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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?

#201

Post by Mirioron »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #170
Mirioron wrote: post #90

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…

> People should be allowed to make their own choices in a free society. When the rest of the "free society" has to bear the costs of certain choices, it doesn't seem so illegitimate to argue that it has some interest in constraining those choices. And there of course is the endless contradiction of being a social creature: on the one hand, being part of a society creates possibilities that were not there before, but…

>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.

But we obviously tolerate this to some extent. I think it's reasonable to limit smoking so that it doesn't cause second hand smoking effects on other people. However, going further than that seems odd to me. If they're only hurting themselves then I don't see the problem with it. We allow people to do extreme sports, we allow them to drink alcohol, we allow them to do high stress jobs, we allow them to eat sugar, we allow them to do a long list of things that can hurt them, but we tolerate most of those because people should be free to choose how to live their life. Yet somehow on a small list of things we control people's behavior. If they don't follow it then they're considered immoral. (We don't call them immoral, but that's how we treat them.)

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#202

Post by s1artibartfast »

bogwog wrote: post #124
IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tar…

I think you might be missing the main point of the argument. It is not that users owe or need to sustain facebook.

It is that most users may prefer keeping FB and targeted adds, over losing FB and taking down targeted adds.

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#203

Post by s1artibartfast »

mistermann wrote: post #184
s1artibartfast wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> teaching people to be able to practice it during realtime conversations of unrelated object level discussions (say, politics) is something else entirely.

In my experience, once you give people the basic toolkit for introspection, it can kick off a positive feedback loop. Not everyone will become a stoic, but they can make meaningful progress on their own.

> 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.

On the contrary I think those who see this as negative are few and far between. Democratic power in the western world has never been greater than today, so if this is something the people want, there is very little that can stand in their way

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#204

Post by seph-reed »

mistermann wrote: post #188
seph-reed wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Rallying for mass adoption -- generally -- should be done after having discussed it in an open-minded setting.

Most ideas become refined as they grow from very small open-minded spaces, towards mass appeal. So perhaps this idea can be refined as well... no sense in trying not trying.

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#205

Post by alentist »

benjaminjosephw wrote: post #63
agent008t wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose there are both philosophical and pragmatic reasons for the current situation: 1. Philosophical - you don't want to get the threat of physical force involved unless there is a very very good reason for doing so. That is, you don't want to make things illegal. So we forbid outright lying and fraud, openly misleading customers, but allow things that you describe. If you have a private online platform, why shou…

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…

> coercion of persuasion

Don't butcher the English language.

That's not what coercion means. Persuasion is not a "coercion".

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#206

Post by bryanrasmussen »

winston_smith wrote: post #195
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #109

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…

If your assumption is that people are helpless to resist persuasion, then who is this incorruptible entity who will protect us from having to make our own choices?

the assumption is that there is some point where people need to be protected, the scenario I envisage is a point where it is extremely obvious because if there was an advertisement that could cause you to automatically buy it people would need to be protected or the company with the advertised product would soon have all the money and all their customers would end up enslaved to it. The question of course is if there are any less extreme scenarios where people need to be protected.

But I think the real question that needs asking here Winston, is when are you going to just give up and love Big Brother?

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#207

Post by alentist »

Super_Jambo wrote: post #105
agent008t wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Tax codes, Health and Safety, Child Labour, Employee exploitation

These also apply to individuals.

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#208

Post by s1artibartfast »

Barrin92 wrote: post #9
benjaminjosephw wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the article does a good job of showing that current technology has the power to be a lot more persuasive than it ever has been. You could nit-pick on the effectiveness of individual methods but the broader point is clearly evident: technology, and our increasing use of it, has more potential to implement, test and refine new persuasive techniques at a scale never seen before in human history. The evidence for…

My point is that I think this kind of thinking is disempowering and counterproductive. By framing technology companies as all powerful, even if that's possibly inaccurate and overblown, tech supremacy becomes inevitable in the eyes of people who see it as lacking any alternatives. ("If they can predict me this well, they must know better, right?") I think this is why Silicon Valley loves to invite their critics who a…

This is also very common in politics. There is a presumption that the government is corrupt and working counter to public benefit.

In reality, the voting public ultimately has 100% control. Most of the people who spend time lamenting about the power of political advertising, lobbying, ect have never once knocked on a door and tried to change someone's mind about an issue.

Unfortunately, believing in a world view where the you are disenfranchised victim is incredibly convenient. It allows individuals to absolve themselves of responsibility while doing nothing.

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#209

Post by PeterisP »

missedthecue wrote: post #166
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's this problem in the sciences and higher academe where we give things names that sound like something but mean another. For instance, Einstein's Special Theory of Relatively is a common example. Ask the average person on the street what it means and they'd say, "Well of course I know what it means, after all, it means that everything is relative." Well obviously that's not what it means. What it means is that…

"Individuals can own and sell property" is part of but not the whole concept of free market.

All the economic theory of free market (and all the advantages of it) rely on a few core assumptions, like liberty to trade and set prices, but also lots of buyers, lots of sellers, full competition, low barriers of entry and full information.

Just as it's well known that a market that devolves into monopoly or oligopoly does not work like a free market anymore, or in the case of severely unequal bargaining power, the same applies in the case of information asymmetry, which also is well known to lead to a failure of free market.

So whether "people are easily affected by suggestion" does matter, because if that becomes the case and companies are widely using effective methods to do so, then the resulting economic structure of the competition is not like a free market.

Re: Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

#210

Post by erichocean »

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 ("…

The solution is to ban all advertising, everywhere, for everyone, for any reason, without exceptions.

People should affirmatively seek out sales materials, not be inadvertently subjected to them.

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