses against them. You should seriously spend some time looking into the secret magic of dark psychology they use to manipulate people because while knowing about their tactics won't make you immune to them, it really can help to be aware of how they work and to train yourself to recognize when they're being used against you.
I don't know, I just went to find an ad in my feed and the first one was for a house plant that was easy to take care of. I'm not saying I'm the smartest cookie in the shed, but I didn't detect any manipulation. Seems like it was a person who just wanted me to know about their product.
I haven't seen the plant ad, but it sounds like once you start learning about how the ad industry works your mind will be blown. Insane amounts of money have been poured into research by the industry (including some highly questionable research being done on children and infants) and some of the results are fascinating.
The manipulation goes beyond even the content of the ads themselves. For example, one of the reasons companies are spending so much money collecting/buying/storing/securing every scrap of data they can get about you and your life is so that they can target ads at you at specific times when they know you'll be more vulnerable such as times when they know you'd normally be tired, or when they think your medication may be wearing off, or during periods where you're under high stress, or when you might be entering a manic phase, or when you're intoxicated, etc.
Like I said, understanding the many many ways that you are vulnerable to their tricks can help but it won't stop them from working on you. It's kind of like how you can't not see certain optical illusions even though you know you're interpreting them incorrectly. The conclusion I've come to is that it's best to do everything you can to avoid exposure to advertising where possible and to keep an eye out for when those tricks are being used against you elsewhere.
So a company should not be able to recommend therapy ads if I seem stressed? Ozempic if I seem like I want to lose weight? Laxatives if I seem constipated, or energy drinks if I'm sleep deprived?
Trying to moralize ad targeting is exhausting. It's not inherently a bad thing to target an ad to someone who's in a bad spot, or really in general.
People who buy the product are presumably competent enough to manage their own finances. Acting like they're being exploited constantly because ads hinted that they weren't masculine enough, or too fat, or being their peers, etc. is ridiculous. Ads aren't like cigarettes.
It's more like companies recommending an alcoholic who has been sober for 13 months his favorite drink because they know he is going through a divorce and is currently 15 feet from a bar, or a company targeting a person with Alzheimer's right at the time they know they'll start sundowning, or even just cranking up nostalgia in their advertising because they know your last surviving parent died and for the first time you won't be going home for the coming holidays.
Ad targeting these days can be intensely personal and manipulative. There are lots of ways ads could be used that aren't harmful, but also lots of ways that they can. Imagine an ad using a deepfake of your own child who died in a car crash telling you in his voice how he might still be alive if your car only had <insert new safety feature here>. There are clearly lines that can and should be drawn. There are extremely unethical practices happening today because companies are amoral monsters that only care about money and there are almost no laws or regulations to stop them from doing whatever they want.
Ads aren't like cigarettes. You make the choice to smoke or not, but ads are just forced on you. Only rarely are you given any opportunity to opt out of them, and the industry spends a lot of money trying to circumvent any efforts you take to cut them out of your life. You can quit cigarettes, but they wont let you quit advertising.
And it's worth noting that there are laws that restrict advertisement of cigarettes, alcohol, etc.
Meanwhile let's also not forget the post itself on which we are commenting: accusations that social media companies have, in fact, engineered their products to be addictive.
Either you intentionally misunderstood his point and deflected or you honestly seem to think this way. In either case, you misapprehended what he meant.
>Advertising is just companies saying "This is what you can purchase from me - it's awesome - please consider purchasing it". I have managed hundreds of millions in ad spend for major brands
"You're not good enough as you are now, but you will be if you purchase this thing"
"Other people you admire or respect have purchased this thing, and if you do too you'll be more like them"
"Other people will like you more if you purchase this thing"
"You'll be more attractive if you purchase this thing"
"This thing will be worth more in the future so if you purchase this thing it will make you money"
"This is your only chance to purchase this thing, so if you don't it now you'll miss out on this price"
I don't think any of them has to do with how awesome "the thing" itself is. Obviously there's more to, say, an expensive watch, than its ability to tell time
The only products that sell this in advertising actually provide those brand features. Essentially people pay money to increase their perceived status.
