Google and Meta struck secret ads deal to target teenagers • Hacker News Board

Re: Google and Meta struck secret ads deal to target teenagers

#241

Post by Terr_ » Thu, Aug 08, 2024, 5:38 PM UTC

mattacular wrote: post #63

Zambyte wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could also make it illegal to advertise to children at all. Wouldn't that be funny if all of us started clicking "I am below 18" :D

Dream bigger? We could make it illegal to advertise period.

There may be some more-creative options out there too.

For example, in Washington State there isn't a blanket prohibition on signs advertising to people on the highway, but anything advertised must be available for purchase on the property. So far, that's been enough to curb companies from lining the highways with walls of giant billboards.

So--just spitballing here--imagine if people had a legal right to use and sell software that blocks ads or objectionable material from their view or on devices they own, and how that could lead to ad-ecosystem changes.

Re: Google and Meta struck secret ads deal to target teenagers

#242

Post by walleeee » Thu, Aug 08, 2024, 5:45 PM UTC

Unbefleckt wrote: post #25

fergonco wrote: post #19

Since I got kids I realized how they are the weakest link in the chain and are targeted by everyone. From tobacco (at the end nobody starts smoking at 30), to "free" cartoons (peppa pig backpack is not free, though), school book sellers. Heck, even the school this year pressured to put my kid in their social media. There is a whole world of people making their living out of your kids. Sorry for the rant. This is just…

Also sugary sweets are aimed at children, for whom a dose of sugar probably hits much harder. As someone who managed to quit sugar, it was like a drug addiction.

Yes, indeed it is a drug addiction.

Re: Google and Meta struck secret ads deal to target teenagers

#243

Post by mrguyorama » Thu, Aug 08, 2024, 5:51 PM UTC

pseudocomposer wrote: post #234

rurp wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm beyond being shocked by this kind of behavior but it is still striking to me how some of the most profitable companies in history will go out of their way to do shady deals for a slight short term increase in their record profits. The resulting reputational damage and future risk to their monopoly revenue has got to make deals like this -EV for the company in the long run, but decision makers at these companies a…

Reputational damage is pretty easy to limit for companies that can control what news a huge majority of people see.

If the "Craftsman" brand of tools didn't go completely out of business despite removing the lifetime warranty and just slapping the brand name on cheap chinese tools, then "Reputational damage" does not exist.

Re: Google and Meta struck secret ads deal to target teenagers

#244

Post by johnnyanmac » Thu, Aug 08, 2024, 5:52 PM UTC

belter wrote: post #225

a2128 wrote: post #15

This reads like a tragic story. Once you've collected enough data on every internet user out there to group them into different advertising cohorts, the remaining ungrouped users, by process of elimination (due to privacy or targeted advertising laws), are children; and now they can be targeted just as easily.

Looking at the stories here in the last two days, lots in HN are more worried with the location of Twitter headquarters...( Will never mention that letter...)

Don't want to go too off topic, but I legitmately don't understand the fuss. It went from California to California. If there's any forced moves to SoCal, my condolances, but I didn't get that vibe from that thread that there were a bunch of disgruntled workers.

Are people still that interested in trying to join Twitter c. 2024? I'm desperate enough in terms of money to accept if I was just handed an offer, but I sure as hell am not doing anything more than 2 interviews before my interest nosedives.

Re: Google and Meta struck secret ads deal to target teenagers

#245

Post by rexf » Thu, Aug 08, 2024, 5:52 PM UTC

nonrandomstring wrote: post #66

netsharc wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the same vine, people "doing it for the 'Gram": you go to a fancy vacation or restaurant not to enjoy the experience, but to enjoy the validation from the thumbs up, hearts, comments of your friends social media... I wonder if that's a valid craving after all, a craving for social contact, sadly a craving being answered not by real life interaction, but by a mobile client hitting some API endpoint called something…

> but to enjoy the validation Absolutely. It makes me think about the things in life that don't need "validation". Maybe it's a cliche but my dad would say about Korea and other wars "no pics, no words, you had to be there". So that was a teenage trope in the 80s and 90s too for my generation, if you were trying to be cool just say "you had to be there". It draws a circle around a personal or group experience that ex…

> Maybe it's a cliche but my dad would say about Korea and other wars "no pics, no words, you had to be there". So that was a teenage trope in the 80s and 90s too for my generation, if you were trying to be cool just say "you had to be there".

sounds like a partial retroactive justification to me. sure, you wouldn't get the full experience via a photo or verbal anecdote, but it's not like camera smartphones were ubiquitous in the 80s either.

