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How is tolerating misleading labeling, "puffery," and other forms of untrue advertising, anything more than tolerating parasites who want to make money by trick

How is tolerating misleading labeling, "puffery," and other forms of untrue advertising, anything more than tolerating parasites who want to make money by tricking people? "If we lie enough, and everyone else does it to, nobody will have the time to check us on our bullshit" seems like a perfect example of non-productive economic activity that just adds additional costs to every transaction at no net positive social or economic gain.

A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
The article describes cases that are, at their very worst, puffery. In many instances, the confusion can be attributed to the "victim" not reading the nutrition label. "Oh no, I was tricked by this picture of an olive on the packaging! It's not entirely olive oil based after all! This calls for a major class action lawsuit."
- lesuorac 3y ago
  > "Oh no, I was tricked by this picture of an olive on the packaging! It's not entirely olive oil based after all! This calls for a major class action lawsuit." How about you quote from either the article or the court case. Its entirely reasonable to assume that a product that contains in its name "with Olive Oil" contains Olive Oil. The fact that it doesn't to me is _Fraud_; the company is attempting to get revenue (additional sales) by deceiving a consumer about the product.
  - A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
    > What he saw was Country Crock Plant Butter Made with Olive Oil, a product with a green lid and a label showing a leafy olive branch floating above a buttered slice of toast, with the words “New!” and “Dairy Free” in delighted-looking cursive. “Most margarines, they don’t put pictures of the ingredients,” Clemmons went on. > Reading, he made a startling discovery: the spread wasn’t made of olive oil, or even mostly made of olive oil. The primary ingredient was a processed blend of palm and canola oils. “I’d been drawn in because of the picture,” Clemmons told me. “And they knew that. I’m sure they knew that. Why wouldn’t people be attracted to things that are natural?” But it did contain olive oil -- it just wasn't the sole oil source. I don't think that's fraud, and, again, anybody can read the label and make up their own mind. A lawsuit over this is a joke. Also, implying that canola oil and palm oil aren't natural is pretty funny.
    - p1necone 3y ago
      If I write an application in 20,000 lines of PHP, and there's 200 lines of JavaScript in some service is it sensible to say "written in JavaScript" on the product page without mentioning PHP at all? If I host the backend for that application on a bunch of Windows servers, but there's one server running that JavaScript service that's hosted on FreeBSD, and I advertise the product as "hosted on FreeBSD", is that sensible? You seem to be clutching at straws to prove your point so I'm not sure that it's even helpful to engage with you, but "X is made with Y" when X is something that could be made entirely with Y implies that X is made entirely/almost entirely with Y. Not "we put a tiny bit of Y in so that we can say it's made with Y on the label" - which is exactly what happened here. It's intentionally misleading.
      - A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
        You neglect to consider the fact that all food products have nutrition labels, which are written according to certain standards and legal conventions. Could be that this company added some olive oil to their "plant spread" and wanted to visually distinguish this type from their alternative olive-free version. In any case, all nutrition facts are on the label -- the label clearly shows that the product is made of an oil blend -- and, as such, the picture of an olive on the packaging can hardly be "intentionally misleading" for more than about five seconds.
        OnlineGladiator 3y ago
        You realize most people don't read the ingredients or are even aware of laws about protected terms such as organic? If you genuinely don't understand how that's misleading marketing, then you have no idea what most people are like. Could the average consumer be more educated? Sure. Could companies be less shitty about marketing their products in a misleading way? Yep. Let me give you my favorite example of a legally acceptable (and actually used) marketing gimmick: a good source of calcium with milk! I've seen this on products with literally 0% calcium, because everything is a good course of calcium with milk. This comment is a good source of calcium with milk. As to your example the issue isn't that it contains olive oil, but that it's not the primary oil used in the product when the labeling clearly implies that. It's a shitty marketing practice that misleads uninformed consumers into buying their product. Quit victim blaming and maybe we should just have marketing that isn't purposefully deceitful?
- arp242 3y ago
  That's a very odd case to critic, because it claimed to be "made with olive oil" while it merely contains olive oil, which seems like an open and shut case of deceit. Why are they advertising the olive oil and only the olive oil? Why not "Made with soybean" or "made with palm oil"? It's not even clear to me how much olive oil it contains; according to the label it's "made with blend of plant-based oils (Soybean, Palm Fruit, Palm Kernel, Olive and Extra Virgin Olive Oil)". 1% olive oil would satisfy that, and given the relative costs and probably small to non-existent flavour differences, I'm betting it's a lot closer to 1% than 99%. "Not reading the nutrition label" basically means "accept that the front is just a bald-faced lie". I got shit to do and a life to lead, and I don't want to scrutinize tiny text for everything I buy just to check if the basic facts on the front are correct. This is why regulations exist in the first place. [1]: https://www.countrycrock.com/en-us/our-products/plant-butter-cream/olive-oil-spread https://www.countrycrock.com/en-us/our-products/plant-butter...

