Hacker News Reader

Comment by wintermutestwin | Hacker News Reader

>Cognitive behavioral manipulation of people

from https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/202...

Aren't the valuations of Google,Facebook et al mostly based on their future capabilities to do exactly this when they feed everyone's data into their AI?

View on HN

That quote is missing some context, the term is used in a section on “systems considered a threat to people”, the examples it gives are specifically behavioural manipulation to do something dangerous like violence. It’s not just any attempt to change someone’s mind on something, that would make all advertising illegal.

I agree the wording is too vague, though.

> that would make all advertising illegal.

I’d vote for someone pushing that.

As a bonus with all those American ad-driven malware driven out of the market there would definitely be room for European companies to compete on delivering actual value

The EU has a billboard campaign going recently with pro-EU messages and utopian imagery which is also be cognitive behavioural manipulation of people (manipulating their thoughts and behaviour (voting) to be more pro-EU).

The EU doing a basic advertising campaign is somehow equivalent to mega corporation manipulating people’s behavior (to their own benefits) by controlling their content feed? Your comparison dilutes terms so much that the whole issue of algorithmic content feeds is lost.

Content feed: text and images you see when you look at your computer/phone

Outdoor billboards: text and images you see when you go outside and look around

I don't see what is dilutive about this comparison, seems about equal to me (except outdoor advertising is worse because you can't avoid it by not visiting certain websites). My broader point, I guess, is that the intended interpretation of the word "manipulation" seems to be restricted to "manipulation we disagree with".

While billboards are annoying, a) everyone sees the same, they aren't tailored, b) they aren't as ubiquitous, most people don't spend as much time looking at billboards as they do at various feeds and c) they are only show 1 advert, I would say an equivalent to a feed would be every billboard in a part of a city showing an advert that sells the same thing in a slightly different way.

Most advertising is manipulation.

*all

If advertising did not change behavior, it wouldn’t be a thing.

Do you have any sources on that? I wouldn't be surprised though, with populism and Euro-skepticism at all time highs.

It's this one, "you are europe":

https://you-are-eu.europa.eu/index_en

The images and slogans in the 4 pictures are what I have also seen on billboards.

I saw one in Sweden recently and thought it was weird. Didn’t realise it was part of such a campaign. Feels totalitarian.

>Feels totalitarian.

Meh, it's just propaganda and not all propaganda is minted by totalitarian regimes. The US/west also minted their own during the cold war.

> The US/west also minted their own during the cold war.

And before and after, its not like the Cold War was in any way unique in seeing the US make propaganda.

Could you share some links about this?

See my comment to FirmwareBurner.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com