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Google and Meta struck secret ads deal to target teenagers

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

#61

Post by andrepd »

aeurielesn wrote: post #58

Nothing will change as long as C-suite roles keep breaking the law and walking away scott free. Also goes for the investors promoting this behavior at startup level.

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 improving our lives. We prefer having a couple trillion-$ companies wreaking havoc on our societies and especially on teenagers and children than not having those companies.

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

#63

Post by mattacular »

Zambyte wrote: post #50
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.

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.

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

#64

Post by hn72774 »

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.

Tax ad revenue as a vice like at alcohol and tobacco levels, or higher.

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

#65

Post by x3ro »

londons_explore wrote: post #30
imiric wrote: post #22

"We're sorry." This is not surprising. Google has a history violating the privacy of and targetting ads to not only teenagers, but children: - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/23/business/youtube-ads-kids... - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/09/business/media/youtube-ki... - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/20/business/media/google-you... - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/04/technology/google-youtube... - https://www.n…

Not allowing advertising to children I think isn't the correct route for society. Instead we should prevent children having money. Until you're 16, you may not handle money. You may not buy things for money. You may not sell things. You may not enter into contracts to exchange money. Your parents however can do all of those things on your behalf. At that point, advertising to children no longer is relevant - the chil…

Ah yes, don’t give children _any_ responsibility with money until they are 16, and then just throw them into cold water and expect them to know how to manage spending.. Sorry for being sarcastic here, and I know how to raise children is a divisive topic, but this sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Let’s give children responsibility and agency as early as possible, so they can learn to make decisions.

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

#66

Post by nonrandomstring »

netsharc wrote: post #57
Xen9 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mind would be the source. This is actually one of my least confident comments; I was almost not going to post it. I consider putting a text together later. Regardless—I've observed, to one example, a young girl I know wanting to buy horse toys to make YouTube horse videos with play & interest in horses being a side motive. The adults are proud of her basically being an instrument of marketing. On one hand, making…

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 explicitly does not or cannot be shared. I think maybe it somehow earns more respect and interest than a photo, and I think with ubiquitous AI image manipulation the currency of "pics or it didn't happen" and "for the Gram" is going to vanish in a puff of incredulity. Now you can just text-prompt for a picture of you and some celebrity you "randomly met" in front of Buckingham Palace or the Taj Mahal! You can probably rent some bots to "auto-like" you on social media, right? So who is fooling who now?

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

#67

Post by moffkalast »

imiric wrote: post #22

"We're sorry." This is not surprising. Google has a history violating the privacy of and targetting ads to not only teenagers, but children: - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/23/business/youtube-ads-kids... - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/09/business/media/youtube-ki... - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/20/business/media/google-you... - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/04/technology/google-youtube... - https://www.n…

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

#68

Post by guerrilla »

hn72774 wrote: post #64
mattacular wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Tax ad revenue as a vice like at alcohol and tobacco levels, or higher.

It's not an abused substance, it's violence.

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

#69

Post by agmater »

netsharc wrote: post #55
GuB-42 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is already the case, more or less. Parents manage their children assets, including money, and children abilities to enter into contract is very limited. They can manipulate money, but only if they parents let them, and they usually do, because it would be crazy not to. It changes nothing to the situation with ads. Ads for children actually target the parents, manipulating children so that they can in turn manipula…

I remember when I was a kid (a long time ago now...), Dr. Martens shoes were the fashion, that my school forbade them. We had uniforms, but the rule with shoes was just that they had to be black. I think the ban was on the technicality that the stiching was yellow, so they're not black shoes. And a student tried to loophole the loophole by coloring the yellow stitching black. I wonder if some brands give out free stu…

> I wonder if some brands give out free stuff to "child influencers" so other kids would moan to their parents about buying the items...

See Ryan's World on Youtube for example, it's a huge industry.

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

#70

Post by whywhywhywhy »

moffkalast wrote: post #67
imiric wrote: post #22

"We're sorry." This is not surprising. Google has a history violating the privacy of and targetting ads to not only teenagers, but children: - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/23/business/youtube-ads-kids... - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/09/business/media/youtube-ki... - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/20/business/media/google-you... - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/04/technology/google-youtube... - https://www.n…

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Because when they try to solve it the solution is us navigating a cookie dialog puzzle where if we lose we give up our privacy.

The setting could have just been a browser toggle, but because of government incompetence every publisher gets to skirt the guidelines and trick or frustrate people into clicking accept.

You can be against the problem and against incompetents forcing bad solutions at a government level or using it to build income streams through fines.

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