Like, if you sell a luxury handbag. When people buy it, they know 70% of the value comes from the advertising saying "this is a high value product" as a status signal. I think that's really dumb, but that's what people want.
It also existed a long time before ads itself did.
> they know 70% of the value comes from the advertising
So, you are aware that advertising is in large part responsible for shaping what is perceived as high-value status signals in society. You're also aware that for certain products the only distinction between those and their alternatives is that specific high-value association.
How come you started out from the position that advertising is "just showing off different aspects of the product" then?
If anonymous billboards or banner ads can convince you you aren't good enough, your life is probably not great with or without ads.
If an ad convinces you to, say, get a gym membership or go on Ozempic, who's to say what happens next? Maybe you do start feeling better about yourself.
They don't consciously convince you directly anymore than a slot machine convinces you to give it one more spin - it's done on a subconscious level. For instance one of the most famous, and effective, ads in history is Apple's 1984 ad. [1] A 59 second ad where the only mention of what's being sold at all happens in about 1 second with a reference to a brand name and then a logo. See: ELM model and peripheral processing. [2] And this is all day one advertising stuff.
Advertising is a horrific industry. It probably always was, but at the modern scales, it's outright dystopic. I think there's simply a large amount of cognitive dissonance around this issue because advertising drives the paychecks of a whole lot of people, and it's rather difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
While I agree with your point about understanding, I think there's also an issue of self-image. "What? Me? Influenced by some ad? Get outta here! I make my own decisions!"
USA here: our schools brainwash children to remove that skepticism. It makes them easier to control and order is very important to the kind of person who becomes a teacher.
Seattle area, they're brainwashing my children to celebrate the "seahawks" team. They came home yesterday being excited that team won the superbowl. I ask "why do you care? You don't like to watch football, none of your friends like to play it". Hard to influence when the kid is there 6.5 hours every day.
Ah, don't worry. He'd forgotten ten minutes later and I later took him rock climbing, which he actually loves and I support him doing despite me being terrified of heights.
Former USA teacher here: I assure you that the 17.5 hours parents have with kids are much more influential. It's likely that a lot of the students were really excited that their home team won and the teachers leaned into that excitement.
My child's San Francisco Bay Area school has taught media literacy / skepticism every year since 3rd grade. Curricula are determined by the teacher, but N=1 is sufficient for a counterexample for a broad country-wide generalization.
Celebrating a local sports win is about as apolitical and low-harm as possible when it comes to promoting a shared cultural bond for a community.
Are the children allowed to sit and study all day on the topic they're currently interested in? No. https://cantrip.org/gatto.html They're required to submit to authority at all times. How could it be otherwise in our system -- one teacher, 20 random kids of varying personalities and education level.
It's not a "local sports win" -- it's a profitable, billionaire-owned corporation stealing public tax money by brainwashing everyone into thinking it's "local". The majority of the players aren't from the area either and will leave after.
Are we really recreating elementary education from first principles here? American public education has always followed an instructor -> pupil format, beginning in New England for bible reading, accounting, and manufacturing.
There are probably some Montessori schools that opt for other formats, but I doubt that children are set up for success by neglecting math or other topics they are uninterested in. I would wager that even Montessori schools require study of the core tested curriculum.
If you have ever been a guest teacher then you would observe that a substantial minority of students must be guided to pay attention to the material. Autodidacts are not representative of the majority of people.
Re: sports: all things have negative aspects to them. Being a grump to such an extent as to discount all positive culturally cohesive aspects of a largely benign activity is a suboptimal way to live life. Choosing to build on commonalities in a community leads to better outcomes. Believing sports to be a net bad activity is a single-digit percentage minority opinion.
It would be good to remember the Miranda warning: "Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law." (emphasis mine). It doesn't say, "maybe" or, "only if".
Do many people think that with their single assault rifle or other weap9n, that they would successfully defend against one or more truckloads of vandals looking to steal whatever they have stored up "self-sufficiently"? History seems to indicate that in the absence of law, those with the most people inside a fortified structure and position are the most likely to survive.
