[…] […] […] AdTech is at it, yet again. Highlighting this paragraph especially: As unpopular and atypically illiberal I’m probably presenting myself saying this, there seriously needs to be more...
Google said: “We prohibit ads being personalised to people under-18, period.
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But Google staff proposed a workaround to bypass the policy: a group called “unknown”, people familiar with the matter said.
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Turning off other age groups for which they had demographic data left only the unknown group, with its high proportion of minors and children: it was described as a way of “hacking” the audience safeguards in their system, one of the people said.
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As part of its pitch, Google also boasted of its “really impressive” usage by 13- to 17-year-olds, handily outstripping daily engagement on TikTok and Instagram, documents show.
AdTech is at it, yet again.
Highlighting this paragraph especially:
Last week, the US Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill, the Kids Online Safety Act, that would place a duty of care on social media platforms to protect children from harmful online content, in a rare moment of bipartisan agreement that brings the US closer to major legislation targeting Silicon Valley on child safety.
As unpopular and atypically illiberal I’m probably presenting myself saying this, there seriously needs to be more regulation on screen-on time for youths on opinion-shaping platforms, since they are all either unwilling or unable to do content moderation due to the sheer volume of data involved (despite the amounts of money involved…). Globally, too.
And I’m noticing that’s already a tangential topic! Should first mention how constant bombardment of ads is probably bad for developing brains, and they’re doing it intentionally. Maximum user retention time for big company XYZ is not in the best interest for society’s future.
How infuriating. When I was in college I remember a freshman computer science class that had a short lecture about security. It was talking about how aggregate data can easily be used to leak...
How infuriating.
When I was in college I remember a freshman computer science class that had a short lecture about security. It was talking about how aggregate data can easily be used to leak information that is supposed to be hidden by taking two or more data sets and subtracting them. For example, if you couldn't get the salary of an individual employee, maybe you could get an intersection of two groups that let you get total salary, and where a specific employee was the only member in group a but not group b.
So this "loophole" is so obvious and so simple it wouldn't even be an interview question to get hired at google.
Considering the prefrontal cortex is one of the last areas of the brain to “mature” which impacts impulse control. Targeting teenagers and children is really targeting the must subsceptible of us.
Considering the prefrontal cortex is one of the last areas of the brain to “mature” which impacts impulse control. Targeting teenagers and children is really targeting the must subsceptible of us.
Eliminate 'screen time' and 'youths' and I'm there. Kill marketing and advertising. All of it, perhaps an exception for trade shows and B2B/wholesale. If you can't sell a product without...
regulation on screen-on time for youths on opinion-shaping platforms
Eliminate 'screen time' and 'youths' and I'm there.
Kill marketing and advertising. All of it, perhaps an exception for trade shows and B2B/wholesale. If you can't sell a product without advertising, your product wasn't needed.
At best, it's propping up giant swaths of unneccessary industries. At worst, it's enabling industries that are actively killing us.
I like the idea in the abstract, but think it's unsolvable in detail. Are product reviews advertising? Is someone getting free product and telling their friends about it advertising? What about...
I like the idea in the abstract, but think it's unsolvable in detail. Are product reviews advertising? Is someone getting free product and telling their friends about it advertising? What about paying stores for better physical placement of the product? There are so many ways a company can affect the likelihood of people knowing about and buying their stuff. Trying to squash advertising would be like trying to squash porn. Free speech lawsuit and judges saying that they'd know it when they saw it.
It's a babystep thing. It's so deeply engrained it's gonna take a strangulation not a surgical removal, pardon the visceral analogy. I would venture to say any and all transfers that the company...
It's a babystep thing. It's so deeply engrained it's gonna take a strangulation not a surgical removal, pardon the visceral analogy.
I would venture to say any and all transfers that the company make to an external party to attempt to increase sales should be banned. The possible exception being free units to registered 3rd-party reviewers with proper transparency.
Here's an idea: As marketing tactics are found to be excessively manipulative in research papers, they become subject to additonal restrictions. Have consumer protection agencies quietly audit reported companies, companies found to be using them are subject to an additional 3% tax on gross revenue.
The 'excessively' would need to be honed in on, but the line would essentially be drawn somewhere to distinguish from factually informative datasheets and branding/psychological tricks.
If you're talking about doing this in the US, I think you should start by explaining how you're going to overturn the First Amendment, because that's going to be a necessary prerequisite to this plan.
