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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?

#121

Post by csharptwdec19 »

Mirioron wrote: post #77
deegles wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an absurd example, if someone were to invent a ray-gun that reprograms people's brains with arbitrary beliefs it would be 100% unethical and illegal to use. However, ads or fake news article that takes many exposures to reprogram you (by using the cognitive bias back channels as you mention) are perfectly fine. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

With the raygun there's a clear cause and effect. You can fairly easily prove that what changes beliefs is the raygun. You can't do that with ads and fake news articles. The other point is that with ads and articles you have to engage with them yourself. Something can grab your attention, but you can decide to ignore it anyway.

> The other point is that with ads and articles you have to engage with them yourself. Something can grab your attention, but you can decide to ignore it anyway.

That's a slippery slope, when we remember that researchers are constantly looking for the right hooks that edge the 'persuasion' closer to entrapment.

Doubly so when we consider neuroatypicals; While many people think of a 'seizure' as something that results in shaking movements/etc, There is a nonzero size of the population that can have seizures that are more 'internal'; the stimulus results in either a locking of focus on an item, or a sort of disoriented haze (at which point, for some, their subconscious is wide open.)

Those who take the time to study hypnotism/NLP and are more wise than intelligent understand that we are playing with fire here folks.

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#122

Post by csharptwdec19 »

Mirioron wrote: post #90
dane-pgp wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't a clear cause and effect between smoking a single cigarette and developing cancer, or even between smoking a single cigarette and addiction. For a long time, tobacco companies used such equivocation to avoid regulation of their industry. Instead, we look at the total effect (and often the intended effect) of multiple small changes, and decide whether they are a net positive for society.

Do we have a total effect of ads and fake news on society? Something that's actually reliable and not propaganda itself? It seems extremely difficult to be able to differentiate between an ad letting people know that a product exists and it directly influencing your decision. Or you could consider letting people know about the product existing as influencing the person, but then it's hard to argue that ads are actual…

> Do we have a total effect of ads and fake news on society? Something that's actually reliable and not propaganda itself? It seems extremely difficult to be able to differentiate between an ad letting people know that a product exists and it directly influencing your decision. Or you could consider letting people know about the product existing as influencing the person, but then it's hard to argue that ads are actually bad.

Thinking out loud, I would be curious to see a study on people who play 'Loot Box/Gacha' style games. Include both people who have been playing for a while, as well as people who 'start' playing during the study. Include non-players.

Measure their other 'vice' behaviors (i.e. Drinking alcohol, nicotine, real gambling, gentlemen's clubs, etc.) over the same time.

My hypothesis is that in those who are introduced to Gacha games, you will see an increase in other 'addictive' behavior, because the content they see will whittle away at their resistance to other addictive behaviors.

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#123

Post by sjg007 »

coding123 wrote: post #113
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 ("…

I see the rest of society buying and liking the typical brands such as: Tide, Kraft, Nabisco, Pepsi-co, what have you and I shutter. It's really weird but I started to have an adverse reaction to all the companies that actually advertise and I'm always on the look out for companies that use few ingredients and in general have no commercials. And this has changed me so much. Even seeing that stereo typical hot-rod sty…

You are a different class of consumer. But you too are actively marketed at.

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#124

Post by bogwog »

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 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.

I hate this argument. It's tries to find a solution to sustain the status quo in the face of change. But that's illogical because if there is a change, then the status quo is going to change too.

The only way Facebook is going to stop doing targeted advertising is if they're forced to, likely due to new regulations. If that happens, Facebook's entire business model will collapse, so they'll either have to make massive fundamental changes to how they make money, or they'll die and be taken over by a competitor.

In either case, users don't "owe" Facebook anything. Consumers are the life blood of the economy, and thinking about how consumers should change their behaviors to sustain a corporation is backwards thinking.

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#125

Post by stronglikedan »

j7ake wrote: post #119

I definitely wouldn’t mind limits on these like there are limits to how much alcohol you can drink when you’re already clearly too drunk.

> there are limits to how much alcohol you can drink

Pedantic, but there's only limits on how much you can buy while clearly drunk. Although, I suppose passing out is sort of a limit on how much you can drink.

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#126

Post by olalonde »

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 ("…

> 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?

Of course humans aren't perfectly rational but I'd argue it's still a good assumption to make, as a society, because the alternative leads to a very disturbing path. Ultimately, assuming individuals don't really know what's best for themselves can be used to justify all kinds of authoritarian measures from limiting speech to straight up enslavement.

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#127

Post by gibolt »

olalonde wrote: post #126
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 ("…

> 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? Of course humans aren't perfectly rational but I'd argue it's still a good assumption to make, as a society, because the alternative leads to a very disturbing path. Ultimately, assuming individuals don't really know what's best for themselves can be used to…

Jumping from ads to enslavement is one of the biggest stretches I've seen on HN...

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#128

Post by rimiform »

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 ("…

Something like Lynx (called Axe here) is probably a great example for a different reason, being that it would not exist were it not for the very advertising that promotes it. The aversion for natural body odour (that is, not 'sweaty' smell) is given by advertising, same with the aversion for 'bad breath'.

Banning advertising would kill these products, because they add no value except to solve the problem they created.

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#129

Post by olalonde »

a3camero wrote: post #104
Mirioron wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.)

> Wouldn't that be a great outcome? Cheap cars or cheap cola?

Bingo. And that's why normal people don't care about ads if they get Facebook and Google for free.

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#130

Post by marcinzm »

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…

I mean, you already have that via the Facebook EULA for example. You give them a license to use your data however they want and in return you get access to Facebook. You can not accept their terms and in return they can not allow you to use Facebook.
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