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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?

#101

Post by LocalH »

agent008t wrote: post #87
benjaminjosephw wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there's anything reasonable about either of these: 1. Are the freedoms of corporations to act without the coercion of the state more important than the freedom of citizens to act without the subtle but effective coercion of corporate persuasion? The case for individual freedom doesn't always imply the absence of action by the state. 2. Would restricting manipulative practices by businesses really lead t…

Corporations are just voluntary associations of people, are they not? It seems strange to allow something for an individual, but to forbid groups of people to associate with each other and carry out the same activity. I also think that calling persuasion 'coercion' is misleading. Coercion implies the threat of force or violence. You and your family still have the choice of switching off your TV, not using facebook or…

When corporations grow above a certain size (the exact size of which is for another discussion), they tend to gain power against the individual. I'm not sure which is worse - powerful government, or powerful corporation. Both serve their own interests ahead of individual liberty, and collectively it means that people are less free and more beholden to corporate interests.

I don't want to put so many restrictions on small business, because they're more directly driven by individuals (although if their behavior starts having a significant negative impact on individuals, then perhaps that can be investigated). Small business has far less power to negatively impact individuals when compared to multi-billion-dollar multinational organizations.

I believe that society should favor and protect the freedom of the individual over the freedom of the large corporation. Without those individuals, society is useless. Of course, that's sidestepping the issue that society far too often sticks its teeth in where it doesn't belong, and won't bite down where they'd actually be useful.

Your last sentence is honestly a copout (not on your part personally, but in general as an intellectual idea). That basically embodies a race to the bottom, as countries around the world erode freedom, and the rest of the world "harmonizes" so as not to be disadvantaged on the world stage. You see this now with the current copyright situation.

It's kind of the same idea as the GPL protecting the greater freedom of software by restricting some of the freedoms that a developer may wish to have. Many similar arguments can apply too, as for example I've heard it said "GPL's restrictions will just push people to use less-restrictive licenses" That may be somewhat true, but there are also people who value the greater freedom more than their personal freedom to use the software in a non-free manner. Note that this isn't an endorsement of GPL over other licenses, just a parallel to be drawn that is somewhat relevant to HN.

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#102

Post by mrfredward »

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 ("…

Cognitive biases are a real problem for free markets, but the question isn't whether free markets are perfect, it's how they compare to the alternatives.

People can make poor choices because of cognitive biases, or they can have choices made for them by other people with cognitive biases. The other people can be unelected, unaccountable leaders, or leaders that are chosen by voters, and politics seems to be where cognitive biases are worst.

In general, I would rather suffer for my own cognitive biases than the biases of elected officials and voters, but that's not to say I advocate for free markets in every scenario, because there is a lot more to consider than individual choice in that discussion.

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#103

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

sneak wrote: post #98
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social media is not the cause of any of this. The techniques used, are probably hundreds of years old (maybe thousands). Social media is just a new medium; but an effective one that allows scale. I'm old enough to remember when television occupied the same slot.

Why does social media not pose the same polarization threat to large free countries other than the US? We're not seeing any large-scale global shift toward political polarization, and, Facebook is pretty much everywhere in the west.

I wouldn't bet that other countries are exempt. If I remember, Europe has had quite a lot of trouble, due to polarization. I grew up in Africa, where tribal conflicts were absolutely horrifying.

These types of campaigns are usually multi-pronged, sustained and coordinated. They aren't really effective, unless they are all managed by a central director.

Dog whistles only work if you train the dogs.

I think that it's about where the effort is directed. The US is a huge target. This nation has an oversize influence on the world, and it's natural for other nations that either resent this influence, and/or want to exert their own, to do as much as possible to damage the US.

Looks like they've done a fairly good job.

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#104

Post by a3camero »

Mirioron wrote: post #80
zupatol wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some economists have tried arguing that advertising adds value to products, but I think it only hinders people from making choices based on the product's merit. It's a distortion of the market. We wouldn't lose much if advertising would just be forbidden. A traditional definition of it would probably be enough to get rid of most of it. The main problem is that huge sums of money are involved, and almost all media pro…

> We wouldn't lose much if advertising would just be forbidden. We would lose the current ad industry and just replace it with some other form of it. You can't get rid odd advertising, because the existence of the product itself is already advertising. Let's imagine that advertising were banned. How could a car manufacturer still advertise their cars? Put bigger logos on them and sell lots of cheaper models for a whi…

Wouldn't that be a great outcome? Cheap cars or cheap cola? That's better than more expensive products (because of the cost of advertising that's turned into billboards and banner ads.)