If you're talking about doing this in the US, I think you should start by explaining how you're going to overturn the First Amendment, because that's going to be a necessary prerequisite to this plan.
Step one: Revoke Citizens United. Corporations are not people. Step two: Paying people to say things is not speech. It's a quid-pro-quo transaction. We ban ads all the time. Throw some naked boobs...
Step one: Revoke Citizens United. Corporations are not people.
Step two: Paying people to say things is not speech. It's a quid-pro-quo transaction.
We ban ads all the time. Throw some naked boobs on a billboard for PornHub and see how long it lasts.
Forgive my ignorance, but given that laws against targeted advertising at children is already a thing, how do those laws exist without running up against the first amendment? Or is the US just...
Forgive my ignorance, but given that laws against targeted advertising at children is already a thing, how do those laws exist without running up against the first amendment? Or is the US just currently sitting in the space before a lawsuit by a company who is comfortable with that kind of association?
The comment they were responding to wasn't just talking about banning ads in certain places or contexts, but rather: This is pretty clearly a very different beast legally than any existing...
The comment they were responding to wasn't just talking about banning ads in certain places or contexts, but rather:
I would venture to say any and all transfers that the company make to an external party to attempt to increase sales should be banned.
This is pretty clearly a very different beast legally than any existing legislation on advertising.
I have a new widget that I want to sell. How do I convince anyone to buy it without marketing? How do I decide what products people want without marketing? This is just an extreme reaction to...
I have a new widget that I want to sell. How do I convince anyone to buy it without marketing? How do I decide what products people want without marketing? This is just an extreme reaction to something that can, but doesn't have to, be damaging to society.
Though I hate advertising as much as anyone, I have to agree. Eliminating advertising wholesale would further entrench already established brands and stifle up-and-coming competition. We already...
Though I hate advertising as much as anyone, I have to agree. Eliminating advertising wholesale would further entrench already established brands and stifle up-and-coming competition. We already have something like 7 companies that own the majority of consumer brands throughout the Western world. We don't need to be handing them further advantages and solidifying their monopolies.
What I would like to see is greater accountability for data collection and targeting, as well as limits to the amount of advertising time/space relative to content. Perhaps we could mandate that data collectors establish that their collection activities are in the public interest before giving them license to advertise. In the US we have the FCC to regulate such things over the public airwaves, so it's not as though there's no precedent for regulation.
We should also be much more stringent on data security standards than the almost complete non-regulation we have in the US today. If your business depends on collecting data from consumers en masse, then you need to be responsible stewards of the data you collect. If the data under your control is stolen by malicious actors and it's found to be your fault, either by your own lax data security policies or by the negligence of third parties to whom you've sold that data, then guess what? You can't collect data willy-nilly anymore. These companies know how valuable consumer data is. They're just about the only ones who do; but they have no interest in spending to protect that data once they've extracted what value they need. That needs to change.
I also think the EU has the right idea with regulating how long collected data can be retained by anyone, governments and private entities alike. As the last decade of American politics has so amply shown us, many of the things about our society that we've come to accept as givens are really matters of unwritten custom, and dramatic swings in how society can treat vulnerable members are far from impossible. Regulation should be about protecting people from the machines we create–whether that be private enterprise or government–as much as it is protecting those machines from unfair practices. I think we've almost totally lost sight of that over the last 45 or so years, in the US and in the countries of some of our closest allies at least.
This would be mitigated over the course of several years as people lose mindshare of existing brands. Also we could take steps to limit their influence, like more stringent packaging requirements....
Eliminating advertising wholesale would further entrench already established brands and stifle up-and-coming competition.
This would be mitigated over the course of several years as people lose mindshare of existing brands. Also we could take steps to limit their influence, like more stringent packaging requirements. Reducing visibility of branding like this, with a drought of advertising would certainly help.
Your link is dead, unfortunately. I just don't see how people forgetting about brands is going to mitigate their monopolies. If anything it might worsen the problem, as making it more difficult to...
Your link is dead, unfortunately.
I just don't see how people forgetting about brands is going to mitigate their monopolies. If anything it might worsen the problem, as making it more difficult to distinguish between brands will also complicate making purchasing decisions based on your opinion of brands' ethics.
