Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The New Mind Control – The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence

aeon.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 212 posts

Re: The New Mind Control – The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence

#111

Post by devishard »

nickff wrote: post #80
chc wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try to sell a bad product? It's done all the time. Heck, a tube of wax called "HeadOn" managed to sell pretty well with an ad campaign that stopped just short of claiming it helped headaches.

The fact that one product which seems to be a placebo may have made some money does not disprove my point; I never said it was completely impossible to make money by selling a bad product, just that it is vanishingly unlikely. If you think that selling diluted ingredients in wax is an easy way to make money, please go ahead and try your hand at it. My position is that advertising a bad product is a very bad bet; the…

Are you kidding me?

Of the major companies out there, almost all of them made money from bad products. McDonald's food is so unhealthy it makes you ill almost immediately when it's even edible. Comcast is hated almost universally for their crap internet and crapper customer service. Fox News makes money by actively deceiving their customers. These aren't exceptions to the rule: these are the rule. They're leaders in their industries.

Re: The New Mind Control – The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence

#112

Post by ikeboy »

>Keep in mind that we had had only one shot at our participants. What would be the impact of favouring one candidate in searches people are conducting over a period of weeks or months before an election? It would almost certainly be much larger than what we were seeing in our experiments.

Reminds me of http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/24/streetlight-psychology/

>And in 2015, a team of researchers from the University of Maryland and elsewhere showed that Google’s search results routinely favoured Democratic candidates. Are Google’s search rankings really biased?

A greater portion of liberals use social media than conservatives (source: http://www.pewinternet.org/2012/03/12/main-findings-10/) Maybe they organically generate more links?

Re: The New Mind Control – The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence

#113

Post by leereeves »

clock_tower wrote: post #66
aapierce wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because the library is funded by taxpayers – it doesn't need the money. How would you feel about a government-sponsored search engine? I think China has one of those.

Quite frankly, it might not be the worst solution. Britain has a government-sponsored TV station which is generally pretty well-regarded, for example...

The BBC is sponsored by a licence fee collected from British people, whether they want to pay for the BBC or not.

Similarly, if the government pays for a search engine, they'll be paying with taxes taken from us anyway.

Re: The New Mind Control – The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence

#114

Post by nickff »

devishard wrote: post #110
nickff wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that one product which seems to be a placebo may have made some money does not disprove my point; I never said it was completely impossible to make money by selling a bad product, just that it is vanishingly unlikely. If you think that selling diluted ingredients in wax is an easy way to make money, please go ahead and try your hand at it. My position is that advertising a bad product is a very bad bet; the…

Are you kidding me? Of the major companies out there, almost all of them made money from bad products. McDonald's food is so unhealthy it makes you ill almost immediately when it's even edible. Comcast is hated almost universally for their crap internet and crapper customer service. Fox News makes money by actively deceiving their customers. These aren't exceptions to the rule: these are the rule . They're leaders in…

I disagree with you on every point here. McDonalds provides a consistent array of food and beverages across many countries, and many people (especially children) enjoy the experience in their restaurant. Comcast is often the only provider of Internet services, and in other instances provides faster or cheaper service than their competitors. Fox News is like every other news channel, in that it informs their viewers with the information the viewers want in a format they enjoy for a price they accept. Fox News is no more biased than CNN, NBC, or just about any other news sources; there is no arbiter of truth, and most of the perceived bias comes from the stories each outlet chooses to pursue.

I say this as a person who hasn't gone to McDonalds in 11 years, has no access to Comcast, and doesn't watch television news. The fact that you or I dislike a product does not make it 'bad'.

Re: The New Mind Control – The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence

#115

Post by Karunamon »

md224 wrote: post #22
pcmaffey wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The library is a catalog of books produced by publishers for the sake of making money. Your example doesn't hold weight, as there is no "purity of information". Even your own insights are filtered through the perspective of your personal influence, your wants, your desires, your history, etc. Google is no different. The organic search results are largely from commercial, or at a minimum, self-interested sources. That…

I'm just saying I wish we could have only organic results. Why should people with more money have more of a presence online? Money shouldn't be able to buy speech. The Internet should not be a place where those with more money get to cut the line in front of those with less. Let PageRank sort it out. Also, what's this about my example not holding weight because "information purity" doesn't exist? It's not about the i…

At the risk of sounding flip: Install adblock. If this "purity" is really that important to you, you're about 3 clicks away from banishing the paid advertising and only having organic results show.

