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> the ad companies just work out what you're interested in The word "just" doesn't belong in that sentence. The ad companies being able to know things about yo

> the ad companies just work out what you're interested in The word "just" doesn't belong in that sentence. The ad companies being able to know things about you without actually listening to you is even more scary. Evil-Ad-Company Neo: "You're telling me I can know things about my customers by secretly listening to them?" Evil-Ad-Company Morpheus: "No Neo, I'm telling you that with the right license agreements, data sharing partnerships, and algorithms, you wont need to secretly listen to them."

Brusco_RF 3y ago
I mean showing you ads for diapers because you googled "best diapers" falls under that same category and I daresay isn't evil at all
- munk-a 3y ago
  I am pretty convinced that modern advertising - from the most inane and innocent to tracking users 24/7 pretty clearly falls under evil. Gone are the days of advertising trying to raise product awareness and convert purchases - that field now exists to create demand. It induces desires in the recipients that play on psychological factors like FOMO to create customers out of thin air - and that process causes we the consumer to pay a constant attention tax and suffer higher levels of stress in our daily lives. Advertising is evil.
  - andrepd 3y ago
    I'm not a radical about many subjects, but I'm certainly radically anti-advertising.
  - iraqmtpizza 3y ago
    Advertising is nudge theory without the do-gooder mystique
  - sublinear 3y ago
    You do realize all forms of media embed advertising directly into the content going right back to the beginning, right? There's nothing modern about it. Showing you a product when you actually want to see it is the most effective way to induce demand. All your favorite shows, movies, youtube personalities, etc. still do this.
    - scarface_74 3y ago
      Well, seeing that: - I use ad blockers for my browser on both mobile and PC - pay for the ad free version of all of my streaming providers - don’t use apps that have ads and don’t have a method to pay to get rid of them
      - dylan604 3y ago
        If you think that the product that the lead actor in the series your marathoning through on your streaming provider isn't there on purpose, then you've just not been paying attention. There's a reason shows blur out logos on people's clothing or the crew covers them up with grip tape, or set dressers turn the cans/bottles/boxes of products around so the main logos are not visible. Even having copyrighted posters on the wall in frame can cause licensing issues.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - gremlinunderway 3y ago
      This isn't true. Originally advertising was designed around the premise of explicitly highlighting utility and functionality of goods/content. It wasn't until Bernays came along and adapted his uncle Sigmund Freud's theories into practice by designing advertising to manipulate people into believing that they actually need the product. Modern advertising is not just "showing a product to induce demand". Car adverts don't just highlight functionality, they use mass market analytics to play emotionally driven messaging and visuals so that you associate that feeling with the car ad. Do you know what Bernays called what services he offered before the word got tarnished? Propaganda.
- Rygian 3y ago
  Those two categories are really far away from each other. Googling X is a voluntary act to search for X. Speaking about X with a friend, while the phone sits in a bag nearby, has exactly zero connotations of wanting to search for X.
- kelnos 3y ago
  Advertising, by its very nature, is emotional manipulation with the goal of getting you to give up some of your money for something you most likely don't really need and won't improve your life all that much, if at all. To me, that's evil. Sure, there are varying degrees of this evil, but IMO even the least-objectionable advertising out there still can't be called "good". In my experience, the case where advertising gets you to buy something that ends up being materially useful, that you would not have bought (or found a substitute for) without that advertising, is the exception, not the rule. Oh, and to address your specific example: if you search "best diapers", and get shown ads for diapers, that absolutely is evil, because some ad-presentation algorithm is pushing you toward whatever diapers will generate the most money for the ad network, likely not toward which diapers are best. Not to mention that "best" often means different things to different people, and the ad networks only care about that insofar it increases their profit.
  - myshpa 3y ago