I could see eliminating advertising altogether if we could somehow ensure that market share gets decided based on merit (highest quality for lowest price with the most ethically conscious business practices) but we don't have that capability, not even in the abstract. If communist states with their tight economic controls have found it impossible to ensure production quality and industrial ethics, how are we going to do so in anything vaguely resembling a free market economy?
You don't. If your product can't sell itself via organic word-of-mouth, search results for your product category, or availability on store shelves (hence B2B and trade shows), then maybe it...
You don't. If your product can't sell itself via organic word-of-mouth, search results for your product category, or availability on store shelves (hence B2B and trade shows), then maybe it shouldn't have been made.
If you can't find a problem to solve without marketing, you probably shouldn't be inventing.
If the only reason I buy something is because it was advertised to me instead of me seeking it out, that tells me I didn't really need it.
The GDP sure as shit would go down, because a very very large number of people would stop buying shit they thought they needed.
How does word of mouth start with no marketing? How do you get any search results without marketing? I really don't think you understand how much you would be banning. It would literally be...
How does word of mouth start with no marketing? How do you get any search results without marketing? I really don't think you understand how much you would be banning. It would literally be impossible to sell any products without marketing.
Mission accomplished. Less snarkily, I addressed that in an early edit: B2B and trade shows. You sell to the retailers, have a website for interested people to investigate your product, and have...
Mission accomplished.
Less snarkily, I addressed that in an early edit: B2B and trade shows.
You sell to the retailers, have a website for interested people to investigate your product, and have trade shows dedicated to your industry as the venues.
Your website is marketing. The Investopedia definition is "Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have...
Your website is marketing. The Investopedia definition is "Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large." It would likely be literally impossible to legislate away all the stuff that you think of as marketing while leaving the things that you think would be acceptable. You might as well just get rid of money.
My point is that it may be clear what they mean...except that it's not actually clear and it's entirely subjective and would be impossible to legislate.
My point is that it may be clear what they mean...except that it's not actually clear and it's entirely subjective and would be impossible to legislate.
Which is probably why most laws are written with much more in-depth language. There are many laws that are written unclearly and yet the courts still enforce them.
Which is probably why most laws are written with much more in-depth language. There are many laws that are written unclearly and yet the courts still enforce them.
Welp, there goes what's left of the entertainment industry, I suppose. I don't care about ads so much more so than how you're advertising. Even if I do need something, I wouldn't appreciate...
Kill marketing and advertising. All of it, perhaps an exception for trade shows and B2B/wholesale. If you can't sell a product without advertising, your product wasn't needed.
Welp, there goes what's left of the entertainment industry, I suppose.
I don't care about ads so much more so than how you're advertising. Even if I do need something, I wouldn't appreciate someone looking into my demographics and other private data to target it to me.
Heavily regualate targeted ads. Fortunately, that's already in motion, so it's more a matter of when rather than if now.
God forbid, people end up walking outside and talking to each other. We are creative social beings, we don't need to be constantly bombarded with entertainment options to entertain ourselves holed...
God forbid, people end up walking outside and talking to each other.
We are creative social beings, we don't need to be constantly bombarded with entertainment options to entertain ourselves holed up in our pods.
Can't make a horse drink. Blame the helicopter parenting, people aren't as used to outside as before.. They'll just browse TikTok or reddit. Well, we're here on tildes for a reason instead of...
God forbid, people end up walking outside and talking to each other.
Can't make a horse drink. Blame the helicopter parenting, people aren't as used to outside as before.. They'll just browse TikTok or reddit.
to entertain ourselves holed up in our pods
Well, we're here on tildes for a reason instead of "outside", as you put it. I try constantly, but my Meetup situation is awful, to put it kindly.
No but you can tear down all the billboards for Coke on the way to the watering hole. :) Not sure about everybody else, but the majority of my time on Tildes is time that is otherwise somewhat...
Can't make a horse drink
No but you can tear down all the billboards for Coke on the way to the watering hole. :)
Not sure about everybody else, but the majority of my time on Tildes is time that is otherwise somewhat dead: bathroom breaks, meetings that should have been emails, 4 AM insomnia. And it does keep me from endless doomscrollling on Reddit or what have you.
Believe me, you don’t need to convince me there. I just find it easier to get other people on this train of thought when the arguments leading up to positions like ours are presented in a less...
Eliminate 'screen time' and 'youths' and I'm there.
