261–270 of 404 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You do a disservice to anyone actually exposed to real violence. I’m sure they’d prefer advertising to violence any day
Maybe not violence, but what word more accurately describes the non-consensual exploitation of human psychology for massive profit?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We could make it illegal for minors to use the internet at all. It is too dangerous. Similar to driving. That would solve so many current problems.
I think it's more interesting when you scope it to mass media system. I think kids using the internet to communicate directly with their peers and family makes a lot of sense. Kids consuming an infinite amount of media and trying to broadcast themselves to the whole world is very often unhealthy. I think this is also true if adults, but I think kids are particularly susceptible to unhealthy habits / addictions around…
Consuming an infinite amount of media is positively wholesome by comparison.
The Instagram campaign deliberately targeted a group of users labelled as “unknown” in its advertising system, which Google knew skewed towards under-18s, these people said. Meanwhile, documents seen by the FT suggest steps were taken to ensure the true intent of the campaign was disguised. The project disregarded Google’s rules that prohibit personalising and targeting ads to under-18s, including serving ads based o…
As always with these massive corporate failures/crimes it turns out no one in any important position knew anything and it was a small group of low-level bad actors causing all the trouble. How sad that all these companies are plagued with this while the leadership is just trying to virtuously do good business!
Dictator: "You mentioned a... reeducation project of some kind...?"
Minister of Internal Affairs: "Yes sir, it's been taken care of already."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having ads targeted at children can be seen as a good thing: it trains the children in what advertising is like, about how they can be manipulated and exploited. It's good for them to get this experience while young when the stakes are low. Of course, this might also train children to be the exploiters and manipulators. Maybe their parents would think that's a good thing too, at least in the long run.
Wouldn't it be better to remove exploitation and manipulation than to subject children to it in the hopes that it somehow makes them resistant to more of it later?
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
We could make it illegal for minors to use the internet at all. It is too dangerous. Similar to driving. That would solve so many current problems.
This might be an unpopular take, but I remember being that age and having to jump through so many hoops to access the sites I wanted to access, and I swore to myself I would defend children's right to exist online. I'm 35 now. My opinion hasn't changed.
The regulations ask websites not to target advertising to children. Websites don't like that because advertising is their main means of profiting or breaking even, so they try to pull their site offline for minors, and limit their ability to communicate with others. COPPA doesn't require that you limit the ability for minors to communicate with others, but websites err on the side of caution because of the very real threat of pedophiles.
Children age 12-ish are bored out of their minds, and a lot of them are really smart and would contribute to the internet in a positive way. See the story of Aaron Swartz. He contributed so much to open software before he was even 16.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's more interesting when you scope it to mass media system. I think kids using the internet to communicate directly with their peers and family makes a lot of sense. Kids consuming an infinite amount of media and trying to broadcast themselves to the whole world is very often unhealthy. I think this is also true if adults, but I think kids are particularly susceptible to unhealthy habits / addictions around…
Are you joking? Peer communication is the most toxic, Lord Of The Flies things there is. Notice how much office politics is high school bullshit? That is what happens when you have norms set by an isolated incestuous prison-mimicking subset of society cut off from experience and wisdom. Consuming an infinite amount of media is positively wholesome by comparison.
As for work, I have had a hard time leaving jobs, because to me that also means leaving the people I work with. I guess my office life is similar to my high school life in the sense that I actually like(d) the people around me.
I think that nowadays industry flavored joke of “you either die a hero or live long enough to become…” should end with Google/Meta. What a dirtbags.
There's plenty of marketing targeted towards children outside of Big Tech. What's the difference when they do it?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And relatedly, I'm sorry that while you were speeding your brother to the hospital, you blew through a red light you couldn't stop for and caused a three-car pileup that killed an elderly woman. Firstly, surveilling every person in the world at all times to ensure safety is a gross misapplicaiton of tech that flies in the face of personal freedom and privacy. Secondly, we're not even talking about authorities surve…
> Firstly, surveilling every person in the world at all times to ensure safety is a gross misapplicaiton of tech that flies in the face of personal freedom and privacy. Are you referring to the opt-in system of surveillance which insurance companies use to monitor driving (install our app/plug our device into your OBD port)? Or are they, these days, buying data on your driving from stuff like traffic cams (wouldn't b…
Not the person you're replying to, but yes, absolutely stuff like that. (I think GP was talking about drone surveillance and stuff like that, but sure, we can talk about this too.)
The problem is that people are being coerced into giving up their privacy and autonomy. In this particular case, the coercion is (as usual) money: you presumably get a discount for letting your insurance company spy on you. I expect, though, that ultimately the insurance companies use these things as justification to charge more on average. Let's face it: most people are not particularly good drivers. That's a problem, certainly, but not one that should or will be solved by a company with a profit motive. Some people will drive within whatever arbitrary, poorly-understood parameters that makes the insurance company's algorithms happy, but most probably will not, and will likely see their premiums go up, but not realize why.
And even if this did actually result in lower premiums on average (for the people who opt into this dystopia), it's still a problem, because the implication is that only rich people are allowed to have privacy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Who is buying Lucky Charms because they find them disgusting, but somehow see them as being important? Have... you met a teenager? I'm failing to see the point of this example, as I don't think I've never met a single person who found their first cigarette enjoyable. Is your experience that people buy their first and second pack out of enjoyment of the taste?
I have never met a teenager who is concerned about eating a "whole" breakfast, no, especially if that "whole" breakfast requires eating something that is otherwise unpleasant. Even if this so-called whole breakfast was some scientific truth, proven to improve health outcomes, what teenager would care? Have... you met a teenager? I don't really see the point of the example either, frankly, but it is what we were given…
No one in their right mind would ever give their kids Oreos for breakfast, but somehow advertisements make people feel comfortable giving them Oero O's. Any person of sound mind would say that giving that to your kids as a meal is neglect, but people do it, and it's "normal". This is the harm that marketing is capable of.
Cookies are, in fact, not a part of a complete breakfast. Evidently, you can convince people that they are by just repeating the message thousands of times to them. I don't see how the people who are involved in making those ads (or the products) can live with themselves. Convincing people to e.g. set their kids up for a life of obesity and early T2 diabetes from poor dietary habits is pure evil, and that's just one example of horrible (yet completely mundane for them) things marketers do.
Just imagine being a person who wakes up in the morning and thinks about how to best convince children to try ingesting poison[0]:
> Juul Labs, the vaping company that has long insisted it never marketed its products to teenagers, purchased ad space in its early days on numerous youth-focused websites, including those of Nickelodeon, the Cartoon Network, Seventeen magazine and educational sites for middle school and high school students, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday by the Massachusetts attorney general.
Everyone involved in something like that should be put in prison.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/12/health/juul-vaping-lawsui...