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0 pointscandiddevmike2y ago0 comments

Who wants to be manipulated into buying things they don't need? Why would I trust an advertisement to show me what is the best product vs doing my own research?

How do we curtail global warming and consumption while still allowing advertising to steal our attention?

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5 comments · 2 top-level

skybrian2y ago· 2 in thread

I understand my buying habits and it's not a problem. Getting a slightly different variety of ads isn't going to trick me into buying something I didn't choose to buy.

(Ads may be a problem for the easily manipulated, but I think TV and direct mail are a lot worse for the elderly.)

II2II2y ago

An advertiser who leaves the consumer feeling as though they are ceding their autonomy is unlikely to be successful. If I were you, I would be very concerned by suggesting that this is only a problem for the easily manipulated.

skybrian2y ago

This is a false binary. Advertising doesn't have to be "manipulative" to be successful. For example, reminding people of something they wanted to do anyway, but forgot, isn't particularly manipulative.

(There much worse tactics, though.)

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gretch2y ago· 1 in thread

> Why would I trust an advertisement to show me what is the best product vs doing my own research?

There’s 2 forms of information reception: fulfillment and discovery.

Fulfillment is when you know what you want and just need to find the best version of it for you. So you search for “buy ping ping table” and look for one of the right quality and price.

Discovery is when you didn’t even know something was an option for you, but it’s extremely valuable. How can you do your own research when you don’t even know something is a problem? For example, in 90s there were tons of commercials on TV that said “Mesothelioma is a cancer that affects you based on exposure to asbestos, and if you got it, then you can sue and win a lot of money”. Without that Ad, probably a lot of people didn’t know about their illness and that someone has wronged them and owes them recompense.

There’s a great deal of ads (I argue most) that just try to get stuff in front of people who didn’t know about a thing.

signal112y ago

> in 90s there were tons of commercials on TV that said Mesothelioma is a cancer

These were not targeted.

The reality of the modern economy is that if your ad profile says "suggest <major disease> ads", you can be sure data brokers will share that with lots of organizations with various agendas.

I haven't had a chance to review Google's categories, but Meta has fairly narrow categories which could be easily exploited, for instance[1] -- although of course Meta have tried to walk some of that back[2].

And of course even if Google starts out with very innocuous categories, these can always become more fine-grained later. And there are ways to enrich even very innocuous categories using signals from other sources.

[1] https://www.everywheremarketer.com/blog/how-to-use-detailed-...

[2] https://www.euractiv.com/section/digital/news/meta-to-preven...

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