Believe me, you don’t need to convince me there. I just find it easier to get other people on this train of thought when the arguments leading up to positions like ours are presented in a less drastic manner at first ;)
I generally agree that we should ban advertising, digitally and otherwise, as much as possible. I am admittedly less sure on how to do that effectively. The first thing I can think of are...
I generally agree that we should ban advertising, digitally and otherwise, as much as possible. I am admittedly less sure on how to do that effectively.
The first thing I can think of are billboards, and how four states in the US: Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, and Vermont, have banned them.
Perhaps the language of those laws can be tweaked to more broadly apply to other types of advertising?
It's certainly not an impossible problem to solve. I think it's a lot easier and more practical than @MimicSquid's first amendment comment would have us believe. Regulatory agencies routinely deal with nuanced issues of all kinds. Nothing about advertising seems particularly more thorny than guns, the environment, or the million other things the "administrative state" handles for us every single day (despite SCOTUS doing their best to undermine this).
At the end of the day, advertising is psychological manipulation, and everyone is vulnerable to it. The more we can minimize its presence in our society, and especially minimize the harms it causes via things like surveillance capitalism, the better off we will all be.
Billboards are some of the most atrocous things. Like legally sanctioned graffiti. I've explained to my child the pros and cons to graffiti. "Use graffiti to bring art to an area that is ugly and...
Billboards are some of the most atrocous things. Like legally sanctioned graffiti.
I've explained to my child the pros and cons to graffiti. "Use graffiti to bring art to an area that is ugly and devoid of spirit, not to ruin something that is beautiful."
My core issue is that this feels more like a parental failing than a government wrong. So similar to pretty much ever media prior (games, home video, radio, yellow journalism), I'd rather we...
As unpopular and atypically illiberal I’m probably presenting myself saying this, there seriously needs to be more regulation on screen-on time for youths on opinion-shaping platforms
My core issue is that this feels more like a parental failing than a government wrong. So similar to pretty much ever media prior (games, home video, radio, yellow journalism), I'd rather we promote the dangers than let the government take the reigns.
It’s a nice thought, genuinely. But here’s the thing: We didn’t leave the cigarettes ban for children up to the parents, either. When marketing is ingrained into the parental brains (next to the...
It’s a nice thought, genuinely. But here’s the thing: We didn’t leave the cigarettes ban for children up to the parents, either.
When marketing is ingrained into the parental brains (next to the glaring addiction itself), there won’t be much focus or even interest in changing it for the kids with most parents.
Sure, because cigarettes have chemicals in them that we can study and observe the effects of Harder to do that with what is ultimately "talking to people online" or "watching funny pereon". We've...
But here’s the thing: We didn’t leave the cigarettes ban for children up to the parents, either
Sure, because cigarettes have chemicals in them that we can study and observe the effects of
Harder to do that with what is ultimately "talking to people online" or "watching funny pereon". We've had both for millenia.
there won’t be much focus or even interest in changing it for the kids with most parents.
Unless we have absolutely breakthrough phycplogical understandings of the brain, I simply see that as society making its choice. I'd rather we start with something like a 4 day work week so parents have more time to recharge, see and care for kids, and actually go outside before we say 'well, no more social media'.
Harder to do that with what is ultimately "talking to people online" or "watching funny person". We've had both for millenia.
As the last of the linked studies also discusses, the millenia-old, probably DNA-ingrained habit of face to face interaction is (probably) fundamentally different for us than when conducted over “social” media. So I think it’s easy to imagine how the effects could be drastically different, too.
I simply see that as society making its choice. I'd rather we start with something like a 4 day work week so parents have more time to recharge, see and care for kids, and actually go outside before we say 'well, no more social media'.
I agree with this sentiment. But it ought to be possible that we work on both at the same time – reduction of social media use, delaying the age first exposure until well into the teens (at least…), etc. while supporting parents to better deal with these topics (and their own lack of time) on their own, too.
Also, one could argue that addictions like these make it not a choice anymore, similar to for example job loss/homelessness stemming from drug addictions. When people in a situation like that need help, the overwhelming majority will usually want to recover/change, but can’t do so in their current circumstances.
Yes, and note the topics of the articles aren't "social media bad". It's more subtle than that: algorithmic recommendations based on tracking data. I agree with limiting this, and fortunately the...
