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This is creeping pretty close to the legal definition of fraud. But advertising has had a fair amount of safe-harbor carve-outs for over a 100 years or so that

This is creeping pretty close to the legal definition of fraud. But advertising has had a fair amount of safe-harbor carve-outs for over a 100 years or so that are not available to other industries. So it is no surprise it continues today. edit: I hate to say it but the auto-downvoters here on HN are approaching reddit levels. Everything I said above is true.

deleted 6y ago
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- deleted 6y ago
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TeMPOraL 6y ago
This is the industry whose job is to manipulate and deceive people. It should surprise no one that, if they do that to others, they'll do that to themselves as well.
jodrellblank 6y ago
> "edit: I hate to say it but the auto-downvoters here on HN are approaching reddit levels. Everything I said above is true." It's not that you're wrong, it's that you're boring. "I knew this years ago, look how my cynicism is superior to your naievite" is a boring comment to read. You could explain why you think this is any closer to fraud compared to selling anything else and claiming it's the best in its class, or what safe-harbor carve outs by whom, or why they matter more than other effects, or what you think should be done to change them, or anything more substantial than "I'm not surprised". Oh aren't you? Great, cool story bro. Except it's not /even/ a cool story. It's old man "get off my lawn". It's every tech forum's old-man status grabbing which is now approaching Reddit /r/SysAdmin levels on HN. The only question is whether aggressive downvoting can curb its growth here before it gets a choke-hold.
- stevespang 6y ago
  Ehhh, get off my lawn, arsehole.
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't cross into personal attack and name calling. It only makes things considerably worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - jodrellblank 6y ago
    I will rephrase as "your comment is boring" rather than "you're boring" in future; my intent was to describe the comment and not to attack the author's person.
    - dang 6y ago
      That would certainly be better.
imdsm 6y ago
It's sad to see the downvote culture come here. Downvoting is meant for removing contributions that don't add much to a discussion, not for indicating whether someone agrees or disagrees with you. It seems to be a norm that is spreading though, sadly. It would appear jodrellblank is perfectly demonstrating how to misuse the feature, by calling you boring. Not exactly the kind of attitude that we want to have around here.
- beaconstudios 6y ago
  The downvote button should be replaced with an "off topic" flag. If downvote is opposed with upvote and upvote is understood to mean "I agree" or "this is informative" then downvote would be expected to mean "I disagree" or "this is bunk". It's semantically misleading.
  - mumblemumble 6y ago
    > The downvote button should be replaced with an "off topic" flag. I hope not. Some of the most informative, useful comments I've seen on Hacker News have taken the form of wild tangents. I do see where you're going, though, that if "I agree" is sufficient cause for an upvote, then it's only reasonable that a vote in the opposite direction should be allowed to carry the opposite semantics. It's just that, from a purely social standpoint, that's not actually how human beings typically think, feel, and react. Perhaps it could be that simple on the Vulcan version of Hacker News.
    - dang 6y ago
      Oh for sure—wild tangents are fine as long as they're unpredictable, which is what makes them interesting. The offtopicness we try to avoid are generic tangents, the kind where people get sucked into the same argument about some topic that they always get sucked into. Those are the black holes of internet forums—it's best to steer clear. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=generic%20discussion%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=whimsical%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
zxcvbn4038 6y ago
I have noticed the same thing over the last four or five months. I’ve been curious if a voting ring has sprung up on HN or maybe a COVID impacted demographic suddenly has a lot of time to patrol the site, or if it’s something else. It would be really interesting to have some anonymized voting data to analyze and see how downvotes map to accounts, geography, and economic trends over time. Though voting data must be relatively huge compared to content and I bet it gets discarded after items close to replies.
- stevespang 6y ago
  There are whole bureaus setup offshore to scan sites and down vote or flag anything they deem negative to their clients . . .
aaron695 6y ago
> advertising has had a fair amount of safe-harbor carve-outs for over a 100 years or so that are not available to other industries. What safe-harbor carve-out existed 30 years ago for advertising that another industry might have wanted something similar on?
- pnw_hazor 6y ago
  Lying to consumers. Puffery is the legal term of art. The "reasoning" allowing advertising/advertisers to lie is that it is assumed consumers do not believe it.
aidenn0 6y ago
It is not fraud to distract from evidence that your product might not work. It is fraud to claim your product works if it doesn't. Therefore ad companies are not going to try to prove that their product doesn't work.
- pnw_hazor 6y ago
  Common law fraud is hard to prove in the US. All of the elements listed below must be proven. However, some of the comments here describe behavior that comes pretty close. (1) a representation of fact; (2) its falsity; (3) its materiality; (4) the representer’s knowledge of its falsity or ignorance of its truth; (5) the representer’s intent that it should be acted upon by the person in the manner reasonably contemplated; (6) the injured party’s ignorance of its falsity; (7) the injured party’s reliance on its truth; (8) the injured party’s right to rely thereon; and (9) the injured party’s consequent and proximate injury.
dang 6y ago
Please don't break the site guidelines by going on about downvotes. I know they suck, but bilious addenda about downvotes also suck, which is why users here are asked to restrain themselves from posting them. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Apart from taking threads badly off topic, such complaints usually end up as uncollected garbage, since often the most unfairly downvoted comments end up getting corrective upvotes from users. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=corrective%20upvote&dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=corrective%20upvote&dateRange=...