    > Advertising, by its very nature, is emotional manipulation with the goal of getting you to give up some of your money for something you most likely don't really need and won't improve your life all that much I've heard somewhere that ads are rich people screaming "give me money". (i know, i know, but i like it) > To me, that's evil. Bill Hicks on marketing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHEOGrkhDp0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHEOGrkhDp0
    - Terr_ 3y ago
      > I've heard somewhere that ads are rich people screaming "give me money". That makes me think of this Paul Graham piece on "the PR industry, lurking like a huge, quiet submarine beneath the news." [0] [0] http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
      - nick-of-time 3y ago
        He makes one really good insight: > If you really want to be a critical reader, it turns out you have to step back one step further, and ask not just whether the author is telling the truth, but why he's writing about this subject at all. Followed quickly by being hopelessly naïve about the future: > Whatever its flaws, the writing you find online is authentic. It's not mystery meat cooked up out of scraps of pitch letters and press releases, and pressed into molds of zippy journalese. It's people writing what they think.
- RHSeeger 3y ago
  Sure, if you take the most benign examples, it doesn't sound so bad. But it's so much worse than that. Going back to 2012 for "acting on data analysis gone wrong" Target Sends Coupons to Pregnant Girl and Unawares Dad Explodes https://www.workplaceethicsadvice.com/2012/02/target-sends-coupons-to-pregnant-girl-and-unawares-dad-explode.html https://www.workplaceethicsadvice.com/2012/02/target-sends-c... > Pole had identified about 25 products that, when analyzed together, allowed him to assign each shopper a "pregnancy prediction" score. More important, he could also estimate her due date to within a small window, so Target could send coupons timed to very specific stages of her pregnancy. And things just get worse from there, as companies figure out more and more ways they can extract information from the information they have about you, and share it with each other.
  - lazyasciiart 3y ago
    But that story was made up. (Not that Target does data analysis - the specific "teenage girl had sex!" anecdote).
- _factor 3y ago
  No no no. First we start with trusted brands you know and love. We use the trust you have in them to slowly build a market around them. With our ad strategy, you’ll start seeing our product as related to Trusted Brand A. You will start seeing comments and reviews for our Brand in the same browsing contexts more and more until our Brand is now correlated enough to Trusted Brand A to remove purchase inhibitions. After that, we just wait. We know we have you. It’s just a matter of time till you need a product like ours (you’re already our target demo), or an impulse buy occurs. Without evening knowing it. You’ve been manipulated into trusting our brand, and you’ll think it was all an organic choice. Nothing malicious or dangerous here.. move along.
colinsane 3y ago
sorry, i don’t mean to be dense here but could you spell out the implications for me? why is what you’re suggesting more scary?
- karpierz 3y ago
  They're saying it's scarier that ad companies can figure out these things without the data because it means that you can't protect yourself by withholding your data.
  - chii 3y ago
    > you can't protect yourself but what are you protecting yourself from? What's the threat model?
    - LoganDark 3y ago
      You're protecting yourself from targeted psychological manipulation. It's like the difference between someone spraying a cyber-attack over the entire IPv4 space, or spending a while trying to drill into a specific server. The latter is much scarier and harder to resist, but it's basically what targeted advertising is these days. They supposedly want just to help you find what you want to buy, but they do this by trying to make you want things you wouldn't actually need otherwise. I like to think I'm immune (the only ad I've ever taken up was years ago for Privacy(.com), and only because I then knew about it later, and could choose to pursue it on my own), but I wouldn't be surprised if at some point before I started being allergic to every type of advertisement imaginable, some ads managed to get my attention for one reason or another. (maybe subliminal messaging's done something before, I dunno.) I'm not too concerned about it since I know it's been kept to a minimum, so at this point basically everything I've done is something I actually wanted to do, there are no concerns about having been manipulated. But that's just because I've managed to avoid seeing targeted ads almost whatsoever.
      - wddkcs 3y ago
        Of course, someone who has been successfully manipulated would also think they've escaped manipulation. Isn't that the scariest part
hiatus 3y ago
> The ad companies being able to know things about you without actually listening to you is even more scary. This has been true for years to the extent that the nature of your purchases can tell a lot about you. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ...