Some pointers for “study and observe effects” – oh it is very much possible to do so, even here:
Yes, and note the topics of the articles aren't "social media bad". It's more subtle than that:
algorithmic recommendations based on tracking data. I agree with limiting this, and fortunately the wheels are slowly turning on this as we speak. The manipulation of something tame like video games being used to lead people down an extremist pipeline is very much expoitative and ruins the whole spirit of "social" media. And companies more than lost their chance to self regulate as they were bribed into turning a blind eye
(and 3) body image is an issue much older than social media. That's had a studied effect on advertisement for decades, in places and media you can't necessarily avoid by logging off. Do we ban that? That's a much more ambivalent issue from issues spanning millenia, but I'll admit it's not my fight to fight.
I'm much more rather address these causes than the symptom that is social media (as so many other media has been accused of over the decades).
Also, one could argue that addictions like these make it not a choice anymore, similar to for example job loss/homelessness stemming from drug addictions.
You could. And if I agreed I'd still have some issues.
Namely: what do you do once the plugged is unpulled? Do you think people will just magically start going outside again while outside life is more expensive than ever, rent is increasing, and quality of life is decreasing (decreasing even more due to social media being gone, somehow). We don't just cold turkey mos alcoholics, but the main remedy here revolves around people being willing to go out and socialize with one another.
Bowling Alone has come full circle. We don't have the facilities nor support circles to simply "meet up" anymore. Nor the time, care, and energy to get over that hump. There's simply many facilities to address before we consider such a cold turkey approach.
I'll throw this out there: Body image has been an exponentially worse issue since the rise of advertising, with cigarette ads leading the charge. Especially once photoshop hit the scenes and we...
body image is an issue much older than social media.
I'll throw this out there: Body image has been an exponentially worse issue since the rise of advertising, with cigarette ads leading the charge.
Especially once photoshop hit the scenes and we went from 'realistic but possible to attain' to 'nearly impossible' images.
I'm sure theres a study out there: Advertising has disprortionately targetted women and has used both subtle and overt shaming to create markets for products.
WRT 'pulling the plug,' I don't think anybody seriously is suggesting decrees from on high that implement changes like a tsunami inside of a year. That said, I wager it's a chicken/egg situation, (my local library gets funding proportional to community engagement) and even if there was a tidal wave of change, it wouldn't be long before people adapted.
Most countries have laws on gambling due to its psychological addictive nature. It should not be impossible to form similar rules for social media. Especially since it is clear they are already...
Most countries have laws on gambling due to its psychological addictive nature. It should not be impossible to form similar rules for social media. Especially since it is clear they are already exploiting similar various psychological tricks to hook users to their platform. Though given how slow and lax lawmakers have been with the tech industry, it is going to be a long battle.
Why don't we ban the tricks instead of the platform? Thing is that there's no fundamental difference between Facebook c. 2024 and the old social media like Myspace. Just more people and more...
Especially since it is clear they are already exploiting similar various psychological tricks to hook users to their platform.
Why don't we ban the tricks instead of the platform? Thing is that there's no fundamental difference between Facebook c. 2024 and the old social media like Myspace. Just more people and more accessibility.
We're on a social media as we speak and no one seems to suggest Tildes is contributing to the problem. So it's clear the tricks are the problem. I just don't understand why some individuals are so gung ho to go towards the sledgehammer solution. Just like games, TV, radio, etc. It doesn't treat the cause but the symptoms.
(also, as a huge tangent, most countries don't care at all about gambling from a psychological POV. That came later. Gambling was hard to tax and the games and payouts were never fair. So the government was going to come down eventually)
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AdTech is at it, yet again.
Highlighting this paragraph especially:
As unpopular and atypically illiberal I’m probably presenting myself saying this, there seriously needs to be more regulation on screen-on time for youths on opinion-shaping platforms, since they are all either unwilling or unable to do content moderation due to the sheer volume of data involved (despite the amounts of money involved…). Globally, too.
And I’m noticing that’s already a tangential topic! Should first mention how constant bombardment of ads is probably bad for developing brains, and they’re doing it intentionally. Maximum user retention time for big company XYZ is not in the best interest for society’s future.
How infuriating.
When I was in college I remember a freshman computer science class that had a short lecture about security. It was talking about how aggregate data can easily be used to leak information that is supposed to be hidden by taking two or more data sets and subtracting them. For example, if you couldn't get the salary of an individual employee, maybe you could get an intersection of two groups that let you get total salary, and where a specific employee was the only member in group a but not group b.
