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>Because manipulation is great. You can help people by manipulating them, you can measurably improve their lives. That's a big reason for me. That's like "why s

>Because manipulation is great. You can help people by manipulating them, you can measurably improve their lives. That's a big reason for me. That's like "why should we heal the sick?" Are you really comparing targeted ad manipulation to medical professionals healing people? And yes, it can help improve lives, but there's also a flipside to what it can do (read: Cambridge Analytica, Russia, etc.). There are negative connotations to manipulation that you need to keep in mind. >Ads that are completely random won't pay the bills... It's worked for TV and radio for decades. They're still somewhat targeted but in a far, far less invasive manner, and they're not individualized.

luckylion 8y ago
I would've replied sooner, but the silly "oh no, you've posted two times in one hour and somebody didn't like what you said, go cool of for 12 hours" function didn't allow it. Talk about manipulating users' behavior. > Are you really comparing targeted ad manipulation to medical professionals healing people? No, I'm comparing beneficial targeted manipulation (notice the lacking of the word "ad") to healing people. You CAN use a knife to murder somebody, but you CAN also use it to perform life saving surgery on them. Advocating for banning all knifes because you don't want people to murder seems weird to me. Facebook literally tested what they can do with targeted manipulation [1], and they found that they can do both good and bad with it. It freaked the public out, and so do knifes, and I get that. The problem isn't that you can use it only for evil, the problem is that FB & their customers don't want people in a good place mentally and emotionally, because you're less likely to buy things you don't need or spend hours on their site. And that's what was suggested: have a social network that isn't run from the Bay area trying to maximize profit extraction, but one that's user focused. You know, where the user is the customer, not the ad agency. > There are negative connotations to manipulation that you need to keep in mind. As there are to using a knife on people. I'm saying "let's ban the bad part and use the good part". Facebook, Google probably know more about their regular users than those users' family, psychiatrists, psychologists and even the users themselves. Are you aware of the potential good they could do with that? Yeah, we won't solve mental health issue by manipulating people, but we'll make it a whole lot better, and we can measure that. > It's worked for TV and radio for decades. Not it really didn't, because they barely used random ads. Most shows' demographics where very specific and they don't run car ads during the sunday morning cartoon hour. Hell, they created show concepts to target demographics so they could then sell ads reaching that demographics. I suppose suggesting to use technology for good doesn't go over well with this crowd. More and more I feel that we're letting the wrong people design, build and steer the technology that will shape the future. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-apologises-psychological-experiments-on-users https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-...

luckylion 8y ago

I would've replied sooner, but the silly "oh no, you've posted two times in one hour and somebody didn't like what you said, go cool of for 12 hours" function didn't allow it. Talk about manipulating users' behavior. > Are you really comparing targeted ad manipulation to medical professionals healing people? No, I'm comparing beneficial targeted manipulation (notice the lacking of the word "ad") to healing people. You CAN use a knife to murder somebody, but you CAN also use it to perform life saving surgery on them. Advocating for banning all knifes because you don't want people to murder seems weird to me. Facebook literally tested what they can do with targeted manipulation [1], and they found that they can do both good and bad with it. It freaked the public out, and so do knifes, and I get that. The problem isn't that you can use it only for evil, the problem is that FB & their customers don't want people in a good place mentally and emotionally, because you're less likely to buy things you don't need or spend hours on their site. And that's what was suggested: have a social network that isn't run from the Bay area trying to maximize profit extraction, but one that's user focused. You know, where the user is the customer, not the ad agency. > There are negative connotations to manipulation that you need to keep in mind. As there are to using a knife on people. I'm saying "let's ban the bad part and use the good part". Facebook, Google probably know more about their regular users than those users' family, psychiatrists, psychologists and even the users themselves. Are you aware of the potential good they could do with that? Yeah, we won't solve mental health issue by manipulating people, but we'll make it a whole lot better, and we can measure that. > It's worked for TV and radio for decades. Not it really didn't, because they barely used random ads. Most shows' demographics where very specific and they don't run car ads during the sunday morning cartoon hour. Hell, they created show concepts to target demographics so they could then sell ads reaching that demographics. I suppose suggesting to use technology for good doesn't go over well with this crowd. More and more I feel that we're letting the wrong people design, build and steer the technology that will shape the future. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-apologises-psychological-experiments-on-users https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-...