Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Researchers fear a scenario in which smart speakers feed sleepers subliminal ads

sciencemag.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 329 posts

Re: Researchers fear a scenario in which smart speakers feed sleepers subliminal ads

#71

Post by mr_sturd »

filchermcurr wrote: post #59

On the bright side, smart speakers aren't even a little bit essential, so it's easy enough to just not buy them if this starts happening. I don't think the value proposition of an always-on device connected to a vast advertising network is very high to begin with. Throw in subliminal advertising and you'd have to be very... dedicated... to want such a device. If it succeeds even a little, though, they'll bake it into…

> Smart enough to let us hear little things like fire alarms or panicked screams, of course.

Then all ads will start with panicked screams and fire alarms.

Re: Researchers fear a scenario in which smart speakers feed sleepers subliminal ads

#72

Post by julianpye »

pjerem wrote: post #10
julianpye wrote: post #8

Every morning I ask my three-year old if she dreamt something nice. "No", she said a few weeks ago, "just ads".

Not sure if you are making a pretty fun joke, or telling us an horrible truth.

I think it is both. We laughed a lot, but also realized that what our dreams show us are sometimes just 'ads' for a life that society expects us to live.

Re: Researchers fear a scenario in which smart speakers feed sleepers subliminal ads

#73

Post by foobar33333 »

kleiba wrote: post #54
sydthrowaway wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing works on Safari

Then you must like Safari more than you despise ads.

There is no alternative on ios. I choose not to watch videos on mobile over using android.

Re: Researchers fear a scenario in which smart speakers feed sleepers subliminal ads

#74

Post by dash2 »

Calm down, Adam Curtis. I see zero evidence here that researchers can in fact implant anything in someone's dreams. Well, except by playing 3 hours of Tetris. The video "documenting" Coors' effort is a joke ad by Coors bemoaning the fact they can't get into the Superbowl. This is just a bunch of shady researchers trying to gin up some publicity for the !!!!terrifying power!!!! of their work (p = 0.048, one-tailed).

Re: Researchers fear a scenario in which smart speakers feed sleepers subliminal ads

#75

Post by foobar33333 »

newsbinator wrote: post #62

Is there an amount of money I can pay monthly, which gets put into a pot and distributed to various companies? That way they get my money without needing to advertise to me and without needing to produce any products or pay salaries, and I get to live a calmer life.

Sure, but then that becomes the baseline and one company will advertise anyway to make even more money

Re: Researchers fear a scenario in which smart speakers feed sleepers subliminal ads

#76

Post by mPReDiToR »

taurath wrote: post #68
Magodo wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think the value proposition of an always-on device connected to a vast advertising network is very high to begin with This is more of a hacker perspective though. All my non technical friends have been seduced by offers of either Alexa or Google Home. Because in my region, they are commonly sold at a huge price discount with almost any medium to large purchase. EX: Buy a laptop - Google Home at 50% off > If…

They would literally give the devices away for free if they thought people would trust it as much as if they paid for it.

That comment has applied to TV's for generations, too.

The propaganda must get through.

Re: Researchers fear a scenario in which smart speakers feed sleepers subliminal ads

#77

Post by Cthulhu_ »

dash2 wrote: post #74

Calm down, Adam Curtis. I see zero evidence here that researchers can in fact implant anything in someone's dreams. Well, except by playing 3 hours of Tetris. The video "documenting" Coors' effort is a joke ad by Coors bemoaning the fact they can't get into the Superbowl. This is just a bunch of shady researchers trying to gin up some publicity for the !!!!terrifying power!!!! of their work (p = 0.048, one-tailed).

I think they can, but it's not directed as such yet. I mean how often have you had a catchy ad tune or catchphrase stuck in your head? like the McD's whistle / catchphrase, or EA Sports, or the really catchy sex phone line tune, or 0118 999 88199 9119 725... 3

Re: Researchers fear a scenario in which smart speakers feed sleepers subliminal ads

#78

Post by Cthulhu_ »

rubatuga wrote: post #56
sydthrowaway wrote: post #13

Has anyone noticed 2-3 ads per YouTube video (especially midstream)? It’s getting ridiculous. There’s got to be a stop to this madness.

Yeah it's called YouTube Premium. Think like a Netflix subscription but for YouTube. Google probably A/B tested different versions of YouTube to see which one generated more YouTube Premium subscribers. It turns out that the higher $$$-generating code (i.e. driving Premium subscriptions) is the one that bypasses Safari's adblocking engine.

Is there guaranteed no ads with Premium or do they still put ads in there? I mean some streaming services and of course the old paid cable TV did.

Re: Researchers fear a scenario in which smart speakers feed sleepers subliminal ads

#79

Post by ptha »

Also linked in the article, scientists have experimented on communicating with Lucid dreamers (low-tech version of Inception), asking yes/no and simple maths questions.

The researchers asked 158 questions of the lucid dreamers, who responded correctly 18.6% of the time, the researchers report today in Current Biology. The dreamers gave the wrong answer to only 3.2% of the questions; 17.7% of their answers were not clear and 60.8% of the questions got no response. The researchers say these numbers show the communication, even if difficult, is possible

The scientists questions were incorporated into the lucid dreamers dreams: One dreamer reported math problems coming out of a car radio. Another was at a party when he heard the researcher interrupting his dream, like a narrator in a movie, to ask him whether he spoke Spanish.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/02/scientists-entered-p...

Re: Researchers fear a scenario in which smart speakers feed sleepers subliminal ads

#80

Post by Cthulhu_ »

sydthrowaway wrote: post #13

Has anyone noticed 2-3 ads per YouTube video (especially midstream)? It’s getting ridiculous. There’s got to be a stop to this madness.

I should look up the local TV advertising rules, I'm fairly confident it's not allowed to have five 6-15 second ads interrupting a ten minute program.

edit: apparently up to 20% of time can be spent on ads (12 minutes per hour), can't find anything about frequency though.

Post reply on HN