So this "loophole" is so obvious and so simple it wouldn't even be an interview question to get hired at google.
Considering the prefrontal cortex is one of the last areas of the brain to “mature” which impacts impulse control. Targeting teenagers and children is really targeting the must subsceptible of us.
Eliminate 'screen time' and 'youths' and I'm there.
Kill marketing and advertising. All of it, perhaps an exception for trade shows and B2B/wholesale. If you can't sell a product without advertising, your product wasn't needed.
At best, it's propping up giant swaths of unneccessary industries. At worst, it's enabling industries that are actively killing us.
I like the idea in the abstract, but think it's unsolvable in detail. Are product reviews advertising? Is someone getting free product and telling their friends about it advertising? What about paying stores for better physical placement of the product? There are so many ways a company can affect the likelihood of people knowing about and buying their stuff. Trying to squash advertising would be like trying to squash porn. Free speech lawsuit and judges saying that they'd know it when they saw it.
It's a babystep thing. It's so deeply engrained it's gonna take a strangulation not a surgical removal, pardon the visceral analogy.
I would venture to say any and all transfers that the company make to an external party to attempt to increase sales should be banned. The possible exception being free units to registered 3rd-party reviewers with proper transparency.
Here's an idea: As marketing tactics are found to be excessively manipulative in research papers, they become subject to additonal restrictions. Have consumer protection agencies quietly audit reported companies, companies found to be using them are subject to an additional 3% tax on gross revenue.
The 'excessively' would need to be honed in on, but the line would essentially be drawn somewhere to distinguish from factually informative datasheets and branding/psychological tricks.
If you're talking about doing this in the US, I think you should start by explaining how you're going to overturn the First Amendment, because that's going to be a necessary prerequisite to this plan.
Step one: Revoke Citizens United. Corporations are not people.
Step two: Paying people to say things is not speech. It's a quid-pro-quo transaction.
We ban ads all the time. Throw some naked boobs on a billboard for PornHub and see how long it lasts.
Breasts? You monster! What if an infant saw that?
Forgive my ignorance, but given that laws against targeted advertising at children is already a thing, how do those laws exist without running up against the first amendment? Or is the US just currently sitting in the space before a lawsuit by a company who is comfortable with that kind of association?
The comment they were responding to wasn't just talking about banning ads in certain places or contexts, but rather:
This is pretty clearly a very different beast legally than any existing legislation on advertising.
I have a new widget that I want to sell. How do I convince anyone to buy it without marketing? How do I decide what products people want without marketing? This is just an extreme reaction to something that can, but doesn't have to, be damaging to society.
Though I hate advertising as much as anyone, I have to agree. Eliminating advertising wholesale would further entrench already established brands and stifle up-and-coming competition. We already have something like 7 companies that own the majority of consumer brands throughout the Western world. We don't need to be handing them further advantages and solidifying their monopolies.
What I would like to see is greater accountability for data collection and targeting, as well as limits to the amount of advertising time/space relative to content. Perhaps we could mandate that data collectors establish that their collection activities are in the public interest before giving them license to advertise. In the US we have the FCC to regulate such things over the public airwaves, so it's not as though there's no precedent for regulation.
We should also be much more stringent on data security standards than the almost complete non-regulation we have in the US today. If your business depends on collecting data from consumers en masse, then you need to be responsible stewards of the data you collect. If the data under your control is stolen by malicious actors and it's found to be your fault, either by your own lax data security policies or by the negligence of third parties to whom you've sold that data, then guess what? You can't collect data willy-nilly anymore. These companies know how valuable consumer data is. They're just about the only ones who do; but they have no interest in spending to protect that data once they've extracted what value they need. That needs to change.
I also think the EU has the right idea with regulating how long collected data can be retained by anyone, governments and private entities alike. As the last decade of American politics has so amply shown us, many of the things about our society that we've come to accept as givens are really matters of unwritten custom, and dramatic swings in how society can treat vulnerable members are far from impossible. Regulation should be about protecting people from the machines we create–whether that be private enterprise or government–as much as it is protecting those machines from unfair practices. I think we've almost totally lost sight of that over the last 45 or so years, in the US and in the countries of some of our closest allies at least.
This would be mitigated over the course of several years as people lose mindshare of existing brands. Also we could take steps to limit their influence, like more stringent packaging requirements. Reducing visibility of branding like this, with a drought of advertising would certainly help.
