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> Advertising should be as general as possible - microtargeting people in a democracy is extraordinarily dangerous. I don’t understand how that follows. Your

by adolph 3y ago

> Advertising should be as general as possible - microtargeting people in a democracy is extraordinarily dangerous. I don’t understand how that follows. Your examples of microtargeting seem helpful since they speak to how politician Foo appeals in ways relevant to a particular segment. Instead of unknown-likelihood inference of how the politician would operate because of some associations, a voter would be able to make an informed choice based on what is significant to them. The alternative to some level of targeting or relevancing is broad branding exercises like “Coke is it” or “Team Blue protects you—team red wants you dead.”

withinboredom 3y ago
microtargeting in a democracy means that literally every candidate is your candidate. There isn't any way to actually figure out what the candidate's platform is, because it will be tailored for you, specifically ... and it all might be a lie or so misconstrued that you vote for someone who is actually against the things you want.
- adolph 3y ago
  Everything you stated is already the case with non-microtargeting. The claim is “microtargeting people in a democracy is extraordinarily dangerous.” Why reply if you can’t address the claim?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - withinboredom 3y ago
    Sure, let me connect the dots for you. 1. Let's say there are two parties: pink and purple. 2. You absolutely love Pink Party because they want to paint the roads pink and force everyone to drive pink cars. 3. I'm running for Purple Party, which says everyone should be allowed to drive whatever color car they want, but we also want pink roads. 4. Gerrymandering is illegal, but our team determined that we can sway some areas. You live in one of those areas. 5. My team writes up an ad saying something like, "Vote Purple and support pink roads and pink cars!" We target all the Pink People living in the aforementioned areas. 6. Pink party runs a very similar ad. 7. You get confused, wasn't there one of them that didn't support pink cars? 8. You google the parties, and visit our website to read our platform. We see that you were in the ad segment, so we hide our support of any color car and change it to say that we're for pink cars. 9. You give up, and just decide that you like my beautiful face -- but more likely you just didn't see the difference, so you vote Purple Party at the election. 10. I get elected and we get pink roads. However, the cars are quite multi-colored. Hopefully, you can see how this is dangerous? It's quite different than without targeting (where everyone sees the same message). The ads I saw told me what I wanted to see, while the ads you saw were what you wanted to see and confused you enough to vote against your own party.
    - adolph 3y ago
      Two key parts to your hypo: 1. Google and party website: this can already be done and it is easily detected if a person is interested in a topic since other sources will broadcast the party position on a topic. 2. Party-centricity: depending on your locale, people vote for a person not a party. Party affiliation is often a proxy for how an elected person would behave but there are typically differences between party and people. Those differences are critical for voters who do not identify with a party. In the original hypothetical, candidates who differed from their party were better able to articulate that difference without broadcasting messages that alienated party stalwarts. I see this as a plus for democracy since people elect politicians whose behavior is more in line with voters’ interests. On the other hand, I can see from your hypothetical that segmenting messaging campaigns allows liars to hide lying a bit better, which is a clear negative.
      - withinboredom 3y ago
        In a perfect world, I think targeting messaging is automating the ability to take someone out to dinner and pitch your platform. I think the world would be a better place for it, but it is a slippery slope because everyone isn't so honest.
pixl97 3y ago
Politicians can lie in their advertisements. There is pretty much no law against this, and on a lot of things we can't do much about it effectively "I said lower taxes but congress didn't let me" for example. The voter could not make an informed choice in the case of targeted advertising because there would be no information. There is no signal, everything is noise catered to a particular user. Yuval Noah goes in depth with this were he imagines a world with human like AI agents that befriend us for the express purpose of politically manipulating us at a later date. https://web.archive.org/web/20230428190758/https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2023/04/28/yuval-noah-harari-argues-that-ai-has-hacked-the-operating-system-of-human-civilisation https://web.archive.org/web/20230428190758/https://www.econo...
- adolph 3y ago
  People already lie. Microtargeting doesn’t change that. The claim is “microtargeting people in a democracy is extraordinarily dangerous.” Is there a hypothetical mechanism or actual evidence whereby poor outcomes are more likely than good ones?
  - pixl97 3y ago
    Quantity is a quality of its own.