Re: Google and Meta struck secret ads deal to target teenagers

#246

Post by radicaldreamer » Thu, Aug 08, 2024, 5:54 PM UTC

supertofu wrote: post #190

burningChrome wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds eerily familiar with how big tobacco targeted underage kids to get them hooked on their products in the 60's and 70's.

You don't even have to go that far back. Remember Juul in the 2010s?

Juul sent representatives to schools who told kids that Juuls weren’t addictive.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/health/juul-teens-vaping....

Re: Google and Meta struck secret ads deal to target teenagers

#247

Post by andrepd » Thu, Aug 08, 2024, 5:55 PM UTC

riedel wrote: post #156

andrepd wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all a natural consequence of capitalism. Heavy regulation is needed for even a semblance of a healthy society, but unfortunately capitalism's incentives themselves make regulation an uphill battle. A mixed economy with strong regulation seems to be the best system we've come up with so far. Unfortunately it's a tough sell because we're obsessed about GDP numbers and making like go up instead of actually improvin…

This seems to be the motivation of EU regulators. However, regulation also needs to be enforcible in a global setting. Also one needs to understand collateral damage to smaller enterprises (recent EU regulations only tries to target large platforms) and economy as a whole by leaving large legal uncertainties. In the end also with heavy regulations often the most ignorant players will survive. We should rather make su…

The "big company clauses" as you say do solve most of those issues: they avoid burdening small enterprises with unreasonable amounts of regulation, but they ensure (very) big companies with huge influence which act for all purposes as public platforms, and not merely as "normal" companies which happen to be very big, do have extra impositions.

Re: Google and Meta struck secret ads deal to target teenagers

#248

Post by bondarchuk » Thu, Aug 08, 2024, 5:56 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #216

Karawebnetwork wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in an area where advertising is not allowed to target children directly. As a result, the adverts don't show children playing with the toys, but present the toys in a bland setting as potential gifts for adults to buy. They will show an adult happy with a purchase. In short, they simply cannot address children directly through television. However, it's a fine line and you hardly ever see advertisements for toy…

Wow, that's really interesting. Having grown up on cartons filled with ads for toys showing kids playing with the toys, it literally never even crossed my mind that anyone would consider that objectionable, let alone pass laws against it. At most parents would be annoyed because their kid would pester them for a toy, but I've literally never heard anyone suggest that the advertising should be banned. (Advertising alc…

I have definitely heard it from parents, some kids get really insufferable during holiday season with all the frantic toy ads on tv (back when they still watched tv, I guess).

Re: Google and Meta struck secret ads deal to target teenagers

#249

Post by gretch » Thu, Aug 08, 2024, 5:57 PM UTC

Nasrudith wrote: post #23

edpichler wrote: post #18

Market data science is tragically fascinating. It's a superpower, capable of being used for eithger good or bad.

What would it look like when it is being used for good? Not being a smartass implying its existence, legitimately wondering.

There's lots of products that people really need and could help improve their lives, but they don't know about the existence of the problem/solution.

For example

"Hey do you have hip pain when walking down the stairs? Turns out this is extremely common and we solved it with this special walking stick. Click here to buy the walking stick"

"Were you an Iraq war veteran who served between 2004 and 2006? Turns out the government owes you money. Click here to get it"

"Do you like Blink 182? Turns out they are actually touring again and they are in your city next weekend. Buy tickets now"

There's tons of stuff out there that would be a win-win transaction, if only ppl knew about it.

Re: Google and Meta struck secret ads deal to target teenagers

#250

Post by mrguyorama » Thu, Aug 08, 2024, 6:01 PM UTC

Terr_ wrote: post #241

mattacular wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dream bigger? We could make it illegal to advertise period.

There may be some more-creative options out there too. For example, in Washington State there isn't a blanket prohibition on signs advertising to people on the highway, but anything advertised must be available for purchase on the property. So far, that's been enough to curb companies from lining the highways with walls of giant billboards. So--just spitballing here--imagine if people had a legal right to use and sel…

Or you can do like a few different states have done and just fucking ban billboards, and the world doesn't end, and the economy doesn't crash, and the world is an explicitly better place.

So much stupid nonsense just to not make the world a better place and I don't understand it. You don't need to be creative.

Speaking of which, at this point it's only a matter of time before some big name attempts to put a satellite in orbit that is also a billboard, so you can ALWAYS see their advertising in the nights sky, because it is not currently being used for advertising so, you know, they want to fix that. If we don't ban it now, we WILL have our night sky blocked out by advertising at some point. Companies already use big drone displays to do this.

And I guarantee you people will insist "It's not a big deal, we need advertising, we don't need to block all of it"