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#105

Post by Super_Jambo »

agent008t wrote: post #87
benjaminjosephw wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there's anything reasonable about either of these: 1. Are the freedoms of corporations to act without the coercion of the state more important than the freedom of citizens to act without the subtle but effective coercion of corporate persuasion? The case for individual freedom doesn't always imply the absence of action by the state. 2. Would restricting manipulative practices by businesses really lead t…

Corporations are just voluntary associations of people, are they not? It seems strange to allow something for an individual, but to forbid groups of people to associate with each other and carry out the same activity. I also think that calling persuasion 'coercion' is misleading. Coercion implies the threat of force or violence. You and your family still have the choice of switching off your TV, not using facebook or…

Corporations are obviously far more than just an association of people. There are huge tomes of legislation that define them, give them extra powers & limit their actions: Limited Liability, Tax codes, Health and Safety, Child Labour, Employee exploitation.

Many of these laws are written in blood.

So no, legislation that limited large companies ability to exploit the heuristics and biases of their customers would not be 'strange'. We can also legislate against foreign companies.

This is an argument to scrap OSHA and allow slavery. How else, after all, can businesses be expected to compete globally?

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#106

Post by pradn »

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…

And what about all the sales that are made through Facebook ads? They support millions of jobs around the world. A less efficient ad machine would mean worse sales or higher marketing costs or both. Some of this excess goes directly to profits, but a good chunk of it supports employment.

Imagine if we got rid of all advertising and what that would do to demand. I know the discussion here is centered on targeted ads, but I think there would be significant economic effects if their incidence was decreased.

The global consumer economy runs on all these extra desires created by ads, and ads do fulfil the function of informing customers.

If I have to see ads (and I really don't), I'm not against tracking ads per se, but the long-term storage of them. Given current technology and governance, there's not a way to separate these two.

In any case, there's significant economic effects to stopping tracking ads.

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#107

Post by beepboopbeep »

I think there's a clear case for limiting the tactics currently employed by social media. They are using a clear strategy and deploying it to millions/billions through the use of algos. There are multiple ways to attack that and I encourage it before the world collectively loses its mind.

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#108

Post by kortex »

zupatol wrote: post #42
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 ("…

Some economists have tried arguing that advertising adds value to products, but I think it only hinders people from making choices based on the product's merit. It's a distortion of the market. We wouldn't lose much if advertising would just be forbidden. A traditional definition of it would probably be enough to get rid of most of it. The main problem is that huge sums of money are involved, and almost all media pro…

> Some economists have tried arguing that advertising adds value to products, but I think it only hinders people from making choices based on the product's merit. It's a distortion of the market.

Precisely. Spec sheets, unbiased reviews, ratings systems that vet purchases, those add value. Almost by definition, what we consider advertisement is designed to distort humans from making rational free-market choices. Stretching the analogy: Attention is finite, therefore every ad you consume moves you further from perfect information.

That's a purely pragmatic argument without getting into the whole bit where ads use all sorts of psychological tools to shape behavior.

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#109

Post by bryanrasmussen »

imagine an advertisement so effective that anyone who saw it would immediately buy the product at whatever price asked as long as they could afford it.

Imagining this we can see that there is obviously some limit beyond which advertising must be curbed, and admitting this the question just becomes at what point must advertising actually be curbed?

Of course one could argue that such an advertisement must be for a product so wonderful and useful that everyone would want it - let us say immortality with youth and good looks - but if that were the case such a product should be recommended enough by word of mouth and the evidence of all the old people becoming young and good looking when taking it.

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#110

Post by AnHonestComment »

prionassembly wrote: post #95
andrepd wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Likewise everyone old enough to have a sex drive has seen enough publicity with barely-clad attractive women to know the ruse. Clearly not, for the simple fact that they do it anyway. It works, else you wouldn't see it in ads.

This is what Slavoj Zizek terms the "cynical function of ideology". People can know the ruse and enjoy it anyway. No one goes to e.g. striptease joints expecting complete sexual gratification. (The following video analyzes a fragment of the movie "West Side Story" and it's fully SFW) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzztNjZqbOQ

You switched a critical aspect on your analogy, replacing a push-mechanism (ads) with a poll-mechanism (strip club).

People voluntarily enjoy sex, but forced orgasms during rape are deeply traumatic.

The aspect of the example you switched is key to why advertising is problematic — and your referenced argument doesn’t apply here, due to that difference in consent.

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