by adolph 3y ago

withinboredom 3y ago

microtargeting in a democracy means that literally every candidate is your candidate. There isn't any way to actually figure out what the candidate's platform is, because it will be tailored for you, specifically ... and it all might be a lie or so misconstrued that you vote for someone who is actually against the things you want.

adolph 3y ago
Everything you stated is already the case with non-microtargeting. The claim is “microtargeting people in a democracy is extraordinarily dangerous.” Why reply if you can’t address the claim?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- withinboredom 3y ago
  Sure, let me connect the dots for you. 1. Let's say there are two parties: pink and purple. 2. You absolutely love Pink Party because they want to paint the roads pink and force everyone to drive pink cars. 3. I'm running for Purple Party, which says everyone should be allowed to drive whatever color car they want, but we also want pink roads. 4. Gerrymandering is illegal, but our team determined that we can sway some areas. You live in one of those areas. 5. My team writes up an ad saying something like, "Vote Purple and support pink roads and pink cars!" We target all the Pink People living in the aforementioned areas. 6. Pink party runs a very similar ad. 7. You get confused, wasn't there one of them that didn't support pink cars? 8. You google the parties, and visit our website to read our platform. We see that you were in the ad segment, so we hide our support of any color car and change it to say that we're for pink cars. 9. You give up, and just decide that you like my beautiful face -- but more likely you just didn't see the difference, so you vote Purple Party at the election. 10. I get elected and we get pink roads. However, the cars are quite multi-colored. Hopefully, you can see how this is dangerous? It's quite different than without targeting (where everyone sees the same message). The ads I saw told me what I wanted to see, while the ads you saw were what you wanted to see and confused you enough to vote against your own party.
  - adolph 3y ago
    Two key parts to your hypo: 1. Google and party website: this can already be done and it is easily detected if a person is interested in a topic since other sources will broadcast the party position on a topic. 2. Party-centricity: depending on your locale, people vote for a person not a party. Party affiliation is often a proxy for how an elected person would behave but there are typically differences between party and people. Those differences are critical for voters who do not identify with a party. In the original hypothetical, candidates who differed from their party were better able to articulate that difference without broadcasting messages that alienated party stalwarts. I see this as a plus for democracy since people elect politicians whose behavior is more in line with voters’ interests. On the other hand, I can see from your hypothetical that segmenting messaging campaigns allows liars to hide lying a bit better, which is a clear negative.
    - withinboredom 3y ago
      In a perfect world, I think targeting messaging is automating the ability to take someone out to dinner and pitch your platform. I think the world would be a better place for it, but it is a slippery slope because everyone isn't so honest.

pixl97 3y ago

Politicians can lie in their advertisements. There is pretty much no law against this, and on a lot of things we can't do much about it effectively "I said lower taxes but congress didn't let me" for example. The voter could not make an informed choice in the case of targeted advertising because there would be no information. There is no signal, everything is noise catered to a particular user. Yuval Noah goes in depth with this were he imagines a world with human like AI agents that befriend us for the express purpose of politically manipulating us at a later date. https://web.archive.org/web/20230428190758/https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2023/04/28/yuval-noah-harari-argues-that-ai-has-hacked-the-operating-system-of-human-civilisation https://web.archive.org/web/20230428190758/https://www.econo...

adolph 3y ago
People already lie. Microtargeting doesn’t change that. The claim is “microtargeting people in a democracy is extraordinarily dangerous.” Is there a hypothetical mechanism or actual evidence whereby poor outcomes are more likely than good ones?
- pixl97 3y ago
  Quantity is a quality of its own.