Re: The New Mind Control – The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence

#116

Post by nunyabuizness »

EGreg wrote: post #60
J_Darnley wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inevitable. Do you really think the power brokers let you have a real choice?

Not power brokers. It's an emergent phenomenon predicted by public choice theory. http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=212

Also, this CGP Grey video explains how a first-past-the-post voting system all-but-guarantees a two party system to emerge over time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo

Re: The New Mind Control – The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence

#117

Post by diskcat »

devishard wrote: post #110
nickff wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that one product which seems to be a placebo may have made some money does not disprove my point; I never said it was completely impossible to make money by selling a bad product, just that it is vanishingly unlikely. If you think that selling diluted ingredients in wax is an easy way to make money, please go ahead and try your hand at it. My position is that advertising a bad product is a very bad bet; the…

Are you kidding me? Of the major companies out there, almost all of them made money from bad products. McDonald's food is so unhealthy it makes you ill almost immediately when it's even edible. Comcast is hated almost universally for their crap internet and crapper customer service. Fox News makes money by actively deceiving their customers. These aren't exceptions to the rule: these are the rule . They're leaders in…

If these things are so bad, why do people consume them?

Is everybody else but you so stupid as to be consuming these obviously 'bad' products?

Just because you think something is bad, doesn't mean it is bad. I would have no trouble selling something you think is the 'worst shit in the known universe' as long as everybody else thinks it's pretty good.

Re: The New Mind Control – The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence

#118

Post by nunyabuizness »

I once read an article about surveillance with a title along the lines of "A Tale of Two Cities."

In it, the author explains that there are two types of surveillance cities that will emerge in the future: one where every park bench is rigged with a mic, every street corner has a camera aimed at it, and where all the data collected is funneled to law enforcement agencies; if you were mugged on some street corner, they'd be able to react to the crime swiftly and with high accuracy.

The other city is exactly the same, but all the data is made available to all citizens through an open API; so if you wanted to meet with someone on some street corner, you could decide for yourself if it was safe enough to visit, likely preventing the crime from happening at all.

Does anyone know what article I'm talking about?

Re: The New Mind Control – The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence

#119

Post by CuriouslyC »

md224 wrote: post #9

I have made this case before, but I will make it again. The Internet is the largest information system in the world, and Google is the primary portal into that information system. Google's "organic" results are accompanied by AdWords results, which are based on a mixture of bid price and relevance. These ads are marked with a small "Ad" label that many people miss, and even those who know they're ads can't really "un…

The ads you see for a given search are highly likely to be profitable (since it is so easy to track and manage). That means people are clicking on those links, and a reasonable fraction of those clicks are being converted. From this, I would like to posit that the profitability of an ad is directly related to the product or service's relevance/value to the user (barring deceptive advertising).

Lets also assume that people buying the ads are willing to increase their ad bid until the cost per acquisition approaches equilibrium with the expected lifetime value. Over time, this should result in only the most profitable ads being displayed. This implies that only the most valuable/relevant ads are being displayed, given the point previously posited.

Thus, over the long term, assuming a fairly efficient market and some restriction on deceptive advertising, the ads can be thought of as an alternate form of result, with a very direct, user-centric ranking metric.

Would it be more palatable if the SERPs were divided into two columns, one being "web search results" and the other being clearly labeled "product/service search results"?

Re: The New Mind Control – The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence

#120

Post by soared »

hotcool wrote: post #46

I designed supraliminal posters[1] to counter the covert forms of persuasion like Low Attention Processing marketing[2]. I definitely find them helpful, especially for meditation. [1] http://zenpusher.com [2] http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/low-atten...

Do you think [2] is a bad thing, and why?
Post reply on HN