deleted 6y ago

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deleted 6y ago
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TeMPOraL 6y ago

This is the industry whose job is to manipulate and deceive people. It should surprise no one that, if they do that to others, they'll do that to themselves as well.

jodrellblank 6y ago

> "edit: I hate to say it but the auto-downvoters here on HN are approaching reddit levels. Everything I said above is true." It's not that you're wrong, it's that you're boring. "I knew this years ago, look how my cynicism is superior to your naievite" is a boring comment to read. You could explain why you think this is any closer to fraud compared to selling anything else and claiming it's the best in its class, or what safe-harbor carve outs by whom, or why they matter more than other effects, or what you think should be done to change them, or anything more substantial than "I'm not surprised". Oh aren't you? Great, cool story bro. Except it's not /even/ a cool story. It's old man "get off my lawn". It's every tech forum's old-man status grabbing which is now approaching Reddit /r/SysAdmin levels on HN. The only question is whether aggressive downvoting can curb its growth here before it gets a choke-hold.

stevespang 6y ago
Ehhh, get off my lawn, arsehole.
dang 6y ago
Please don't cross into personal attack and name calling. It only makes things considerably worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- jodrellblank 6y ago
  I will rephrase as "your comment is boring" rather than "you're boring" in future; my intent was to describe the comment and not to attack the author's person.
  - dang 6y ago
    That would certainly be better.

imdsm 6y ago

It's sad to see the downvote culture come here. Downvoting is meant for removing contributions that don't add much to a discussion, not for indicating whether someone agrees or disagrees with you. It seems to be a norm that is spreading though, sadly. It would appear jodrellblank is perfectly demonstrating how to misuse the feature, by calling you boring. Not exactly the kind of attitude that we want to have around here.

beaconstudios 6y ago
The downvote button should be replaced with an "off topic" flag. If downvote is opposed with upvote and upvote is understood to mean "I agree" or "this is informative" then downvote would be expected to mean "I disagree" or "this is bunk". It's semantically misleading.
- mumblemumble 6y ago
  > The downvote button should be replaced with an "off topic" flag. I hope not. Some of the most informative, useful comments I've seen on Hacker News have taken the form of wild tangents. I do see where you're going, though, that if "I agree" is sufficient cause for an upvote, then it's only reasonable that a vote in the opposite direction should be allowed to carry the opposite semantics. It's just that, from a purely social standpoint, that's not actually how human beings typically think, feel, and react. Perhaps it could be that simple on the Vulcan version of Hacker News.
  - dang 6y ago
    Oh for sure—wild tangents are fine as long as they're unpredictable, which is what makes them interesting. The offtopicness we try to avoid are generic tangents, the kind where people get sucked into the same argument about some topic that they always get sucked into. Those are the black holes of internet forums—it's best to steer clear. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=generic%20discussion%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=whimsical%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

zxcvbn4038 6y ago

I have noticed the same thing over the last four or five months. I’ve been curious if a voting ring has sprung up on HN or maybe a COVID impacted demographic suddenly has a lot of time to patrol the site, or if it’s something else. It would be really interesting to have some anonymized voting data to analyze and see how downvotes map to accounts, geography, and economic trends over time. Though voting data must be relatively huge compared to content and I bet it gets discarded after items close to replies.

stevespang 6y ago
There are whole bureaus setup offshore to scan sites and down vote or flag anything they deem negative to their clients . . .

aaron695 6y ago

> advertising has had a fair amount of safe-harbor carve-outs for over a 100 years or so that are not available to other industries. What safe-harbor carve-out existed 30 years ago for advertising that another industry might have wanted something similar on?

pnw_hazor 6y ago
Lying to consumers. Puffery is the legal term of art. The "reasoning" allowing advertising/advertisers to lie is that it is assumed consumers do not believe it.

aidenn0 6y ago

It is not fraud to distract from evidence that your product might not work. It is fraud to claim your product works if it doesn't. Therefore ad companies are not going to try to prove that their product doesn't work.

pnw_hazor 6y ago
Common law fraud is hard to prove in the US. All of the elements listed below must be proven. However, some of the comments here describe behavior that comes pretty close. (1) a representation of fact; (2) its falsity; (3) its materiality; (4) the representer’s knowledge of its falsity or ignorance of its truth; (5) the representer’s intent that it should be acted upon by the person in the manner reasonably contemplated; (6) the injured party’s ignorance of its falsity; (7) the injured party’s reliance on its truth; (8) the injured party’s right to rely thereon; and (9) the injured party’s consequent and proximate injury.

dang 6y ago

Please don't break the site guidelines by going on about downvotes. I know they suck, but bilious addenda about downvotes also suck, which is why users here are asked to restrain themselves from posting them. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Apart from taking threads badly off topic, such complaints usually end up as uncollected garbage, since often the most unfairly downvoted comments end up getting corrective upvotes from users. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=corrective%20upvote&dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=corrective%20upvote&dateRange=...