191–200 of 241 posts
I'm ok banning emotional appeals in advertising. Would be great to include political ads. No music, no triggering words, just cold hard facts please.
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.
There are some powerful benefits of free markets over command economies, such as decentralized self-organization, tendency towards the maximization of total surplus, and dynamic adaptation to changing conditions.
But those benefits are conditional on, for one thing, the rational behaviour of individuals.
There are ways to "hack" people such that they stop behaving rationally (with respect to the economy). The threat of violence or incarceration (maybe one you are equating with government intervention) is one of them.
But there are plenty of others: chemical addictions (e.g. cigarettes), systems that prey on the susceptibility of our dopamine-reward pathways (like slot machines, or your perhaps your facebook feed), etc.
Good policies in a free market economy are ones that make it more difficult to disrupt the beneficial aspects of a free market. I'd say good policy-making actually increases the free market-ness of markets in a messy, imperfect world.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I don't think you can compress the issue down to a "government" vs "corporation" binary. There are some powerful benefits of free markets over command economies, such as decentralized self-organization, tendency towards the maximization of total surplus, and dynamic adaptation to changing conditions. But those benefits are conditional on, for one thing, the rational behaviour of individuals. There are ways to "hack"…
Historically, our society has drawn a distinction between force (things like direct threats of violence or incarceration), which makes things done under such conditions involuntary, and things that are addictive but which people still voluntarily choose to do.
In some cases, such as smoking, we have ended up still imposing penalties on companies that purvey such products, but the basis for such penalties has not been the addictiveness of the thing, but the physical harms it causes, such as lung cancer. Addictive things that do not cause harms of the same sort, such as slot machines, have not been treated the same.
IMO that distinction is a good one: addiction does have a voluntary aspect that is not present in cases of simple threat by force. Treating addictions as though they simply override the agency of the person is not, IMO, a good idea. And I think a similar distinction can, and should, be drawn between simple threat by force and "persuasive technologies"; there is a voluntary aspect to the latter--people have to choose to believe what they are being told--just as there is with addiction.
Of course we also draw a distinction between acceptable persuasion and fraud or manipulation, which are unacceptable and punishable. That distinction is also a good one, and I think it can help to deal with "persuasive technologies" in a reasonable way.
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 pro…
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…
No. Corporations are a creature of government policy, and receive entitlements that sole proprietorships or general partnerships do not receive, such as limitation of liability.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 pop…
I think this is it precisely. I agree with you that intent, scale and common sense matter. Some of this can be included in the law or left up to a judge/magistrate to decide.
Going back to the premise of the article, before we design a privacy law for targeted advertising, we have to agree on what constitutes a level of manipulation so great it effectively takes agency away from those targeted.
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 always wondered what's stopping a rival to Facebook that offers users a share of the money they are generating. Besides the scale barrier to entry of course. Generally speaking, people like money and will switch products and services that puts money in their pocket.
They sort of do. The money is converted into the utility of the product to each user. Technically, they could lower the utility of Facebook and pay you the rest.
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 always wondered what's stopping a rival to Facebook that offers users a share of the money they are generating. Besides the scale barrier to entry of course. Generally speaking, people like money and will switch products and services that puts money in their pocket.
Most users care about the enjoyment/utility/stimulation they get out of a social network. Some users care about their privacy. Needing an extra $30-60/year does not rank high on user priorities.
While facebook might make $200/US individual, their profit margin is only 30%.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 actu…
I understand what pattern you're going for, but I don't think the study would show that. The number of people that play gacha games is small conjugated to the number of people that smoke, drink, gamble etc. Chances are that you'd likely see the reverse - doing those things could increase your likelihood of playing gacha games (or well, spending money on them - it's entirely possible to play most of these games as virtually free).