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"We’re constantly working to detect and stop this type of activity because we don’t want our services to be used to manipulate people." What do they think adver
by gaze 7y ago
"We’re constantly working to detect and stop this type of activity because we don’t want our services to be used to manipulate people." What do they think advertising is?
- jachee 7y agoThe "politically" seems to be implied.
- uniformlyrandom 7y agoMore like 'without paying us first'.
- jachee 7y agoOh, I doubt that. I imagine they don't want paid propaganda, either, since that'll make them appear complicit, politically.
- gaze 7y agoThis rhymes with when people say “it’s just politics.” What does that even mean?
- jachee 7y agoFacebook is totally okay with people being influenced to buy things, but doesn't want to be seen to sway their non-consumption-related opinions.
- tzs 7y agoMost advertising is attempting persuasion, not manipulation.
- gaze 7y agoThere’s a wide spectrum between “eat oat bran it’s good for colon health” and “diamonds are forever,” and I see what foreign governments do these days as being somewhere in the middle.
- BurningFrog 7y agoThose words only differ in emotional charge, not factual meaning. In other words, "manipulation" is just persuasion that you (or I) don't like. I'm open to being persuaded otherwise :)
- tzs 7y agoTo persuade is to "Induce (someone) to do something through reasoning or argument" (Oxford), to "move by argument, entreaty, or expostulation to a belief, position, or course of action" (Merriam-Webster), or "to plead with" (Merriam-Webster). To manipulate is to "Control or influence (a person or situation) cleverly or unscrupulously" (Oxford), or to "control or play upon by artful, unfair, or insidious means especially to one's own advantage" (Merriam-Webster), or to "change by artful or unfair means so as to serve one's purpose" (Merriam-Webster). Manipulation implies a level of deceit and deception that persuasion does not. They are sufficiently different in meaning that thesaurus.com does not list either as a synonym of the other. Neither does whatever Google is using as its thesaurus source when it decides to answer itself instead of link to a site.
- ambicapter 7y agoPersuasion sounds like the recipient has the choice to take part in the persuasion, while ad exposure is something most people don't really control.
- kerkeslager 7y ago> Manipulation implies a level of deceit and deception that persuasion does not. Actually, if we're going to get into this nitpicky level of semantics, none of the words "cleverly, unscrupulously, artful, unfair, insidious" mean "deceit" or "deception". I'd argue that advertising is pretty inherently unscrupulous, and if it's at all effective, it's clever, artful, and insidious. And you can argue all day long that it's not "especially to one's own advantage" or "to serve one's purpose", but the fact is that if it was really providing a service to customers and not just serving advertisers, that service would be better provided by a neutral third party (such as Consumer Reports, OutdoorGearLab, etc.). But while we're at it, plenty of advertising is deceitful and deceptive too, so even if that's a prerequisite for being manipulative, advertising is still often manipulative.
- NoodleIncident 7y agoGoing even further, a lot of people in the advertisement industry see it as just providing a way for companies to inform consumers that their products even exist. The point of ad targeting in this worldview is to figure out who already wants to know that certain products exist, not to change anyone's mind by getting them to purchase something they don't want to.
- cameronbrown 7y agoAs someone who's worked with ads campaigns, yes that's true and entirely how I thought about it, but there are so many bad apples too, those disgusting Taboola ads as an example.
- OnlyRepliesToBS 7y agolol
- spunker540 7y agoAds are at least usually marked as such rather than through fake accounts controlled by bots with an agenda pretending to be real people.
- qtplatypus 7y agoAds are payed for and marked as such.
- Schnitz 7y ago"you should buy an iPhone" is a far less objectionable message than "you should help us oppress these people over there".