Your link is dead, unfortunately.
I just don't see how people forgetting about brands is going to mitigate their monopolies. If anything it might worsen the problem, as making it more difficult to distinguish between brands will also complicate making purchasing decisions based on your opinion of brands' ethics.
I could see eliminating advertising altogether if we could somehow ensure that market share gets decided based on merit (highest quality for lowest price with the most ethically conscious business practices) but we don't have that capability, not even in the abstract. If communist states with their tight economic controls have found it impossible to ensure production quality and industrial ethics, how are we going to do so in anything vaguely resembling a free market economy?
Weird, still works for me. Here's another sample
If that still doesn't work, just search "dharma initiative food.'
You don't. If your product can't sell itself via organic word-of-mouth, search results for your product category, or availability on store shelves (hence B2B and trade shows), then maybe it shouldn't have been made.
If you can't find a problem to solve without marketing, you probably shouldn't be inventing.
If the only reason I buy something is because it was advertised to me instead of me seeking it out, that tells me I didn't really need it.
The GDP sure as shit would go down, because a very very large number of people would stop buying shit they thought they needed.
How does word of mouth start with no marketing? How do you get any search results without marketing? I really don't think you understand how much you would be banning. It would literally be impossible to sell any products without marketing.
Mission accomplished.
Less snarkily, I addressed that in an early edit: B2B and trade shows.
You sell to the retailers, have a website for interested people to investigate your product, and have trade shows dedicated to your industry as the venues.
Your website is marketing. The Investopedia definition is "Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large." It would likely be literally impossible to legislate away all the stuff that you think of as marketing while leaving the things that you think would be acceptable. You might as well just get rid of money.
I think it’s pretty clear they are talking about paying third parties for marketing on their platform.
My point is that it may be clear what they mean...except that it's not actually clear and it's entirely subjective and would be impossible to legislate.
Which is probably why most laws are written with much more in-depth language. There are many laws that are written unclearly and yet the courts still enforce them.
Welp, there goes what's left of the entertainment industry, I suppose.
I don't care about ads so much more so than how you're advertising. Even if I do need something, I wouldn't appreciate someone looking into my demographics and other private data to target it to me.
Heavily regualate targeted ads. Fortunately, that's already in motion, so it's more a matter of when rather than if now.
God forbid, people end up walking outside and talking to each other.
We are creative social beings, we don't need to be constantly bombarded with entertainment options to entertain ourselves holed up in our pods.
Can't make a horse drink. Blame the helicopter parenting, people aren't as used to outside as before.. They'll just browse TikTok or reddit.
Well, we're here on tildes for a reason instead of "outside", as you put it. I try constantly, but my Meetup situation is awful, to put it kindly.
No but you can tear down all the billboards for Coke on the way to the watering hole. :)
Not sure about everybody else, but the majority of my time on Tildes is time that is otherwise somewhat dead: bathroom breaks, meetings that should have been emails, 4 AM insomnia. And it does keep me from endless doomscrollling on Reddit or what have you.
Believe me, you don’t need to convince me there. I just find it easier to get other people on this train of thought when the arguments leading up to positions like ours are presented in a less drastic manner at first ;)
I generally agree that we should ban advertising, digitally and otherwise, as much as possible. I am admittedly less sure on how to do that effectively.
The first thing I can think of are billboards, and how four states in the US: Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, and Vermont, have banned them.
Perhaps the language of those laws can be tweaked to more broadly apply to other types of advertising?
It's certainly not an impossible problem to solve. I think it's a lot easier and more practical than @MimicSquid's first amendment comment would have us believe. Regulatory agencies routinely deal with nuanced issues of all kinds. Nothing about advertising seems particularly more thorny than guns, the environment, or the million other things the "administrative state" handles for us every single day (despite SCOTUS doing their best to undermine this).
At the end of the day, advertising is psychological manipulation, and everyone is vulnerable to it. The more we can minimize its presence in our society, and especially minimize the harms it causes via things like surveillance capitalism, the better off we will all be.
Billboards are some of the most atrocous things. Like legally sanctioned graffiti.
I've explained to my child the pros and cons to graffiti. "Use graffiti to bring art to an area that is ugly and devoid of spirit, not to ruin something that is beautiful."