History seems to indicate that in the absence of law, those with the most people inside a fortified structure and position are the most likely to survive.
I don't think that's true. I imagine the people with the highest chance of survival are the ones whose governing/ruling people seek peace and the rule law quickest. Second would be people who flee to the nearest safe and lawful area. A fortification is probably the third best option if you can't have either of the first, but the probability of that structure keeping you alive is very low, especially if the conflict lasts long enough to become a siege. Entire cities managed to hold out from sieges that lasted for years, but the ordinary people inside did not.
Funny the person you replied to mentioned an antique rifle and then you ranted about assault weapons while censoring yourself?
Rifles are great for many things aside from roving bandits. First thing is that hunting is an excellent capability to have and rifles are much easier to use than bows. Another thing is the deterrence one provides. If you're moving around the end times with just your fists, you're an easier target than someone equipped. The final bit is if your point is right and living in a fortified structure is the way to go, someone with a rifle and the knowhow to use it is going to be immensely more useful to the group than someone who just knows how to use a computer. In the absence of law, you will be obliged to defend yourself whether that's individually or in a large group.
That also includes knowing how to process game. A dead deer or a dead rabbit has a small window between being a dead creature and a toxic mess. If you're gonna plug animals learn how to make proper use of them.
People stockpiling only "weap9n"s aren't going to last near as long as people stockpiling only food.
In real life melee weapons are readily available and far more overpowered that you'd think, but what matters more is that robbery is risky. Winning most of the time isn't enough; you'd need to win all of the time.
It depends on if the people with weapons can find the people with food. With no rule of law, everything is on the table. Warlords still exist in many parts of the world today
Modern warlords have large quantities of subjects from generations and generations of consolidation, which itself is a variation of joining instead of looting. Gaining subjects is extremely risky, when you don't already have an army.
Really, modern first-world countries are just the descendants of warlordships that ran out of kingdoms to consolidate with and instead switched to taxation, either relinquishing enough power to their citizens to maintain a stable but effectively symbolic monarchy or overtaxing then losing to a rebellion.
number of firearms is moot without 1) the ammo to use it, and 2) enough bodies to use them.
I'd rather have 10 people with 10 guns than 3 people with 30 guns, esp. if of different calibers and configurations
and in a collapse situation I'd rather have excessive water purification and just enough firearms, than excessive firearms and little to no water purification
With thy said, I’ve had a few enthusiast friends the years, and for most of them the amount of ammo was more staggering than the number of firearms. Most also had a fairly well throughout strategy around what the shtf related arms should be chambered in as well as reloading presses. Further, that made sure their trusted group of friends were familiar with their shtf firearms. To be fair, the most excessive of these friends also had an equally excessive build out for water storage.
> History seems to indicate that in the absence of law, those with the most people inside a fortified structure and position are the most likely to survive.
Sometime when you're in a used bookstore, thrift store or yard sale, keep an eye out for very old dictionaries, and if found, look up the word "conputer". You will find the proof of the human occupant of this definition surprisingly recently (as in 1930s)
Pretty much every school in the US has students using touchscreen Chromebooks. It's funnyish when a young person tries to touch my MacBook screen to do a quick action, and I have to tell them that it's necessary to go to the touchpad, diddle a little to find the cursor, then do a move action to get to get to the target. Dragging is even more puzzling, touch and drag on a screen vs. move, double-tap or ctrl-click, then drag, then tap to release. I'm sure some will help me with faster touchpad methods, but that aside, I've used Mac laptops for 30+ years, and generally feel that those who perceive touchscreens as a gorilla-arm problem just haven't used a touchscreen laptop. They provide a much more efficient interface for some common actions. Touchscreens are so common now that most Windows and Chrome devices have them as the norm. Always strikes me as a bit strange that Apple-priced Mac laptops lack a feature found in low-price competitors.
"Pretty much every school in the US has students using touchscreen Chromebooks."
