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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?

#181

Post by cycomanic »

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…

I have a solution, if corporations are just voluntary associations of people, then all the people voluntarily associated with the association should be responsible for the corporations actions. So if the corporation is caught breaking the law, all shareholders become personally responsible and face jail time. No more shielding from personal responsibility with limited liability etc..

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#182

Post by bonoboTP »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #178
bonoboTP wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In another discussion on philosophy someone mentioned a principle they didn't have a name for, but applies here as well. Their example was that you can ethically look at a license plate and memorize it, but if you get a network of people at strategic positions of a town to meticulously write down all license plates 24/7 and collect this in a central place, that becomes an unethical/illegal privacy violation. Enough q…

Im not sure I follow your opening premise. Why is strategic tracking of license plates unethical? I am pretty sure it is not illegal. You can pay a private detective to follow someone around town taking pictures.

In Europe, even before the GDPR, but especially after it, this would be illegal. It's personally identifiable information and tracking it requires consent.

Private investigators - not sure how legal that is around here and what are the constraints.

Example - for a job application I recently needed a background check by a US company. As soon as I filled out my current location as a European country, a consent form popped up. They can't go sniffing around even in the public records and compile stacks of background info on people at the scale a company does this.

Lots of things are public outdoors only with the common sense understanding that it's ephemeral, is just remembered by people's imperfect memory and won't be meticulously categorized and stored somewhere, unless there is consent. Now, you can make small scale notes and a personal journal about whom you got to know at a party etc. You can take tourist shots and have random people in the pictures but you can't follow people around and photograph them specifically as the main subject of the photo without their consent. Public figures and officials like the police don't have such privacy rights on duty.

It's about the scale of it, and common sense judgment of whether it systematic data collection or something just happening normally as life goes on. But I'm not a lawyer, I'm just describing the broad principle.

The law and people's intuition may be different in the US.

----

If you don't like this, think about another example: hitting/patting your friend on the back as banter or congratulations or something. How strongly do I have to hit them to commit assault? What if it's my frail grandma? Intent, scale and common sense matter. There is no law saying the exact amount of force I am allowed to apply.

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#184

Post by mistermann »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #175
kongolongo wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe but as of yet there doesn't appear to be any clearly net positive solutions (IMO) that can both curb emotional appeal and cognitive biases without introducing harms themselves.

These is always enducation. Teaching people to identify the biases and analyze their emotional reactions. I cant think of any downside here.

Teaching people things like logic, critical thinking, psychological biases, etc so they understand it when in abstract thinking mode when the topic is just that is one thing - teaching people to be able to practice it during realtime conversations of unrelated object level discussions (say, politics) is something else entirely.

> I cant think of any downside here.

I can imagine many people who may see a downside of a population who is broadly capable of skilful critical thinking. I don't think it's an accident that we only talk about the crucial need for it, but never talk about actually doing something about it.

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#185

Post by Bakary »

There are two hilarious subtexts that always accompany these sorts of arguments:

-It's okay to use persuasive technology to push political orientations I agree with

-We want to defend democracy but we implicitly agree as commentators above the fray that people can't be trusted to make the right decisions and have to be manipulated towards our preferred orientation

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#186

Post by pdonis »

missedthecue wrote: post #179
pdonis wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whether or not people are 'easily affected by suggestion' as you put it, has got no impact on the concept of free markets. Yes, it does. A free market is not just about individuals owning and trading property. A free market requires that all trades are voluntary . If people are forced, for example by law, to make trades they would not freely choose to make, you do not have a free market: forced trades are not volun…

You are correct that if you are compelled by the government to do something it's not a free market. But if coca-cola convinces you to try a new flavor through a marketing campaign, it does not eliminate the free market. It was your choice the whole time.

> if coca-cola convinces you to try a new flavor through a marketing campaign, it does not eliminate the free market.

If the marketing campaign is open, and I'm aware that that's what it is, and it doesn't make any actual false claims (puffery is another matter--that's basically unavoidable), then yes, it's my choice whether or not to be convinced.

If the "marketing campaign" is really efforts behind the scenes to present me with misleading information and to disguise the motives behind it, that's something different.

It is true that efforts of the latter sort are not new. What impact new "persuasive technologies" have on the frequency or success rate of such nefarious tactics is, I think, an open question.

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#188

Post by mistermann »

seph-reed wrote: post #162
mistermann wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You simply cannot ban emotional appeals in principle, because all appeals have an emotional component. This way lies a dystopia far more terrible than "grandpa shared some nonsense on facebook". True enough. But are you implying (not saying you are, just asking) that ~"nothing can be done"? "Banning emotional appeals....This way lies a dystopia..." is just one option - might there be other approaches that could imp…

Obviously there are approaches that could improve this situation. But most people like to project the stupidest idea they possibly can on anything they have a negative emotional response for. This problem space has barely been cracked open, and we're going to have to get big smart about it before it destroys us.

> This problem space has barely been cracked open, and we're going to have to get big smart about it before it destroys us.

100% agree, but try getting any group of people to agree on this idea even in principle.

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#189

Post by JoshTko »

stickfigure wrote: post #131
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 ("…

There is absolutely no limit to this. Putting on a suit for a financial job interview exploits the cognitive biases of interviewers. Tattoos exploit the cognitive biases of hipsters. Putting hockey-stick growth projections in pitch decks exploits the cognitive biases of VCs. Equity grants (pretty much always) exploit the cognitive biases of startup employees. Driving a fancy car exploits the cognitive biases of (a ve…

We're going to have to figure out the right limit at some point. Otherwise we're heading towards some neural network continually feeding depression vulnerable people content that keeps them in a perpetual state of depression in order to optimize engagement. Perhaps we're already there.
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