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

sciencemag.org

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

#171

Post by spywaregorilla »

hangonhn wrote: post #50
IvyMike wrote: post #18

Leela : Didn't you have ads in the 21st century? Fry : Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games... and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts, and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams, no siree.

I never appreciated Futurama when I was younger. At the time it felt like worse Simpsons but in the future. But later on I realized it’s a really good critique of our contemporary society disguised as the future looking back on us with Fry standing in for the audience. Some of the jokes are funny because they’re so biting.

The simpsons was pretty on spot too, but it was easier to just laugh at homer if the satire was over your head

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

#172

Post by briandear »

skummetmaelk wrote: post #108
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…

You underestimate what people will sacrifice in order to be able to say "Alexa, what's the weather like today" rather than pull out their phone and open the weather app which is probably faster to do anyway. "But what if I have my hands full with stuff" they'll say. Well, will you really be able to remember what Alexa says about the weather if you're busy doing other stuff anyway? All everyone can ever point out as a…

Or use HomePod and Siri and you don’t have to worry about your trading privacy for convinience.

Really when people talk about nefarious smart speakers, they are really saying “Google, Amazon, Facebook.”

It is possible to have a smart speaker that isn’t spying on you or trying to sell you stuff.

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

#173

Post by XorNot »

tremon wrote: post #119
pas wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes no sense. Every time an economic activity happens that helps people growth happens. The simple fact that when someone gets a bicycle, car, washing machine, electricity, plumbing, a phone, or whatever they value and if it helps them take better care of their family (or even themselves), that counts as growth. The problem is unsustainable growth, ecological destruction, etc. Of course effective measures (car…

"When a measure becomes a goal, it seizes to be a good measure." But as you say, the problem isn't economic growth in itself, but the fact that our entire (debt-based) economy is predicated on eternal growth. Eventually, every population reaches a steady-state equilibrium with its environment (even an artificial environment such as "the economy"). The hyper-focus on economic growth and our dependence on it causes all…

Again, this is not what economic growth is. Any efficiency improvement, any self-improvement, anything, is economic growth.

If you don't have economic growth, then tomorrow cannot be better then today. But that is a very different question to "should we cut down more rainforest?"

You've got the cause and effect backwards, and it's exactly what lobbyists for the problem areas want: arguing against economic growth is pretty trivially a bad idea, but they want you speaking in the abstract because it does useful things like not have you saying "the burning of fossil fuels is unsustainable" and "we need to tarrif unsustainably sourced palm oil" because then you're dangerously (to them) close to actually lobbying for an effective solution.

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

#174

Post by XorNot »

woliveirajr wrote: post #123
aerique wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Economic growth is not the solution: it is the problem." -- one single political party in the Netherlands that does not get enough votes

If you stop buying bottled water and use tap water, economy is shrinking. Reduce tap water and get some from your backyard and it shrinks again. Healthier economy growth

Question: what happens to all the money you don't spend on bottled water?

The economy does not shrink because you make a process more efficient.

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

#175

Post by JumpCrisscross »

southerntofu wrote: post #132
streamofdigits wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its the defining issue of our times and there is some of nuance: First, there is room (imho) for conventional growth in many parts of the world. Its insane that people go starving, without shelter or water while others throw away truckloads of food - because of "xyz". Then there is the branch of "personal growth" that is decoupled from material consumption. Getting every functioning brain to fully develop its faculti…

The fact that there's starving folks and throwaway-food, and more empty apartments than homeless persons, is an argument against growth... at least on a global level. In a system based on private property, where a piece of paper determines ownership and speculation determines production (instead of actual needs), production is necessarily harmful. Anti-productivism is not about not producing anything at all, but rath…

> organize into autonomous communes

Humans once operated like this. We were violent, suspicious of one another and traded from time to time. Most people died violent deaths or starved. (Absent any police force, I can take command of my commune on the promise of improving its wellbeing by taking your’s stuff.)