Pfff, what a laughable claim. Meanwhile, just because people CAN use to learn something doesn't mean it's good. Touchscreen computers, especially laptops, are dumb for a few reasons. They already have a touch interface (the trackpad), and touchscreen on a computer requires dumbed-down interfaces with oversized controls and an M.O. that tolerates your hand and arm blocking your view of what you're trying to work on.
And also the screen's hinges must be (and perpetually remain) stiff enough to sustain people pressing on the screen the whole time.
With people doing so much on phones and tablets now, you can bet that when they fire up a legitimate computer, they want a computer's capabilities. That means a real keyboard, a precision pointing device, and software with a proper computer UI.
Displaying Nazi symbols is allowed (protected) in the United States, but prohibited in Germany. Does that mean that any German person involved in enforcing pr even tangentially acting on that restriction would be ineligible for a U.S visa?
Hopefully, yes. The free speech situation in Germany is ... not good. Completely useless and reactionary laws restricting speech of specific symbols are only a small part of it of course but any global pushback would be good.
> Completely useless and reactionary laws restricting speech of specific symbols are only a small part of it of course but any global pushback would be good.
You do know why these laws exist, right? And they are not useless. Many terrible things happened, and tens of millions died, because an extremely hateful ideology was allowed to take hold by assaulting civil society and democracy.
Banning anything related to that ideology is not only needed, not only common sense, but I'd argue the moral duty of the German people. And everyone else who witnessed it (so everyone). And for what it's worth, most developed countries have banned Nazi-related things. The US is an outlier in thinking that Nazi opinions matter, and allowing murderous types to express their desire to murder others is somehow a virtue.
And to be clear, yes, National Socialism is extremely agressive and murderous. One of its core tenets, probably its main one, is violent antisemitism and "master race"-ism, with their solution being exterminating "lower" "races". Nothing useful, nothing good, nothing redeeming. Just pure hatred and genocide.
Nothing good can come out of "debating" a Nazi in the "marketplace of ideas". Goebbels himself said so back in the 1930s, that they do not intend to play by the rules of democracy, but if democracy wants to give them the tools to spread their ideology, they'll happily use it. The world saw this happen and saw the results. Nazis have no place in any civilised society, and anyone espousing Nazi ideology or sporting their insignia deserves to ostracised at least.
Working with a group of friends on a "microcontroller-for-makers" kind of thing called the MakerPort. (https://makerport.fun) Sort of similar to an Arduino or micro:bit, but uses the MicroBlocks programming editor (https://microblocks.fun) created by John Maloney, who was the original team leader for Scratch at MIT for 11 years. The hardware includes an mp3 player, I2C ports, accelerometer and true capacitive touch sensors.
I used to do presentations at educational technology conferences and many (30+)years ago I speculated that "in the future" computers that could create would be licensed. This was based on the observation that every significant past technology under user control was eventually licensed for permission to operate - radio, television, cars, the list is long.
radio/tv share the bands which are very narrow resource so licensing pretty much have to exist else there would be interference abound (imagine competing TV station just driving around with a jammer on competition
cars have that + the fact infrastructure is built by public money. Allowing anyone on anything with no training there literally costs lives
Or, copyright wise, to earn money in before digital world you kinda had to not have too much of copyright infringement - while artist today might get popular enough to subside on patreon/other form of digital tips, before it wouldn't be possible
This doesn't really disagree with the parent's thesis. You're just giving the long explanation for each event.
Any significant technological advancement necessarily uses some shared public resource which will drive people to regulate it. For AI folks are trying to get a lot of random things to stick: the power grid, water usage, public safety, disinformation.
No comments here about the odd non-standard "say yes to say no" sliders for data collection and selling? I've only seen this a few times in privacy settings windows but enough times that I'm now wary of just assuming that gray means opt-out.
Not sure what you’re seeing, but I’ve seen that particular window several times (and no sliders). Very easy to “Disagree” or “Reject All”.
Anyway, those are usually avoided in comments unless they are particularly egregious, because as per the guidelines:
> Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.
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