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Internal Facebook Note: Here Is A “Psychological Trick” To Target Teens
- Froyoh 8y agoWhat a dirty trick I must say.
- phoneyphone 8y agoSo they did grassroots marketing? Like when a barber shop creates an Instagram profile to get the word out..
- newscracker 8y agoI don't think this practice is shady in any way or manipulative like what Facebook has done in several instances. They used some techniques to raise curiosity and get some engagement. That's just Marketing 101, with the execution method being different for this target. Also, so much fluff to get to the point? Buzzfeed, these articles could be much better reads with some editing to cut down the length, avoiding repeating points a few times and getting to the crux of the matter quickly.
- coolso 8y ago> Also, so much fluff to get to the point? Buzzfeed, these articles could be much better reads with some editing to cut down the length, avoiding repeating points a few times and getting to the crux of the matter quickly. Buzzfeed's "News" Articles Used Psychological Tricks To Make Teens Think They Were More In-Depth and Professional Journalism-y Than They Actually Are
- moonrobin 8y agoThe entire field of marketing is hinged on applied psychology. The way that this article frames basic marketing techniques in a negative light simply because Facebook used them is the pinnacle of sensationalism.
- FussyZeus 8y agoI don't disagree, but I think it commands a certain level of "is this really good for us long term?" to ask if the fact that hundreds if not thousands of PhD holding scientists have had their collective efforts devoted to making people buy as much, download as much, consume as much, watch as much, etc. as they possibly can? I mean marketing is marketing and always has been, but where it is today the Mad Men era marketing guys couldn't have DREAMED of having. You can now target demographics with laser precision and choose the exact sort of message that's going to hit the hardest. I mean I'm all for marketing fluff and a certain level of salesmanship, that's what capitalism is based on. But you've got actual scientists putting their best foot forward to get Joe Everyman to buy, download, watch, play, stream, etc. and all the discussions I see about this paint it as even odds. That's laughable. Joe doesn't stand a fucking chance, and we all know it, and we all just keep acting like that's ok.
- taneq 8y agoThat One Weird Trick: > We eventually identified a psychological trick: > 1. Set the app’s Instagram profile to Private. > 2. Set the bio to something mysterious, e.g., “You’ve been invited to the new RHS app—stay tuned!” > 3. Follow the targeted users. > 4. Wait 24 hours to receive the inbound Follow Requests. (They were curious about our profile so they requested access) > 5. At 4:00PM when school gets out (The Golden Launch HouseTM), add the App Store URL to the profile. > 6. Finally, make the profile Public > This notified all students at the same time that their Follow Request had been accepted—and they subsequently visited our profile, looked at our App Store page, and tried the app. What Happened Next probably won't Shock You!
- imron 8y agoStudents hate them!
- 8_hours_ago 8y ago* Teachers hate them!
- petepete 8y ago> “You’ve been invited to the new RHS app—stay tuned!” The Royal Horticultural Society are really upping their social media game.
- bm3719 8y agoIn order to reduce the likelihood my child is victimized online by questionable corporate behavior, I've redirected facebook.com to infowars.com in /etc/hosts.
- naaaaak 8y agoI’m stealing this tip and propagating it.
- smt88 8y agoI can't begin to express my horror at the idea of a well-meaning parent funneling their child into a pit of abhorrent fear-mongering, bigotry, and conspiracy theories. I sincerely hope this was a weird joke.
- userbinator 8y agoI bet it was a weird joke in the hacker sense --- however "not even wrong" the content of InfoWars is, you have to admit that it is a lot more thought-provoking than Facebook.
- smt88 8y agoI don't disagree with blocking children from Facebook. Replacing it with InfoWars would be a medicine that's worse than the disease.
- amf12 8y agoExactly! Teaching them the importance of privacy and the harm of social media would be a hundred times better than redirecting facebook.com to infowars.com. I would be pissed off if my parents had done that to me.
- sAbakumoff 8y agoYeah, and in 20 years you kid will have an appointment with the AI driven shrink developed by Facebook...and it will be seriously pissed off when it finds out that you redirected facebook to infowars. Be ready!
- toast_coder 8y agoThis seems fairly benign. What's giving it the coverage and negative feedback here is the fact that somebody call it a 'psychological trick'. Is an ice cream truck playing music and slowing rolling down your street on a hot summer day also a psychological trick we need to guard against? Accounting for human congregations and 'appealing to their curiosity' is a part of the human existence. Downloading junk is also a life lesson, they will learn.
- jeremylylebrown 8y agoBut when will they learn? What if it's too late for them to claim their attention span back, as they go down the spiral of useless junk/social media? And what about the people who never learn - is it their fault? I suppose if kids/people learn to treat personalized (and well-timed) social media invitations like I treat 3/4ths of the emails I receive, it's not terrible, just more of the same, but at worst, those individuals most vulnerable to distraction/suggestion will end up even more distracted and hustled out of their money. I understand that it's up to people to be their own judge, but people en masse are vulnerable to all this marketing stuff. This in particular just seems somewhat more invasive.
- s3r3nity 8y agoIf you want to criticize the entire field of neuromarketing, fine - it's an interesting discussion to have. But I agree with parent commenter in that let's not pretend Facebook is doing anything unique and/or the only ones doing this type of stuff.
- bendoernberg 8y agoWhat's the case for "billion-dollar companies using neuroscience to manipulate the behavior of individuals is a moral and societal good"? Neuromarketing seems pretty straightforwardly evil to me...
- jawarner 8y agoAre you against marketing in general? What's different about these advanced techniques? I see technology applied to marketing as a natural consequence of business. You have a point that it's not necessarily in the best interest of society at large, but how would we go about regulating the messages businesses are allowed to communicate?