Also, I can’t autonomously grow good avocados in New York.

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

#176

Post by briandear »

sydthrowaway wrote: post #49
fogihujy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why aren't you using an ad-blocker?

Nothing works on Safari

That just isn’t true. Here’s one example: https://crystalapp.co/ and: https://better.fyi/

I use both on iOS Safari.

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

#177

Post by tgv »

southerntofu wrote: post #134
tgv wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Partij voor de Dieren. It's a simplistic slogan, probably not meant to be taken too seriously.

Why would you say that? It sounds like classical ecologist rhetoric. Stop producing shit, stop trying to measure what cannot be measure. Just make sure everyone is housed and fed and suddenly things are better. Sounds like a better and more serious political program to me than any other political party i've heard lately. But hey i'm an anarchist so "fuck capitalism" has always been my program, it's just not what we h…

> stop trying to measure what cannot be measure

That'll work out just fine, I'm sure.

> Just make sure everyone is housed and fed and suddenly things are better.

Literally 99.8% of the population is housed and fed.

But saying economic growth (however you define it) is the problem, means that economic shrinkage is a solution. I'm not so sure about that. I'm also 100% convinced the problem isn't economic growth, but pollution and other ways of exploiting nature that form part of the problem. But saying that lacks that edge.

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

#178

Post by southerntofu »

mycologos wrote: post #151
southerntofu wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such ethical standards can only be altered on a big scale through relentless struggles. Abolish competition and advertisement, and suddenly a lot of things will start to be ok in society. Yes a lot of people will loose their useless job, but that won't be a requirement to have a place to live anymore, and both individuals and society will be better off.

What does it mean to "abolish competition and advertisement"? If I come up with a new idea, I can't tell anybody about it?

Competition doesn't mean "having ideas" or going separate ways. "Competition is a rivalry where two or more parties strive for a common goal which cannot be shared" (wikipedia).

For example, competition is when you keep millions of empty apartments to make sure everybody struggles and will pay more and do whatever you say to find a place to live. Competition is also when you teach children in schools that they should not copy because it's cheating.

Advertisement is also not "telling anybody". It's paying other people to tell in your place about stuff they wouldn't want to talk about otherwise.

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

#179

Post by southerntofu »

tssva wrote: post #154
mycologos wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it mean to "abolish competition and advertisement"? If I come up with a new idea, I can't tell anybody about it?

You won't have a need to because your new idea won't be allowed anyways because it will compete with an old idea.

That's not how ideas work, except in a capitalist system. New ideas about how to better run the world are not allowed because they compete with private interest of the ruling class. The same is true in pretend-communist States like the USSR, which are just State-capitalist systems, not actual communism (where communism is according to Marx abolition of class, property and privilege... none of which were abolished in Leninist States).

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

#180

Post by XorNot »

johnchristopher wrote: post #43
Red_Tarsius wrote: post #17

They are kind of doing it already e.g. I hate when ads exploit classical music for trivial purposes. Whenever I hear Libiamo ne' lieti calici now my mind instantly fills with pizza ads. And once an association is made, it doesn't go away. Ads attach themselves to positive memories like parasites. Whenever you think back to your first kiss, a nice family moment, a cherished memory of going out with friends – here they…

This is something that I had been venting about for years to anybody I met. There's that (Coca-Cola I think) ad that ends up with teenagers watching the sunrise after a party night, they sit on a roof in what I remember could be suburban California. The ad was in the style of All I need from Air. These are very delicate and precious moments when you are a teenager. But now it's Coca-cola telling people how to feel. F…

I feel like this speaks more to the lack of enough of an ad-blocking movement though.

The real disaster of the TV-age was that we didn't have the internet to allow enough dispersal of the tools and technology to mute ads on demand, or distribute key-frame data for spotting ad breaks.

What we do today with things like ublock origin is pretty incredible and very effective.

In the marketplace of ideas, you actually need competition and competition means we need to be pushing back on ads always.

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