My core issue is that this feels more like a parental failing than a government wrong. So similar to pretty much ever media prior (games, home video, radio, yellow journalism), I'd rather we promote the dangers than let the government take the reigns.
It’s a nice thought, genuinely. But here’s the thing: We didn’t leave the cigarettes ban for children up to the parents, either.
When marketing is ingrained into the parental brains (next to the glaring addiction itself), there won’t be much focus or even interest in changing it for the kids with most parents.
Sure, because cigarettes have chemicals in them that we can study and observe the effects of
Harder to do that with what is ultimately "talking to people online" or "watching funny pereon". We've had both for millenia.
Unless we have absolutely breakthrough phycplogical understandings of the brain, I simply see that as society making its choice. I'd rather we start with something like a 4 day work week so parents have more time to recharge, see and care for kids, and actually go outside before we say 'well, no more social media'.
Some pointers for “study and observe effects” – oh it is very much possible to do so, even here:
As the last of the linked studies also discusses, the millenia-old, probably DNA-ingrained habit of face to face interaction is (probably) fundamentally different for us than when conducted over “social” media. So I think it’s easy to imagine how the effects could be drastically different, too.
I agree with this sentiment. But it ought to be possible that we work on both at the same time – reduction of social media use, delaying the age first exposure until well into the teens (at least…), etc. while supporting parents to better deal with these topics (and their own lack of time) on their own, too.
Also, one could argue that addictions like these make it not a choice anymore, similar to for example job loss/homelessness stemming from drug addictions. When people in a situation like that need help, the overwhelming majority will usually want to recover/change, but can’t do so in their current circumstances.
Yes, and note the topics of the articles aren't "social media bad". It's more subtle than that:
algorithmic recommendations based on tracking data. I agree with limiting this, and fortunately the wheels are slowly turning on this as we speak. The manipulation of something tame like video games being used to lead people down an extremist pipeline is very much expoitative and ruins the whole spirit of "social" media. And companies more than lost their chance to self regulate as they were bribed into turning a blind eye
(and 3) body image is an issue much older than social media. That's had a studied effect on advertisement for decades, in places and media you can't necessarily avoid by logging off. Do we ban that? That's a much more ambivalent issue from issues spanning millenia, but I'll admit it's not my fight to fight.
I'm much more rather address these causes than the symptom that is social media (as so many other media has been accused of over the decades).
You could. And if I agreed I'd still have some issues.
Namely: what do you do once the plugged is unpulled? Do you think people will just magically start going outside again while outside life is more expensive than ever, rent is increasing, and quality of life is decreasing (decreasing even more due to social media being gone, somehow). We don't just cold turkey mos alcoholics, but the main remedy here revolves around people being willing to go out and socialize with one another.
Bowling Alone has come full circle. We don't have the facilities nor support circles to simply "meet up" anymore. Nor the time, care, and energy to get over that hump. There's simply many facilities to address before we consider such a cold turkey approach.
I'll throw this out there: Body image has been an exponentially worse issue since the rise of advertising, with cigarette ads leading the charge.
Especially once photoshop hit the scenes and we went from 'realistic but possible to attain' to 'nearly impossible' images.
I'm sure theres a study out there: Advertising has disprortionately targetted women and has used both subtle and overt shaming to create markets for products.
WRT 'pulling the plug,' I don't think anybody seriously is suggesting decrees from on high that implement changes like a tsunami inside of a year. That said, I wager it's a chicken/egg situation, (my local library gets funding proportional to community engagement) and even if there was a tidal wave of change, it wouldn't be long before people adapted.
Most countries have laws on gambling due to its psychological addictive nature. It should not be impossible to form similar rules for social media. Especially since it is clear they are already exploiting similar various psychological tricks to hook users to their platform. Though given how slow and lax lawmakers have been with the tech industry, it is going to be a long battle.
Why don't we ban the tricks instead of the platform? Thing is that there's no fundamental difference between Facebook c. 2024 and the old social media like Myspace. Just more people and more accessibility.
We're on a social media as we speak and no one seems to suggest Tildes is contributing to the problem. So it's clear the tricks are the problem. I just don't understand why some individuals are so gung ho to go towards the sledgehammer solution. Just like games, TV, radio, etc. It doesn't treat the cause but the symptoms.
(also, as a huge tangent, most countries don't care at all about gambling from a psychological POV. That came later. Gambling was hard to tax and the games and payouts were never fair. So the government was going to come down eventually)
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