- jeremylylebrown 8y agoHow do kids have a shot at a non-fragmented attention span when companies target them like this? I'm not suggesting this is anything new in marketing, but having social media app 1 feed into social media app 2 feed into etc... I fear it's harmful to society on a whole in the long run.
- godelmachine 8y agoI see they have not mentioned the methodology of the said psychological trick anywhere
- ada1981 8y agoI see you have not read the article.
- caiocaiocaio 8y agoEvery time I see an article condemning Facebook, there's always a Facebook share button visible.
- egfx 8y agoAnd now you can even get them on Twitter! https://2fb.me https://2fb.me what a time to plug my app to the unsuspecting HN crowd.
- yotamoron 8y agoFacebook is evil.
- chrischen 8y agoThe irony is that this article is using a psychological trick to get us to read basically a non-story about how a startup tried to acquire users using not really a psychological trick. "Facebook's Teen App" really means "Third Party App Facebook Eventually Acquired"
- hanspeter 8y agoIt's Buzzfeed. Their entire existence is based on psychological tricks. Ironic indeed.
- saudioger 8y agoThe trick itself isn't very shitty, but some of the mentality is: "Our team obsessed with finding ways to get individual high schools to adopt a product simultaneously." Seriously? getting a bunch of kids to adopt a product is what you want to obsess about? How about helping companies make a product that's not shit so you don't have to trick kids into using it.
- lysp 8y agoGetting large groups of people to join a new social app is very tricky. Take a dating app/site for example. You join - there's 2 people on the platform and they are no where near your location. People leave and the product fails. Start a social media app/site that doesn't have the backing of a large company and large media/news advertising - you join, no one is there. People leave and the product fails. Start an app like instagram where you can upload all your photos. The bulk joining doesn't matter as much, as the social aspect is not the primary purpose and that can come later. Product can grow and the "social" aspect can develop over time.
- amf12 8y agoTo be fair, all the toys/consoles have been similarly marketed to a bunch of kids (for example during after school hours) for a long time without anyone getting pissed off. It's just marketing. This doesn't really seem like a "psychological" trick to me.
- saudioger 8y agoToys are marketed so you buy something that's (hopefully) fun. Apps are marketed and given away for free to collect data on how to influence children. In many cases they're designed to be habit forming or addicting.
- amf12 8y agoBut we are talking about the marketing aspect of it here and not the utility of the product.
- freetime2 8y ago> TBH noticed that teens often list their high school in their Instagram bio. So, using a private Instagram account of its own, the company would visit a school’s location page and follow all accounts that included the school’s name. The idea of a company targeting and following individual high school students on instagram does feel a bit "off" to me. If facebook or any other billion dollar public company were doing this, a bit of public uproar would not be out of line, even if it is perfectly legal. But it sounds like TBH stopped doing this after they were acquired by FB, claiming that the methods were too “scrappy” for a big company. While facebook is of course now ultimately responsible for any actions that TBH took in the past, trying to make a big stink about it after they have already stopped (and using misleading headlines to boot) feels a bit disingenuous. EDIT: I initially missed the fact that TBH was essentially pretending to be affiliated with the school of the kids they were targeting, by creating a new account per school and saying things like "You’ve been invited to the new <school name here> app—stay tuned!" (A fairly dumb oversight on my part as that's essentially the whole point of the story). This is indeed hugely deceitful and having re-read the article it changes my opinion entirely. Facebook should be banning companies that pull stunts like this instead of buying them out for millions. I would like to see Facebook issue a statement clarifying their position on these kinds of marketing ploys, update terms of use if necessary to prevent them, and also probably issue an apology.
- SolarNet 8y agoI don't think the motive is necessarily creating stink. I think it may also in part be because other startups might want to use this technique, and YC is an incubator...
- phoneyphone 8y agoIsn't that how Facebook got started: by creating networks based around schools? I don't see the big deal, especially if the school isn't developing new communication tools for students.
- Disruptive_Dave 8y agoI think OP's beef is high school vs college.
- c3534l 8y agoTalk about a rag. That article is 95% priming you what to think and 5% information. The audacity to to call out other media companies for psychological trickery is astounding. The phrase the pot calling the kettle black doesn't do it justice.
- adtac 8y agoThe irony of Buzzfeed talking about psychological tricks lmao.
- LinuxBender 8y agoEverything about FB has been psych tactics since day one. This is not unique to FB, though they do have a fascinating resemblance to all the tests I took in the military, broken down into smaller pieces which I think the military could learn from.
- ramblerman 8y agoGiven this article is on 'buzzfeed' is definitely a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
- stemuk 8y agoIt always amazes me how long Buzzfeed can hold off the actual content of the article with useless banter without seemingly losing readers. The title mentions 'a psychological trick', but delays the actual explanation of the 'trick' until the very end of the article.
- ConceptJunkie 8y agoAs someone said above, the title of the article is a psychological trick itself.
- golergka 8y agoArticles like this make me want to switch from engineering to marketing - there's so much innovation and potential for creative solutions in this field that not may people are actually aware of. By the way, what's Facebook Quick Promotion that they mention? Is this a special kind of ad on Facebook?
- adultSwim 8y agoHilarious that this is being reported on by BuzzFeed
- znpy 8y agoParents, uncles and grandparents getting on Facebook and other social media is basically the end of social media for teens/youngsters. The one true thing teens want is freedom from parents and other relatives: they mostly represent a repressive force (positive or negative is not the issue) and they want to interact with other teens freely.
- joezydeco 8y agoI guess we all forgot that time way back when Gmail was invite-only and you had to beg someone for a way in.