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Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

schneier.com

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Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#31

Post by tangjurine »

names_are_hard wrote: post #25
lordnacho wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the 200 bucks more a way for FB sellers to get your money instead of other shops?

No, because it's $200 on top of what you would otherwise spend on the stuff you buy. The cost of marketing has to get baked into the price of goods or the sellers would be losing money. If they weren't advertising, or could advertise for less, they'd be able to lower prices.

Advertising can lower the cost per item, if there was a large startup cost and marginal costs are small. More importantly, facebook ads have caused me to buy more things because the ads showed me things that I thought were useful that I otherwise wouldn't have known about. Honestly, I feel like maybe I should be paying to see FBs ads sometimes.

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#32

Post by Hokusai »

gnicholas wrote: post #27

> The technology exists to take your likeness and morph it with a face that is demographically similar to you. The result is a face that looks like you, but that you don’t recognize. If that turns out to be more persuasive than coarse demographic targeting, is that okay? I have wondered if in the future, movies/TV shows will be personalized with your name. I have found that when I watch a movie where the main charact…

You are describing video games.

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#33

Post by AntiImperialist »

lordnacho wrote: post #26

I wrote this for a related article yesterday: --- If we know that humans have all sorts of cognitive biases, how come it's ok to use that fact while at the same time we insist there's some kind of free market? Say you discover that putting good-looking women next to cars causes the sale of cars to increase. Why does nobody question whether it is legitimate to do so? It's as if there's a line between actively lying ("…

With freedom, humans can control for this by learning from it. They can see that cars don't necessarily get you women despite of what the ads say. This can also be indirect learning by someone pointing it out.

If you start making certain things illegal to say, you can use that against people. For example, given enough money for lawyers, you can sue people for saying that "these cars don't get you women" using the same anti-free speech regulations by finding holes and exceptions in them. History has shown that lawyers can pull this off.

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#35

Post by tonyedgecombe »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #17
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #4

I keep coming back to my default idea here - that PII needs to be seen as legally owned by me and only licensed to others for use. The default legal framework should include medical / epidemiology research as freely licensed and commercial use as ... well let's just say i think my license conditions will be expensive. If an advertising channel then shows ads that breach license they are liable. A fairly simple licens…

If you're a US citizen with a Facebook account, your value for Facebook is about $ 200 per year. That's the average, including children, seniors, etc. If you're a tech worker in your 30s, it's probably 3x as much. If you want to use Facebook without targeted advertising, you need to either convince them that they don't need all that money, or pay it yourself. And that's just Facebook. In other words: the internet eco…

>If you're a tech worker in your 30s, it's probably 3x as much.

I wouldn't be surprised if it's much more than that. Most businesses sales follow the Pareto principle, 80% of their revenue comes from 20% of their customers.

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#36

Post by tonyedgecombe »

xwdv wrote: post #14
throwitaway1235 wrote: post #5

I sometimes ask myself, in 20 years will we begin to see class action lawsuits directed at technology platforms that use notification triggered dopamine releases for growing engagement?

No, because that case is too vague. Sending a notification isn’t a crime, especially when you request them by not turning off notifications.

especially when you request them by not turning off notifications

This is only funny because it's so close to the truth.

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#37

Post by pjc50 »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #17
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #4

I keep coming back to my default idea here - that PII needs to be seen as legally owned by me and only licensed to others for use. The default legal framework should include medical / epidemiology research as freely licensed and commercial use as ... well let's just say i think my license conditions will be expensive. If an advertising channel then shows ads that breach license they are liable. A fairly simple licens…

If you're a US citizen with a Facebook account, your value for Facebook is about $ 200 per year. That's the average, including children, seniors, etc. If you're a tech worker in your 30s, it's probably 3x as much. If you want to use Facebook without targeted advertising, you need to either convince them that they don't need all that money, or pay it yourself. And that's just Facebook. In other words: the internet eco…

"Without ads" and "without targeted ads" are different things. There's an "ad-centrist" view whereby adverts should be OK so long as they're chosen to go with the content on the page and the community that the site aims at - you know, like all newspapers and magazines used to do.

I'm not sure how imgurl survives given the abuse workload; there is an inevitable death spiral of image hosting sites as they get cluttered by more and more adverts of worse and worse quality.

Stackexchange handles this very differently, too.

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#38

Post by sneak »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #34

As usual for Schneier, a thoughtful, complete, balanced article. It will be hard to put guardrails on this stuff. It's pretty much 100% "gray area," easy to cast in many ways.

I'm a little sad to see him falling into the "we are under attack and something must be done!" narrative around free and open discussion on the internet.

By all accounts, the election system in the US is working, most people aren't antivaxxers, and belief in an undetectable wizard in the sky seems to be falling. We are winning the war against misinformation.

Why are so many smart people claiming that we aren't, and that more censorship is required?

> [TFA, Schneier] In this regard, the United States, already extremely polarized, sits on a precipice.

Citation needed.

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#39

Post by user-the-name »

AntiImperialist wrote: post #33
lordnacho wrote: post #26

I wrote this for a related article yesterday: --- If we know that humans have all sorts of cognitive biases, how come it's ok to use that fact while at the same time we insist there's some kind of free market? Say you discover that putting good-looking women next to cars causes the sale of cars to increase. Why does nobody question whether it is legitimate to do so? It's as if there's a line between actively lying ("…

With freedom, humans can control for this by learning from it. They can see that cars don't necessarily get you women despite of what the ads say. This can also be indirect learning by someone pointing it out. If you start making certain things illegal to say, you can use that against people. For example, given enough money for lawyers, you can sue people for saying that "these cars don't get you women" using the sam…

Nonsense. There are plenty of things you are not allowed to say, and nobody is using them as "loopholes". False advertising is a crime already, for one.
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