A_D_E_P_T 3y ago

The article describes cases that are, at their very worst, puffery. In many instances, the confusion can be attributed to the "victim" not reading the nutrition label. "Oh no, I was tricked by this picture of an olive on the packaging! It's not entirely olive oil based after all! This calls for a major class action lawsuit."

lesuorac 3y ago
> "Oh no, I was tricked by this picture of an olive on the packaging! It's not entirely olive oil based after all! This calls for a major class action lawsuit." How about you quote from either the article or the court case. Its entirely reasonable to assume that a product that contains in its name "with Olive Oil" contains Olive Oil. The fact that it doesn't to me is _Fraud_; the company is attempting to get revenue (additional sales) by deceiving a consumer about the product.
- A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
  > What he saw was Country Crock Plant Butter Made with Olive Oil, a product with a green lid and a label showing a leafy olive branch floating above a buttered slice of toast, with the words “New!” and “Dairy Free” in delighted-looking cursive. “Most margarines, they don’t put pictures of the ingredients,” Clemmons went on. > Reading, he made a startling discovery: the spread wasn’t made of olive oil, or even mostly made of olive oil. The primary ingredient was a processed blend of palm and canola oils. “I’d been drawn in because of the picture,” Clemmons told me. “And they knew that. I’m sure they knew that. Why wouldn’t people be attracted to things that are natural?” But it did contain olive oil -- it just wasn't the sole oil source. I don't think that's fraud, and, again, anybody can read the label and make up their own mind. A lawsuit over this is a joke. Also, implying that canola oil and palm oil aren't natural is pretty funny.
  - p1necone 3y ago
    If I write an application in 20,000 lines of PHP, and there's 200 lines of JavaScript in some service is it sensible to say "written in JavaScript" on the product page without mentioning PHP at all? If I host the backend for that application on a bunch of Windows servers, but there's one server running that JavaScript service that's hosted on FreeBSD, and I advertise the product as "hosted on FreeBSD", is that sensible? You seem to be clutching at straws to prove your point so I'm not sure that it's even helpful to engage with you, but "X is made with Y" when X is something that could be made entirely with Y implies that X is made entirely/almost entirely with Y. Not "we put a tiny bit of Y in so that we can say it's made with Y on the label" - which is exactly what happened here. It's intentionally misleading.
    - A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
      You neglect to consider the fact that all food products have nutrition labels, which are written according to certain standards and legal conventions. Could be that this company added some olive oil to their "plant spread" and wanted to visually distinguish this type from their alternative olive-free version. In any case, all nutrition facts are on the label -- the label clearly shows that the product is made of an oil blend -- and, as such, the picture of an olive on the packaging can hardly be "intentionally misleading" for more than about five seconds.
      - OnlineGladiator 3y ago
        You realize most people don't read the ingredients or are even aware of laws about protected terms such as organic? If you genuinely don't understand how that's misleading marketing, then you have no idea what most people are like. Could the average consumer be more educated? Sure. Could companies be less shitty about marketing their products in a misleading way? Yep. Let me give you my favorite example of a legally acceptable (and actually used) marketing gimmick: a good source of calcium with milk! I've seen this on products with literally 0% calcium, because everything is a good course of calcium with milk. This comment is a good source of calcium with milk. As to your example the issue isn't that it contains olive oil, but that it's not the primary oil used in the product when the labeling clearly implies that. It's a shitty marketing practice that misleads uninformed consumers into buying their product. Quit victim blaming and maybe we should just have marketing that isn't purposefully deceitful?
arp242 3y ago
That's a very odd case to critic, because it claimed to be "made with olive oil" while it merely contains olive oil, which seems like an open and shut case of deceit. Why are they advertising the olive oil and only the olive oil? Why not "Made with soybean" or "made with palm oil"? It's not even clear to me how much olive oil it contains; according to the label it's "made with blend of plant-based oils (Soybean, Palm Fruit, Palm Kernel, Olive and Extra Virgin Olive Oil)". 1% olive oil would satisfy that, and given the relative costs and probably small to non-existent flavour differences, I'm betting it's a lot closer to 1% than 99%. "Not reading the nutrition label" basically means "accept that the front is just a bald-faced lie". I got shit to do and a life to lead, and I don't want to scrutinize tiny text for everything I buy just to check if the basic facts on the front are correct. This is why regulations exist in the first place. [1]: https://www.countrycrock.com/en-us/our-products/plant-butter-cream/olive-oil-spread https://www.countrycrock.com/en-us/our-products/plant-butter...