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It frustrates me greatly how little people, and especially regulators, value attention in modern society. Your behaviors as a human are largely driven by the th
by Taek 1y ago
It frustrates me greatly how little people, and especially regulators, value attention in modern society. Your behaviors as a human are largely driven by the things you pay attention to, and advertising is a form of driving your behaviors by bringing your attention to things that are good for them (and not necessarily good for you!).
In other words, advertising is a form of mind control. By hijacking your attention, it hijacks how you think about the world and changes what sorts of things you focus on every day, pulling your mental cycles into products when maybe without seeing that ad you'd instead be thinking about family.
I really think the social and societal cost of advertising is immense, and that it should be strongly regulated. Especially because most people greatly under-value their own attention and under-estimate how much seeing ads in their kitchen every day is going to disrupt and hijack their normal thinking patterns.
- fsflover 1y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43595269 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43595269
- npteljes 1y agoRegulators don't "value attention little", they did the exact opposite, harnessed the power of the internet to grab unreal amount of power. They are doing the exact mind control you are writing about, and what they care about is whether they control the minds or not. How we fix, I have no idea. Personally, not many ads make it into my private life. Other than this, I got nada.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoIn the US, regulators exist largely as rubber stamps and are 99% captured to do the bidding of megacorps while throwing roadblocks in front of small businesses and ordinary people.