Brusco_RF 3y ago

I mean showing you ads for diapers because you googled "best diapers" falls under that same category and I daresay isn't evil at all

munk-a 3y ago
I am pretty convinced that modern advertising - from the most inane and innocent to tracking users 24/7 pretty clearly falls under evil. Gone are the days of advertising trying to raise product awareness and convert purchases - that field now exists to create demand. It induces desires in the recipients that play on psychological factors like FOMO to create customers out of thin air - and that process causes we the consumer to pay a constant attention tax and suffer higher levels of stress in our daily lives. Advertising is evil.
- andrepd 3y ago
  I'm not a radical about many subjects, but I'm certainly radically anti-advertising.
- iraqmtpizza 3y ago
  Advertising is nudge theory without the do-gooder mystique
- sublinear 3y ago
  You do realize all forms of media embed advertising directly into the content going right back to the beginning, right? There's nothing modern about it. Showing you a product when you actually want to see it is the most effective way to induce demand. All your favorite shows, movies, youtube personalities, etc. still do this.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    Well, seeing that: - I use ad blockers for my browser on both mobile and PC - pay for the ad free version of all of my streaming providers - don’t use apps that have ads and don’t have a method to pay to get rid of them
    - dylan604 3y ago
      If you think that the product that the lead actor in the series your marathoning through on your streaming provider isn't there on purpose, then you've just not been paying attention. There's a reason shows blur out logos on people's clothing or the crew covers them up with grip tape, or set dressers turn the cans/bottles/boxes of products around so the main logos are not visible. Even having copyrighted posters on the wall in frame can cause licensing issues.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - gremlinunderway 3y ago
    This isn't true. Originally advertising was designed around the premise of explicitly highlighting utility and functionality of goods/content. It wasn't until Bernays came along and adapted his uncle Sigmund Freud's theories into practice by designing advertising to manipulate people into believing that they actually need the product. Modern advertising is not just "showing a product to induce demand". Car adverts don't just highlight functionality, they use mass market analytics to play emotionally driven messaging and visuals so that you associate that feeling with the car ad. Do you know what Bernays called what services he offered before the word got tarnished? Propaganda.
Rygian 3y ago
Those two categories are really far away from each other. Googling X is a voluntary act to search for X. Speaking about X with a friend, while the phone sits in a bag nearby, has exactly zero connotations of wanting to search for X.
kelnos 3y ago
Advertising, by its very nature, is emotional manipulation with the goal of getting you to give up some of your money for something you most likely don't really need and won't improve your life all that much, if at all. To me, that's evil. Sure, there are varying degrees of this evil, but IMO even the least-objectionable advertising out there still can't be called "good". In my experience, the case where advertising gets you to buy something that ends up being materially useful, that you would not have bought (or found a substitute for) without that advertising, is the exception, not the rule. Oh, and to address your specific example: if you search "best diapers", and get shown ads for diapers, that absolutely is evil, because some ad-presentation algorithm is pushing you toward whatever diapers will generate the most money for the ad network, likely not toward which diapers are best. Not to mention that "best" often means different things to different people, and the ad networks only care about that insofar it increases their profit.
- myshpa 3y ago
  > Advertising, by its very nature, is emotional manipulation with the goal of getting you to give up some of your money for something you most likely don't really need and won't improve your life all that much I've heard somewhere that ads are rich people screaming "give me money". (i know, i know, but i like it) > To me, that's evil. Bill Hicks on marketing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHEOGrkhDp0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHEOGrkhDp0
  - Terr_ 3y ago
    > I've heard somewhere that ads are rich people screaming "give me money". That makes me think of this Paul Graham piece on "the PR industry, lurking like a huge, quiet submarine beneath the news." [0] [0] http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
    - nick-of-time 3y ago
      He makes one really good insight: > If you really want to be a critical reader, it turns out you have to step back one step further, and ask not just whether the author is telling the truth, but why he's writing about this subject at all. Followed quickly by being hopelessly naïve about the future: > Whatever its flaws, the writing you find online is authentic. It's not mystery meat cooked up out of scraps of pitch letters and press releases, and pressed into molds of zippy journalese. It's people writing what they think.
RHSeeger 3y ago
Sure, if you take the most benign examples, it doesn't sound so bad. But it's so much worse than that. Going back to 2012 for "acting on data analysis gone wrong" Target Sends Coupons to Pregnant Girl and Unawares Dad Explodes https://www.workplaceethicsadvice.com/2012/02/target-sends-coupons-to-pregnant-girl-and-unawares-dad-explode.html https://www.workplaceethicsadvice.com/2012/02/target-sends-c... > Pole had identified about 25 products that, when analyzed together, allowed him to assign each shopper a "pregnancy prediction" score. More important, he could also estimate her due date to within a small window, so Target could send coupons timed to very specific stages of her pregnancy. And things just get worse from there, as companies figure out more and more ways they can extract information from the information they have about you, and share it with each other.
- lazyasciiart 3y ago
  But that story was made up. (Not that Target does data analysis - the specific "teenage girl had sex!" anecdote).
_factor 3y ago
No no no. First we start with trusted brands you know and love. We use the trust you have in them to slowly build a market around them. With our ad strategy, you’ll start seeing our product as related to Trusted Brand A. You will start seeing comments and reviews for our Brand in the same browsing contexts more and more until our Brand is now correlated enough to Trusted Brand A to remove purchase inhibitions. After that, we just wait. We know we have you. It’s just a matter of time till you need a product like ours (you’re already our target demo), or an impulse buy occurs. Without evening knowing it. You’ve been manipulated into trusting our brand, and you’ll think it was all an organic choice. Nothing malicious or dangerous here.. move along.

colinsane 3y ago

sorry, i don’t mean to be dense here but could you spell out the implications for me? why is what you’re suggesting more scary?

karpierz 3y ago
They're saying it's scarier that ad companies can figure out these things without the data because it means that you can't protect yourself by withholding your data.
- chii 3y ago
  > you can't protect yourself but what are you protecting yourself from? What's the threat model?
  - LoganDark 3y ago
    You're protecting yourself from targeted psychological manipulation. It's like the difference between someone spraying a cyber-attack over the entire IPv4 space, or spending a while trying to drill into a specific server. The latter is much scarier and harder to resist, but it's basically what targeted advertising is these days. They supposedly want just to help you find what you want to buy, but they do this by trying to make you want things you wouldn't actually need otherwise. I like to think I'm immune (the only ad I've ever taken up was years ago for Privacy(.com), and only because I then knew about it later, and could choose to pursue it on my own), but I wouldn't be surprised if at some point before I started being allergic to every type of advertisement imaginable, some ads managed to get my attention for one reason or another. (maybe subliminal messaging's done something before, I dunno.) I'm not too concerned about it since I know it's been kept to a minimum, so at this point basically everything I've done is something I actually wanted to do, there are no concerns about having been manipulated. But that's just because I've managed to avoid seeing targeted ads almost whatsoever.
    - wddkcs 3y ago
      Of course, someone who has been successfully manipulated would also think they've escaped manipulation. Isn't that the scariest part

hiatus 3y ago

> The ad companies being able to know things about you without actually listening to you is even more scary. This has been true for years to the extent that the nature of your purchases can tell a lot about you. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ...