Google and Meta struck secret ads deal to target teenagers | Hacker News Reader

Google and Meta struck secret ads deal to target teenagers

ft.com

570 pointsViktorRay361 comments

Thank you

This reads like a tragic story. Once you've collected enough data on every internet user out there to group them into different advertising cohorts, the remaining ungrouped users, by process of elimination (due to privacy or targeted advertising laws), are children; and now they can be targeted just as easily.

A tragic story would be one where folks in positions of power in these organizations saw these crises coming from a million miles away, tried to avoid disaster, and failed.

I don't think this is a tragic story.

I think this is a rather boring and formulaic plot we're seeing over and over: the story of late-stage capitalism and the application of value-extraction to human social structures resulting in comically terrible outcomes.

The line has to go up, and the slack has to be taken out of every last source of revenue. Like that story that was here yesterday about insurance companies monitoring customer's insured assets with drones and AI. Every unexploited dollar left on the table is slack, and a perfect market leaves no dollar unexploited. Therefore a more perfect market can be built with more perfect machine-powered decisions to more perfectly screw you out of every nickel they can.

"Oops, sorry your brother cut his leg and you had to speed to the hospital, but you better get a second job if you wanna keep your car."

Fuck this shit. Fuck all of it. And fuck all the status quo warriors sitting on the sidelines bleating about "it's just the way it is" because the axe hasn't swung for them yet. You're safe now because the market has more vulnerable people to grind up first, but rest assured, as it churns through them, your time will come too.

You’re on a website run by venture capitalists who use this platform to increase the value of their portfolios… so unless you’re an agent provocateur, your comment needs to be read as ironic performance art because I hate to break it to you - you’re also part of the problem

I operated under this mental model originally as well. But, based on all available information, while HN allows running ads for YC portfolio companies and uses it for other promo purposes (YC applications), I have come to the conclusion tha pg, dang, et el are running this place as part science project, part public good, funded by YC returns (which, while not exact, can be predicted with high confidence from public information wrt portfolio liquidity events).

Certainly, you need funding, look what happened to Reddit's quest to squeeze community for returns. HN runs lean (two servers in colo, a few mods) and small (less is more), so they can be more flexible in what they're optimizing for. I will argue there is something intangible that exists they are cultivating. More for another thread, but I would be cautious about saying "You cannot speak truth about capitalism failings because YC runs HN and YC is a VC fund." Simplicity is rare, and the evidence does not indicate this forum runs to maximize profit.

If the problem you're referring to is capitalism, it is not possible to not participate in capitalism because capitalism operates every nation state and every portion of the planet.

If the problem you're referring to is venture capital, I don't work at a VC firm and have no intention to.

https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1259257-we-should-improve-so...

Kinda tired of hearing this over and over. By and large, most HN readers and commenters are just regular people. Certainly we are regular people of a certain demographic, but we're not all venture capitalists or startup executives or whatever. Not even close.

If you have evidence that the people who run and moderate HN are doing so with a heavy bias toward projecting some sort of venture-capitalist narrative, please present that evidence. My interactions with dang, at least (reading his comments here, and a few email interactions) suggest quite the opposite.

There is no ethical consumption while living a capitalist way of life.

And relatedly, I'm sorry that while you were speeding your brother to the hospital, you blew through a red light you couldn't stop for and caused a three-car pileup that killed an elderly woman.

There's a reason we have these rules, and the problem of better enforcement leading to more application of the rules isn't a late-stage-capitalism problem; it's a "rules require flexibility" problem (but it's not great if the nature of the flexibility is "you didn't get caught").

> And relatedly, I'm sorry that while you were speeding your brother to the hospital, you blew through a red light you couldn't stop for and caused a three-car pileup that killed an elderly woman.

Firstly, surveilling every person in the world at all times to ensure safety is a gross misapplicaiton of tech that flies in the face of personal freedom and privacy.

Secondly, we're not even talking about authorities surveilling you to prevent safety situations (which would, by itself, already be plenty vile enough). We're talking your insurance company checking on you to make sure your roof doesn't have moss on it, and jacking your price/nuking your policy if they feel your behavior is too "risky," according to a model you (and probably they) don't fully understand how it works.

There's so much wrong with this and if you don't think so I doubt a comment here is going to change your mind. If you place ANY value at all on personal autonomy and privacy, I don't believe it's possible to, at the same time, say your insurance company by virtue of insuring your car, has the right to surveil that car at a time and via a method of their choosing, with no notification, and with no oversight, solely for the purpose of jacking up your price and/or rewriting your contract on the fly. These relationships already heavily, heavily bias in the favor of the corporation. Do they really need YET MORE unearned, unchecked authority in our lives?!

> surveilling every person in the world at all times to ensure safety is a gross misapplicaiton of tech that flies in the face of personal freedom and privacy

Not at all times, of course.

But if we built the technology to do it whenever someone is operating a multi-ton vehicle on a shared roadway (similar to how we require police to wear body-cams), I wouldn't actually be sad about it or feel unduly watched.

I do concur, however, that routing it through the insurance company is pretty sub-optimal; I'd much prefer a public authority that I could vote out if they screw up.

Not at all times, just when they are driving 2 tons of deadly metal.

I look forward to police metadata monitors that identify speeding and dangerous driving.

Way back in high school, I remember learning the Mean Value Theorem in calculus, and I asked the teacher (little annoying asshole that I was) whether the consequence of the theorem that "for a continuous function, the mean of the values in the interval is one of the values in the interval" implies that you could track how long it took someone to get from point A to point B on the highway and conclude that even if you didn't see them speed, they must have sped.

He paused and responded "yes, but nobody will stand for getting tickets like that."

Fast-forward to the 2020s and I find there are actually plenty of people who would, in fact, stand for that.

> Firstly, surveilling every person in the world at all times to ensure safety is a gross misapplicaiton of tech that flies in the face of personal freedom and privacy.

Are you referring to the opt-in system of surveillance which insurance companies use to monitor driving (install our app/plug our device into your OBD port)?

Or are they, these days, buying data on your driving from stuff like traffic cams (wouldn't be surprising, sorry if I'm giving them the idea now)?

In the thread I saw yesterday, can't spend the time to find it atm, the topic was specifically about an insurance company using drones and AI to ascertain that someone's roof had moss growing on it. The homeowner fully acknowledged that this was a lapse in his upkeep, but also, I am incredibly opposed to the notion that a company can surveil people as such simply because they buy insurance from them.

> Are you referring to the opt-in system of surveillance which insurance companies use to monitor driving (install our app/plug our device into your OBD port)?

Not the person you're replying to, but yes, absolutely stuff like that. (I think GP was talking about drone surveillance and stuff like that, but sure, we can talk about this too.)

The problem is that people are being coerced into giving up their privacy and autonomy. In this particular case, the coercion is (as usual) money: you presumably get a discount for letting your insurance company spy on you. I expect, though, that ultimately the insurance companies use these things as justification to charge more on average. Let's face it: most people are not particularly good drivers. That's a problem, certainly, but not one that should or will be solved by a company with a profit motive. Some people will drive within whatever arbitrary, poorly-understood parameters that makes the insurance company's algorithms happy, but most probably will not, and will likely see their premiums go up, but not realize why.

And even if this did actually result in lower premiums on average (for the people who opt into this dystopia), it's still a problem, because the implication is that only rich people are allowed to have privacy.

> only rich people are allowed to have privacy.

We already live in a world where being wealthy can buy you more privacy. The question is only where we put the comfort slider on that fact, not whether it is a fact.

Actually these days new cars have GPS tracking built in, and the manufacturers sell your location data, so it's much more fine-grained than traffic cams, and they didn't need your help getting the idea.

Does it really matter if it's opt-in when insurance companies are going to make the price without the "discounts" you get for opting in completely unaffordable for most people? When I shopped around for auto insurance most recently, I discovered that Liberty Mutual is already using this model. The quoted price is way higher than most, but convenient discounts are offered if you download an app that lets them spy on your driving habits. What happens when every insurer starts doing stuff like this because it becomes socially acceptable for them to do so? The issue, as usual, isn't from one or two firms offering a discount in exchange for data collection, it's when this data collection happens at scale and is practically unavoidable, especially for people who don't realize what they're really opting into.

> Does it really matter if it's opt-in when insurance companies are going to make the price without the "discounts" you get for opting in completely unaffordable for most people?

let’s be accurate with statements yes? i was offered one of these devices, refused it, and my rates did not increase. you’re claiming the rates people have been paying are lower than after they refuse the device. This is incorrect.

That's not the mechanism by which this happens. It's likely illegal (or at the very least, a bad look PR wise) for them to increase your rates based on your refusal to be spied on, but the base price will likely increase as the adoption of technologies like this becomes more widespread, and the discounts will become a more important part of how people afford car insurance. It's not that your specific policy will go from $200/mo to $300/mo for not opting in, it's that over time the same policy for new customers will be $300/mo but with a $100/mo discount for letting them spy on you.

Inflation will also do that. So are you mad at the current administration for increasing the prices of all policies?

in reality so long as there still competition and the gov keeps their regulatory noses out of it, then competition alone will take care of it.

Besides, the devices are embedded into cars now so this is entirely a nonissue going forward. Everybody already has one and your driving data is being sent to insurance companies without you even knowing.

Someone on HN [1] recommended "Broken Code," [2] a book about the various people who tried to fix Facebook/Meta from the inside and noped out. Highly recommend having purchased and read. "Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.” -- Captain G. M. Gilbert

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40969211

[2] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/712678/broken-code-...

(keep those book recommendations coming)

I'm beyond being shocked by this kind of behavior but it is still striking to me how some of the most profitable companies in history will go out of their way to do shady deals for a slight short term increase in their record profits.

The resulting reputational damage and future risk to their monopoly revenue has got to make deals like this -EV for the company in the long run, but decision makers at these companies are paid more for short term profits and they know it.

Reputational damage is pretty easy to limit for companies that can control what news a huge majority of people see.

If the "Craftsman" brand of tools didn't go completely out of business despite removing the lifetime warranty and just slapping the brand name on cheap chinese tools, then "Reputational damage" does not exist.

Yep. Reputational damage is a thing of the past in a world where everyone is completely bombarded with useless and incorrect information 24/7. Maybe it was never a thing at all, and companies merely assumed it was as a theoretical. Either way, I have never seen any brand actually suffer long term because of their reputation.

Tarnished brands change their name these days.

Pedantry: "Craftsman" was never a company and didn't "go out of business".

"Craftsman" was originally a store brand used by Sears, under which it sold tools that Sears contracted various third parties to produce.

In 2017, Stanley Black & Decker purchased the "Craftsman" trademark from Sears (Sears Holdings at the time), giving Sears a long-term royalty-free license to continue producing and selling tools under that trademark (I think that license lasts for about another decade at this point? And then there'd be a small royalty payment for using the trademark beyond that point.)

As a result, several different stores now each carry tools all called "Craftsman", they're generally not the same tools; different stores sell different tools produced in different places, and all sell their own versions of the tools under the same "Craftsman" brand name.

This undoubtedly causes absurd levels of consumer confusion. As you say, it's absolutely causing tremendous reputational value for the trademark.

> the story of late-stage capitalism and the application of value-extraction to human social structures resulting in comically terrible outcomes

You mean the MBAs. Ban anything related to business administration degrees and fix the problem.

> the remaining ungrouped users, by process of elimination..."

This being hacker news, I can't help but appreciate the pure evil genius of this. It reminds me of some other cases cunning corporate ingenuity:

- Monsanto and their "terminator" seeds that prevents farmers from planting seeds they harvest, requiring them to purchase new seeds for every planting.[1]

- Volkswagen and how they programmed diesel engines to activate emissions controls only during laboratory emissions testing.[2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto#%22Terminator%22_seed...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal

> Monsanto and their "terminator" seeds that prevents farmers from planting seeds they harvest, requiring them to purchase new seeds for every planting.

Kind of misleading to just state it like this if your source points out that Monsanto never sold this, pledged 25 years ago they won’t do this, and according to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_tech... , they also didn’t invent it.

Monsanto isn’t forcing anyone to buy their product. Farmers use it because they’re better than uncopyeighted seeds.

They are forced in the sense that it's a prisoner's dilemma type of thing: Farmers would be better off if none of them used exploitative seeds. However since they are competing with farmers who are using those seeds then have to do so as well in order to stay competitive.

I dont see how that is the case. How does one farmer using monsanto seeds mean another needs to as well? Each farmers seed choice has no effect on others choices. If the monsanto seeds cost more than they were worth farmers wouldnt use them. In fact saying that you need to use their seeds to be competitive makes it clear that you understand that the seeds are worth it, you just wish they were free or cheaper. But in order to create these seeds monsanto needs to be paid.

My guess would be it's about pricing. Let's imagine a world where there are only two farms, mine and my neighbor's. We're both using regular seeds, and we do a decent job, but it's not wonderful, and some years our yield isn't so great.

Then Monsanto comes along and wants to sell us a product that gives us better, more consistent yields, even better than our best harvests with the regular seeds. The catch, of course, is that we have to buy new seed from them every year, and can't propagate seed from the prior year's crop.

So my neighbor decides to start buying Monsanto's seeds, but I don't like the terms of the deal, so I don't. My neighbor sees amazing yields, even to the point of surplus. He decides to undercut me by lowering his prices because he has so much to sell, and can still make out better than before, with those lower prices. Nothing's changed for me, so I can't lower my prices. My neighbor's entire inventory sells out, but because of his surplus, only half of my yield gets sold. Fortunately I have some savings to fall back on, so I burn my entire savings feeding my family for the rest of the year, and then grudgingly buy Monsanto seeds for next year.

I'm sure this exact scenario doesn't scale up to the global agricultural system, but I think it's more likely than your naive "no one forces anyone to buy anything; if they buy it, it's because it's worth it" view of economics... things are rarely that simple.

You do realize that most farming is subsidized by the gov these days right? So in your scenario here, likely no farmer is making profit and the gov is paying the difference.

In your story nobody is forced to anything. The farmer that doesn't like the monsanto deal made their choice, effectively rendering their farm business less competitive (unable to lower prices like the other farmer). That was predictable, it's also why the other farmer took the deal. Yeah, forced by market to not ignore progress to be better at what you do, that may be, but can't see that as negative.

They are forced in the sense that they don't have a viable choice other than taking a bad deal.

Note that the issue isn't ignoring progress. Neither farmer has an issue with using more sophisticated seeds. The issue is with the deal that goes along with the seeds.

If you neighbor uses monsanto seeds, he also sprays pesticides that might kill your crops or make them have too much pesticides to be edible. It's also basically impossible to do organic farming besides such a farm.

https://investigatemidwest.org/2020/12/04/buy-it-or-else-ins...

https://inthedirt.substack.com/p/when-the-neighbor-kills-you...

This is an interesting twist of the original urban legend around these seeds. The story was that if you didn’t pay for monsanto seeds, and your neighbor did and planted them, and one blew into your yard then you’d be targeted by a lawsuit.

in reality though, i’d like to see this farmland so close to another that they can’t accurately spray or sow. there’s fences and access roads between fields, sometimes trees as well.

They were buying farms out and suing neighbour farmers for using monsato seeds blown by wind from their farms. Theyre pure evil. They have a deal with Bayer

There are zero cases of monsanto suing farmers for seeds blown by the wind.

Hmm true, I was lied by internet it seems. But https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/12/monsanto...

" nce you've collected enough data on every internet user " I guess by legal I can force companies not to collect data from me. (I am not a kid). I just happen not to live in the US. But this article reads more like a US problem.

We could also make it illegal to advertise to children at all. Wouldn't that be funny if all of us started clicking "I am below 18" :D

Dream bigger? We could make it illegal to advertise period.

Tax ad revenue as a vice like at alcohol and tobacco levels, or higher.

It's not an abused substance, it's violence.

This is not the first time I'm hearing someone say free speech is violence, but it is the first time they actually meant it about free speech and weren't covering up something else by calling it that.

Not who shared that but there's a concept of non-violent communication that they may be referring to.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication

Coercion -> force -> violence

Forcing ads onto kids = violence?

From my experience, that concept is mostly used as weapon and shield by the worst kind of people, to let them get away with their manipulative bs.

Speaking clearly sometimes means saying things that are uncomfortable to hear.

That sounds more like gaslighting.

Non-violent communication isn't at all about manipulation. It's about discussing behaviors and their impact on the person vs attacking and defending in circles that go nowhere.

Yeah, I get the potential, and I'm not saying it's a bad idea.

It's just that in practice I've only seen it used by morons to shut down discussions they don't feel like having.

One can couch their words in the language of nonviolence and still be manipulative, cruel or discriminatory. It can and does act as a form of social camouflage, because humans are shitty and a method of communication will not safeguard against predators.

You can’t make people harmless, but you can force them to innovate different ways to harm others.

Yeah, but that isn't it at all, I'm afraid.

It's much darker.

The fact is that exactly the same people who are pushing the idea, are the ones who we would need protection from. And they're not innovating much, it's the same bs over and over and over again.

I don’t think the dynamic you are talking about has much to do with Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication.

Perhaps a slightly reductive view, but I see “NVC” as basically saying that when people argue, emotions can sometimes overrule logic.

When people get emotional, they sometimes plug their ears and start screaming into the void.

NVC is then basically a bunch of tactics to circumvent the emotional aspect so that the discussion can get back to logical facts.

It also tries to create a framework where the people arguing have to hear the other side’s arguments before making a counter argument.

I think the book has some very useful ideas mixed in with some amount of self-promotion. I think the name “Nonviolent Communication” (which might throw some people off) is part of that self-promotion. Don’t let the name fool you.

I don't think eliminating emotions from human interaction is a very smart thing to do, and certainly not the only alternative to screaming into the void.

We're already at the point where we're almost not supposed to have emotions anymore, turning more into robots every day.

Every single aspect of being human is emotional, every single decision you make is emotional, no matter how hard you work to justify it mentally.

The idea is nice in theory, if it wasn't for all the humans involved it might actually work.

Exactly this.

Why is free speech free? If you think people (and by extension businesses) should be allowed to express themselves that's one thing, but advertising is importantly distinct from that. It's protected speech in most of the Anglosphere to say you don't like some person or group, but not to maliciously damage someone's reputation or incite hatred. I can imagine an analogous situation where you're free to express that you think your product is good, but not to incite irrational desire in consumers or try so place information about your product in places that are difficult to avoid, like public billboards.

On free speech vs violent acts of speech (if we want to keep using that term)

A possible compromise that might work is to protect _good faith_ speech while working against bad faith speech.

Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff have been attacking that trope as factually incorrect and unhelpful for almost a decade now:

"Why It's a Bad Idea to Tell Students Words Are Violence : A claim increasingly heard on campus will make them more anxious and more willing to justify physical harm." (2017)

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/07/why-it...

You do a disservice to anyone actually exposed to real violence. I’m sure they’d prefer advertising to violence any day

Maybe not violence, but what word more accurately describes the non-consensual exploitation of human psychology for massive profit?

Fraud is closer but still a massive reach.

IMO advertising is worse than fraud. At least with fraud the impact is usually fairly clear, and not buried in our broken, manipulated, subconscious minds.

We know so little about out subconscious that this simply seems alarmist. Maybe TV really does rot our brain, maybe it's better to answer kids's questions about everything and expose them to it rather than set age restrictions.

Until some substantial info of our brains occur, I can't say the ability to make people aware of products is worse than fraud.

If all ads did was make you aware of products, we would not be having this discussion. They attempt to hijack deep-seated human urges and tenancies in order to get you to buy their crap. Watch any perfume or cologne commercial and tell me they are simply making you aware that the product exists.

I hate ads, but this is not a winning argument. Instead of winning people over to the sympathetic cause (nobody really LIKES ads besides google and meta employees) you alienate people

I would hazard a guess that no one likes ads except the likes of google and meta SHAREHOLDERS).

I was incredulous but many normal people actually enjoy ads.

I mean they can often be useful.

Many people have also never experienced a world where ads do not exist. I use so many layers of adblocking that whenever I use a vanilla VM or devices, I'm stunned at how shockingly bad the internet experience is for most people.

Ads can be likeable under the right conditions. Who doesn't want to learn about something that will actually improve their life? Which is also ideal for advertisers. Who wants to pay to advertise to an audience that doesn't want their product?

Google and Facebook, in the early days, thought they could use copious amounts of data to tailor the ads to the user such that they would only be subjected to those which are likeable, but then the audience got skittish about having that much information collected on them. And so we now just get whatever random ad happens to be in the queue – which, indeed, is statistically unlikely to be in line with what you actually need, and therefore unlikable.

There’s a subtle error in your beliefs about the motivations of FB and Google. They are incentivized not to give users useful ads, but effective ones. The goal isn’t to improve your life. For example, something you buy because its marketed very well, but then never use, is a success for FB or Google and a loss for you. You should frame them less positively as a consequence. I also want to point out that it’s not skittishness; skittishness implies animalistic irrationality. People are right to be afraid of the control that a powerful actor can exert over them if it knows everything they do.

Nobody would buy something without an understanding of it being beneficial.

I'll grant you that understandings can be faulty. One may learn that there was no benefit. But that's outside of the ad itself. Invalidating your hypotheseses is an important part of the scientific method.

Explain sugar cereals, soda, cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, gambling, etc.

The advertisements create the misunderstanding. "Lucky Charms are part of a complete breakfast" etc. No normal person under normal circumstances would think that marshmallows or cookies are part of a healthy meal if you asked them directly to think about it.

What's to explain? They feel good when consumed, and thus improve one's life, even if only for a fleeting moment.

Who is buying Lucky Charms because they find them disgusting, but somehow see them as being important? Let's be real: People only (continue to, at least – they may buy once just to try) buy Lucky Charms if they like consuming them.

> Who is buying Lucky Charms because they find them disgusting, but somehow see them as being important?

Have... you met a teenager?

I'm failing to see the point of this example, as I don't think I've never met a single person who found their first cigarette enjoyable. Is your experience that people buy their first and second pack out of enjoyment of the taste?

I have never met a teenager who is concerned about eating a "whole" breakfast, no, especially if that "whole" breakfast requires eating something that is otherwise unpleasant. Even if this so-called whole breakfast was some scientific truth, proven to improve health outcomes, what teenager would care? Have... you met a teenager?

I don't really see the point of the example either, frankly, but it is what we were given. I expect the contextual parent was just desperately trying to come up with something in the absence of having something meaningful to say.

The point of the example is that there are plenty of things that have no benefit at all, and in fact have obvious downsides that everyone knows about. However, there is an immense amount of marketing around those things to try to make them seem "cool" and minimize their perceived harm. People get addicted to these things, and struggle to stop consuming them even when they know they're literally dying from it.

No one in their right mind would ever give their kids Oreos for breakfast, but somehow advertisements make people feel comfortable giving them Oero O's. Any person of sound mind would say that giving that to your kids as a meal is neglect, but people do it, and it's "normal". This is the harm that marketing is capable of.

Cookies are, in fact, not a part of a complete breakfast. Evidently, you can convince people that they are by just repeating the message thousands of times to them. I don't see how the people who are involved in making those ads (or the products) can live with themselves. Convincing people to e.g. set their kids up for a life of obesity and early T2 diabetes from poor dietary habits is pure evil, and that's just one example of horrible (yet completely mundane for them) things marketers do.

Just imagine being a person who wakes up in the morning and thinks about how to best convince children to try ingesting poison[0]:

> Juul Labs, the vaping company that has long insisted it never marketed its products to teenagers, purchased ad space in its early days on numerous youth-focused websites, including those of Nickelodeon, the Cartoon Network, Seventeen magazine and educational sites for middle school and high school students, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday by the Massachusetts attorney general.

Everyone involved in something like that should be put in prison.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/12/health/juul-vaping-lawsui...

> No one in their right mind would ever give their kids Oreos for breakfast

Assuming you are going to feed your children Oreos at some point, why not for breakfast?

> Cookies are, in fact, not a part of a complete breakfast.

They could be. If you are going to eat them anyway, why not at breakfast?

> Evidently, you can convince people that they are by just repeating the message thousands of times to them.

Evidently not. Remember, a "complete breakfast" refers to a specific culinary dish that consists of items like bacon, sausages, eggs, baked beans, tomatoes, mushrooms, etc.

Who eats a bowl of cookies in addition to all that? I've certainly never met such a person. I've known people who eat bowls of cookies for breakfast, indeed, but when they do that's approximately the only thing they eat, which violates what is told in the advertisement. The advertisement you point to is abundantly clear that these cookies are only to be eaten with all those other foods.

Evidently people don't pay attention to what is said and will go off and do their own thing.

> Evidently people don't pay attention to what is said and will go off and do their own thing.

It's almost like that was the intention. It's weird how the ad doesn't prominently show the eggs, beans, etc. and talk about how great they are, and instead focuses on how you can totally eat cookies for breakfast!

Here's an example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnvHUXssIAo

"Not Candy! Resees Puffs cereal!"

It is candy. Like 1/3 of the mass is added sugar, and the other 2/3 is more carbs. And what's the complete breakfast that goes with it? Two slices of white-bread toast, a glass of milk, and a glass of juice. Even the "complete" breakfast is garbage. The bowl almost certainly has more than the 1 cup serving as well.

The purpose of this commercial is not to inform you about how to use their product as part of a healthy diet (because it isn't a part of a healthy diet). It is to turn your brain off and get you to buy something that you intuitively know is not appropriate. People received the intended message.

Even if they did show their product as a small side (rather than a centerpiece) of an otherwise healthy breakfast, it's still ridiculous to suggest that you should be giving your kids candy with any regularity.

My oldest kid is 3, and I don't think she has had an Oreo. Will she before she's 18? Probably. Has she had some other treats? Sure. But it's not at all a regular thing. It's certainly not part of a daily diet.

> The purpose of this commercial is not to inform you about how to use their product

Assuming we watched the same video, the purpose is to inform the offer of a solution to a problem: The problem of parents needing to rush off to work and the kids off to school, without time to prepare a proper healthy breakfast, with the kids crying "I'm hungry" yet turning their nose up at anything that might be even reasonably healthy.

Hell ya I've given my children candy for breakfast on occasion. We seem to both accept that the occasional treat is not the end of the world. Why not at breakfast? I certainly wouldn't want to make it a habit, but I can also say that from a point of relative privilege in time and resources to cater to other choices. While I think we can agree it is not ideal to turn it into a habit, I can empathize with the parent who is trying to cope with a hard situation by resorting to something that solves the immediate problem.

> ...as part of a healthy diet

While this ends up being true, does this caveat not imply that health is the only problem people face? Clearly that is not true.

> It is to turn your brain off and get you to buy something that you intuitively know is not appropriate.

Like you imply, I expect most parents have a pang of guilt when buying breakfast candy for their children, but I expect they also don't know what is a better alternative that fits within their life constraints. If you could market to them something that is at least as equally palatable to the picky child, at least as easy to prepare, and actually healthy, I bet you could destroy the cereal market overnight. But without consumers becoming aware of that better solution...

Again, this is a problem the advertisers create. My kid doesn't turn her nose up at healthy food; she asks for it. Want to know why? She doesn't know things like cereal exist. She wouldn't know to ever ask for it, much less demand it. In her mind, strawberries are a treat.

We don't eat candy for breakfast because candy is not food. Thus the issue of fighting to enforce good habits never arises. Without advertisements undermining us, the idea simply does not exist. If it ever occurred to her, it's easy to say "no, candy is not food" and we don't have a TV telling her otherwise.

> My kid doesn't turn her nose up at healthy food; she asks for it.

Yeah, so did my kids at that age. In fact, if given the choice, they would choose the healthy food over the candy. Get back to us in a few years.

On that note, there is nothing to me that suggests the ad in question is even trying to convince you that your unruly 3 year old that you are rushing to get off to school is a problem. It clearly portrays older children. You appear to be the exact embodiment of the idea that ads are not likeable when they are not applicable.

What does seem applicable to your preferences is healthy food. Would you be this miffed if you were shown an ad in a similar vein about a new food product that tastes great and has proven to be healthy? Or would you be glad to learn about it?

> She doesn't know things like cereal exist.

Without some kind of advertising, she also wouldn't know anything exists – even healthy food. Seems you're trying to go down the same road as the parallel thread of "advertising is only bad if the product is bad".

Which is hard to deny on some kind of superficial level, sure, but seems to conflate a number of ideas that I'm not sure should be conflated.

Of course she would know healthy food exists: her parents show her. That is fundamentally different from a paid message.

I don't see why you wouldn't tie those ideas. Sure, ads that remind you to do some push-ups and tell kids how cool it is to be strong would be great, but they don't exist. Talking about decent adverts might as well be talking about how "true" communism hasn't been tried. In the real world, the product generally is somewhere between unnecessary and outright bad. It's obtuse to ignore that.

One of us is talking about hypothetical ads for fantasy products. The other is talking about actual ads.

Reading the two of you is surreal:

> Without some kind of advertising, she also wouldn't know anything exists – even healthy food.

Our family didn't see, hear, or read an advertising until myself and siblings were well into our teens .. we were all too far out from cities to get TV, the national broadcasting radio didn't carry ads, etc.

We all knew what healthy food was, the food we grew, raise, and caught. The bulk goods that were ordered.

> Sure, ads that remind you to do some push-ups would be great, but they don't exist.

Sure they do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNjEge3Awl8 the first "ad" campaign series I saw. As a teenager.

Life without advertising is possible, even today - I principally use the internet and haven't seen an add their for decades thanks to sponser blocks and ad blocking.

> The bulk goods that were ordered.

Wait. Ordered as in you shouted out into the wilderness: "Oh great vast expanse, give me rice!"

Or ordered as in, like, you contacted a business that supplies bulk goods and requested that they fulfill an order? I'm assuming this one, but how did you magically find out about this business without some kind of advertising letting its existence be known?

Hell, even if we believe the former, how did you come to learn that rice (or whatever good it is that you ordered) exists? You (or your parents, or their parents, whatever) were somehow magically born with that knowledge?

> Of course she would know healthy food exists: her parents show her. That is fundamentally different from a paid message.

Advertising does not necessarily imply paid, but let's go down that road. How do you, and therefore your child, know how to obtain the food that your children eat?

In my case, I go to the grocery store. But I only know that there that grocery store to go to because they spend quite a lot of money to let it be known that they exist. And when in the grocery story, they spent quite a lot on marketing to let it be known what I can buy, healthy or otherwise.

It is advertising all the way down.

> Talking about decent adverts might as well be talking about how "true" communism hasn't been tried.

Well, of course it hasn't been tried. Communism is a work that imagines what life could be like if we achieve post-scarcity. Star-Trek is another adaptation of the same idea. Outside of science fiction, trying either at this juncture is fundamentally impossible. We have not yet succeeded in fulfilling the necessary preconditions that would allow trying.

Yes, indeed, there is hopeful progress towards that goal. We have, according to the UN, achieved post-scarcity in the area of food. It is quite possible that we will get all the way there some day. But not yet. Its time has not yet come.

So what purpose would a "Star-Trek hasn't been tried!" ad actually serve? Just to state the obvious? Perhaps you see it as some kind of gorilla marketing tactic to convince people to watch Star-Trek, or to what you really said, read about the imagined world of communism, because you find it to be entertaining and think others will too?

> One of us is talking about hypothetical ads for fantasy products. The other is talking about actual ads.

And then there is what the rest of us are talking about. What is not clear is who the second player is. Do you have a split personality, by chance?

> I only know that there that grocery store to go to because they spend quite a lot of money to let it be known that they exist. And when in the grocery story, they spent quite a lot on marketing to let it be known what I can buy, healthy or otherwise.

You know, there is this thing called a “map” that you can use to find places without having them advertize themselves to you. And of course grocery stores show you the food they sell, how else would they sell it?

> You know, there is this thing called a “map” that you can use to find places without having them advertize themselves to you.

A blank map will reveal business destinations? Methinks you've not thought this through.

> And of course grocery stores show you the food they sell, how else would they sell it?

It is not unheard of to see counter service, with the food hidden away in the back. Presenting the food can be deferred until after the sale is made. Ordering online for pickup (or perhaps delivery, although that is less common around here) has also become quite popular, which definitely means you aren't seeing the food beforehand. Most grocery stores try to go for the wholesale experience nowadays because it is a great way to advertise the products, sure, but it is not a strict requirement. Methinks you've not thought this through.

I enjoyed reading your side of the argument but am less convinced with

> Without some kind of advertising, she also wouldn't know anything exists – even healthy food.

Do you actually believe that before the 1900s and the invention of advertising, nobody knew about food?

I don't see how you can make such a big claim without resorting to "well, daddy telling you to eat cucumber is a form of advertising".

> but am less convinced

Is there something we are supposed to convince you of?

> Do you actually believe that before the 1900s and the invention of advertising, nobody knew about food?

1900s? Even what is considered "modern" advertising dates back to the 17th century – i.e. the 1600s.

> I don't see how you can make such a big claim without resorting to "well, daddy telling you to eat cucumber is a form of advertising".

Okay, but unless "daddy" hales from Mesopotamia, then he didn't really stumble upon one in nature by happenstance. The rest of world only came to learn of the existence of cucumbers through advertising.

Alright, it's all good and dandy to play devil's advocate to everyone, but it would be nice if you didn't mind sharing your definition of "advertising" that dates back to the 1600s and includes "knowing about the existence of vegetables".

Just a definition would be nice. Thanks.

By the 1600s, people were letting it be known about wares they wish to sell and whatnot in newspapers; a practice that continues today. This is generally considered the birth of "modern" advertising.

If you want a definition, pick a definition – come up with something on the spot, even. It makes no difference to me.

>Any person of sound mind would say that giving that to your kids as a meal is neglect,

it's grains either way, even if some grains have sugar on them (we have a lot of stuff with too much sugar/salt for taste or preservative purposes. Fresh food every day is sadly a luxury). This seems overly dramatic to the point of dismissing your whole point. Giving "bad breakfast cereal" is neglect? Really?

You're free to only give your kid soylent 3 times a day if you want to minmax health, but you seem to be missing a core point that humans also desire pleasurable senses.

I'm not sure what you mean by it's grains either way. My older kid usually asks for cottage cheese in the morning. She wouldn't know to demand cereal because we've never bought it or even gone into that aisle in the store. She's never heard of it, and advertisers don't have access to her to suggest it.

Even if it's something you want, if there is competition in the space, then since Internet ads work on a real-time auction system, you can expect that the winning bidder is the entity that has the most available margin to make. i.e. it is the worst possible deal for you the customer. So e.g. when you search for something on Amazon and see sponsored results, you can expect that those are the worst possible deal.

I don't think it's the random ads that bother me and others so much, those are easy to tune out. Nobody cares about billboards. Random junk ads on websites are annoying, but I don't think they're doing much societal harm.

On the contrary, it's the hyper targetting of ads, nested in content algorithmically maximixed for engagement, that I object to.

I've worked in the ad industry, so I've certainly heard and appreciate the whole "we're just educating consumers about products they might be interested in" angle. That's fine, academically speaking, if that's all advertising was. However, advertising more often than not attempts to pray on people's emotions to generate demand for a product. And when we know exactly who someone is, it's SO much easier to do that.

As a perfect example, I woke up last Saturday, started scrolling IG, and saw an ad with a photo of a miserable looking middle aged man lying in bed, asking "Are you tired of feeling like a horrible father because of your drinking problems? Try Reframe!" (No idea what the exact phrasing was, but close enough to that.)

Yes, I'd in fact had drinks with friends the night before. And yes, I'm a middle aged dad. I thought the targetting was pretty hilarious, so I laughed and shared it with my wife and friends. But also, Reframe is praying on my feelings of guilt and shame in an attempt to sell me their shitty app.

I can laugh it off, but I'm not so sure your typical teenager could.

Let's assume, for the sake of discussion, that this Reframe is some miracle app that will truly do what you think it claims to. Would that not be an ideal way to get the solution into your hands if you have that problem?

You're not going to feel guilt or shame unless you already are under the understanding that you're not, in this case, being then parent you wish to become. Anyone who takes an interest in this ad will do so only because they actually want to make their life better by becoming a better parent and drinking less, and are seeking solutions to see that through.

It seems the only problem here is that the app is shitty.

That's a valid way to look at this, and I appreciate that perspective.

However, I think you may be missing the point that the advertisement is specifically meant to elicit, or create, those feelings of guilt or shame. Maybe I feel just fine about the amount I drink, but the wording of the ads subtely implied I should feel guilty about my drinking. If the question was "Do you feel like you could use help with your drinking? Then try Reframe.", then I'd agree with your point more.

But maybe a bad example, because in that case perhaps the end result of the targetted ad could in fact be a better outcome for everyone, as you point out. To pick a bit of a hyperbolic example, what if instead the ad had instead said "Tired of being the the ugliest girl in your class? Try BetterMakeup!" (with all the appropriate imagery the targetting provides). Is advertisement like that truly good for anyone but the seller?

As a bit of a side note, everyone knows ads are targetted now, so there's an implicit assumption on the viewers part that the seller must know something about them. And now advertisers are using that to their advantage.

I think the larger point though is that many of us simply do not think its ethical or healthy to give companies the tools to manipulate our emotions and tap into our insecurities in the pursuit of profit. The seller doesn't care about the buyer, they only care about convincing the buyer to buy their product, even if that means making them feel shitty about themselves.

> I think you may be missing the point that the advertisement is specifically meant to elicit, or create, those feelings of guilt or shame.

I'm not sure that was missed, but, as before, you cannot elicit or create feelings where there isn't already an understanding of what the feelings reflect. The particular ad no doubt does elicit feelings in those who already see themselves as not being the parent they want to be. It's not going to elicit any particular feelings in someone who is childless, though. They lack the necessary understanding.

And if you do have concern about the way you are parenting, wouldn't you want to improve upon that?

> what if instead the ad had instead said "Tired of being the the ugliest girl in your class? Try BetterMakeup!" (with all the appropriate imagery the targetting provides). Is advertisement like that truly good for anyone but the seller?

Sure, it is also good for the person who has an understanding that they are ugly and no longer want to be, again, assuming the product works. We do again have the potential problem of where the product might not work as expected. Indeed, that can be a problem, but I'm not sure that's a problem with advertising in and of itself. We should be careful to not conflate different ideas.

On the assumption that "BetterMakeup" actually makes a person more beautiful, someone wants to become more beautiful, and the ad gave awareness to the person that there is a solution to their apparent problem, is that not a win for the consumer?

> I think the larger point though is that many of us simply do not think its ethical or healthy to give companies the tools to manipulate our emotions and tap into our insecurities in the pursuit of profit.

If all products magically solved the problems they purport to solve, would you still have the same concern? As before, trying to convince a childless person that they are a bad parent isn't going to work. This only works when you are presenting a solution to someone who already understands that they have a problem.

If the product is shitty, thereby not solving the problem, then I can definitely understand your overall concern. Although I am not sure you have made clear why advertising is to blame for shitty products. If we are imagining ways to change the world, why place product evaluation in the advertising band at all? Perhaps these shitty products don't need to be allowed on the market in the first place?

> And if you do have concern about the way you are parenting, wouldn't you want to improve upon that?

> Let's assume, for the sake of discussion, that this Reframe is some miracle app that will truly do what you think it claims to.

Reading this discussion, I remain unconvinced. Unless I lost the plot somewhere along the way (admittedly, that's a possibility), it sounds like the context is that of someone advertising a product in a probably dishonest way and it's justified because people want the thing that's being advertised, even though it's not necessarily the thing that's being sold.

> Although I am not sure you have made clear why advertising is to blame for shitty products.

Put another way: what if the product in question was literally snake oil? Is that still justifiable as marketing because they're making a promise about it which someone wants to hear? Maybe it's more than just a shitty product.

> I remain unconvinced.

Was there something we were supposed to convince you of?

> what if the product in question was literally snake oil? Is that still justifiable as marketing because they're making a promise about it which someone wants to hear?

The discussion is about advertising preying on insecurities, not marketing in general. If we assume snake oil were to be advertised, is there some reason to prefer: "Snake Oil: The miracle cure-all!" over "Your bad breath is scaring off the girl of your dreams. Cure it with Snake Oil!"?

If yes, why is the latter less preferable? Is it because it calls attention to a real problem someone might want to solve? Does that continue to hold if we assume snake oil truly is a miracle cure-all that eliminates bad breath?

Because the advertisement inappropriately calls the product a solution to an unrelated problem. The manufacturer can demonstrate that it will eliminate my halitosis but not that it will get me laid. Using the initial example, I might be less addicted to alcohol but that doesn't necessarily make me a better parent; the advertisement sold me on being a better parent.

(I appreciate your questions. I had to think about that one.)

> Because the advertisement inappropriately calls the product a solution to an unrelated problem.

Yes, but that is true in both cases. A miracle cure-all, if there were such a thing, would, indeed, solve your halitosis and girl troubles.

If I am to infer something here, it is that you didn't realize what a "cure-all" can do. It took more precise language to get you thinking about specific problems and how to solve them.

So, let's assume for a minute that snake oil is well and truly a magical cure-all. It seems that by the first ad you wouldn't recognize that fact and would end up not being able to benefit from is miracle properties. Perhaps the second ad would actually be preferable?

> Yes, but that is true in both cases.

I think I can see where you're coming from with this but it's still not how I read it. The second advertisement is telling me that the product will cure my bad breath and therefore my girl problems but my girl problems are not necessarily related to my bad breath. It's the same as the drinking father example; a person's parenting can be good or bad irrespective of their drinking habits. (Maybe it fixes my girl problems independently from curing my bad breath but the advertisement seems to be telling me that it will solve my girl problems by means of curing my bad breath. Same as the given drinking father real-world example.)

Can you think of a non-cure-all example for which this argument holds?

> but it's still not how I read it.

Right. Which also demonstrates why the latter type of ad tends to be much more effective, even though both technically say the same thing.

So, it seems to me that we have two different discussions trying to compete here:

- The acceptability of false advertising.

- The acceptability of advertising that attempts to evoke emotions.

While you are not wrong in noticing that these examples also exhibit false advertising, that is staring to move away from the original discussion, which was about preying on insecurities.

> Can you think of a non-cure-all example for which this argument holds?

How about we turn to the ad that shows up on just about every HN page? It will be well-familiar to everyone here. Here are two variants on one of those ads (with a little paraphrasing on my part):

- "Rust: It will protect your memory!"

- "Still programming in C like it is 1972? The hackers are going to get you. Secure your programs with Rust!"

My understanding from earlier in the thread is that only the first example should be allowed according to the beliefs of those who participated. But, I must say, I'm far more compelled by the latter. It addresses problems I understand deep down when programming in C and then offers a solution. The "It will protect your memory" doesn't tell me much. Why do I need my memory protected? Next.

Assuming only the latter ad catches my attention, which I think is a decent assumption based on what we've seen in this very thread and around ad response behaviour in general, is it possible that the consumer actually benefits from the latter?

The Rust example is categorically different from the drinking father example. The former evokes emotions around professional decisions while the latter evokes emotions around personal decisions.

The consumer may still ultimately benefit from this advertisement which evokes emotions in such a personal way, especially if we assume the efficacy of the product to be as advertised. The advertisement might also cause a mentally unhealthy individual to become worse as such. The negativity of the emotions might push someone into a worse spot or into learning self-harming or abusive behaviors.

As much as advertisers A/B test their advertisements, I don’t get the feeling they measure the effect they have on national suicide rates. Do you think they’d publish those numbers if they had them?

Admittedly, I dragged this away from OP’s point a bit but I think I brought it back. One person might laugh it off while another abuses their family. It’s really hard to say that the advertisement is not evil, even if it can be demonstrated to be a net good for some.

> The former evokes emotions around professional decisions while the latter evokes emotions around personal decisions.

That there is a division between personal emotions and professional emotions is a new idea to me. What is the difference?

> It’s really hard to say that the advertisement is not evil, even if it can be demonstrated to be a net good for some.

If we assume that advertisements can be evil, how are we certain the type that doesn't go after insecurities aren't the evil ones? Like you say, there doesn't seem to be much data published to back up which and which ads aren't evil.

> What is the difference?

The emotions are all personal but some topics evoke emotions of lesser or greater intensity than others; the topic of one’s parenting will likely be more emotionally intense than the topic of their tech stack at work. Most people in relevant situations will be far more invested in the former than the latter.

> If we assume that advertisements can be evil, how are we certain the type that doesn't go after insecurities aren't the evil ones? Like you say, there doesn't seem to be much data published to back up which and which ads aren't evil.

It’s a personal belief that this behavior is evil; indeed, that seems a necessary component of calling anything evil. I also wouldn’t distinguish between advertisements which play on emotions and those which don’t -- they all play on emotions. The important distinction for me is in the specific topic being exploited. (There was also the distraction I brought up of false advertising but I think that’s more uncontroversially “evil”.)

> the topic of one’s parenting will likely be less emotionally intense than the topic of their tech stack at work. Most people in relevant situations will be far more invested in the former than the latter.

Where does "Are you tired of feeling like a horrible father because you are spending more time tracking down error cases you forgot to handle than with your children? Try Rust!" fall?

> I also wouldn’t distinguish between advertisements which play on emotions and those which don’t -- they all play on emotions.

You kind of have to distinguish between them in order to meaningfully participate in this discussion. That there is no difference follows my point made initially, so I can certainly appreciate your position in a vacuum, but we moved long past that to explore the idea that there is a difference. If you cannot speak to a difference then there is only nonsense.

Perhaps I misunderstand?

>Would that not be an ideal way to get the solution into your hands if you have that problem?

I think that's where the algorithm matters more than the ad. e.g. if it was some random traveling saelesman going door to door and they researched this neighborhood having 30 year old dads, it wouldn't feel that bad to happen upon a convinient solution.

When you know some company sold your data (with dubious consent) to a bidder who can then pay another company who has your data to say "yeah, give this ad to 30 year old dads", then start starts to feel overly invasive. Not because the product is bad per se, but because two different conglomerations exploited your data.

and for the absurd, "optimal" solution: if this company had government surveillance about your private life up to your recent daily activity, and used that to directly text your spouse or older kid about how your spouse/dad needs this to get over his drinking problem, that'd go way over the line.

> Who doesn't want to learn about something that will actually improve their life?

I don't, honestly. If I've decided I want something, I'll seek it out. If I've identified an area where I feel like my life is lacking, I might look for a product to help fix that. If I don't even know about something that I might want, I'm fine not having it.

The problem is that I don't really trust anyone else to determine what kind of ad passes the test of "will improve people's lives". There's really no objective way to approve or reject an ad based on this kind of criterion.

I'd rather we just ban all forms of advertising.

> Google and Facebook, in the early days, thought they could use copious amounts of data to tailor the ads to the user such that they would only be subjected to those which are likeable

No, they wanted to give people ads they thought would be effective. Google's plan was to make ads unobtrusive, mostly text-only, and thought that they would be likeable enough to be effective. But that's the key: they didn't do this because they were being nice and wanted to make the web a better place. They did it because they thought the ads would actually work better.

>If I've decided I want something, I'll seek it out.

you dont know what you don't know. I wouldn't have even been aware of tech if I didn't randomly bumble into a robotics club in high school. Would I have been fine likely making much less in a field I'm less paasoinate about? Maybe, but that seems to be a big sacrifice just so your life is "ad-free" (an odd ideal, if possible at all).

the advertiser also doesn’t know what they don’t know.

if you hadn’t joined the robotics club, chances are very high you would tripped over robotics on your way off of the stage when graduating. it’s that prevalent these days. if not then you would’ve seen one of the many youtube videos convincing you to join some company. had you seen an ad for robot building school, most would consider it a scam and move on.

Limit advertising budgets to some percentage of reported (and taxed) income.

Solve multiple problems at once :)

So the big companies can spend more and the startups wouldn’t be able to advertise at all. That’s not solving anything.

Those sorts of taxes could be made progressive. And if one wanted to be really cheeky, the progression could be based on percentages of global revenue.

Ads really are a negative externality, and they should really be treated as such.

take a complex solution that doesn’t actually solve the problem and make it more complex so then it solves it, yet still doesn’t.

a less complex solution, let companies like apple do what they do and allow ad blockers and develop an AI feature for removing them.

people still seeing ads these days are doing so by choice.

> people still seeing ads these days are doing so by choice.

Hey, you might not know, but there exists this place called "the outside", where there are no adblockers, no AI, but A LOT of ads.

Severly limiting ads would solve that too. Adblocks wouldn't.

nobody is forcing you to look at anything. unless you’re in Asia, the rest of the world has what, a billboard occasionally?

That is overly simplistic. Advertising is a great way to make people aware of things they may find useful. Without a good method to spread the news no one could sell their innovations.

But i do agree that most ads are annoying.

A ridiculous concept — the only people that win in that are the incumbent producers.

“I make a better widget at a lower price than BigCorp” — yet nobody will ever find out about it because advertising that fact would be illegal. Journalists would become supremely powerful and (more) supremely corrupt. Just like radio DJs in the 20th century determined what music sold (and were often bribed accordingly,) the same thing will happen for literally everything. Journalism would become even more like advertising but people wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. I don’t want the equivalent of radio DJs determining what products and services win.

Many professional sports would disappear, Motorsports, soccer, many olympic sports would cease to exist at the highest level. The Olympics themselves would no longer be broadcast (who would pay for it?) Kid’s little league teams would lose local business sponsors. Everything would be pay-per-view assuming the economics worked at all. Newspapers would all shut down. TV stations would disappear. Radio would be limited to small amateur stations — if that because the moment the host mentions a product, service, song, they’d be sued (wrongly or rightly) for potentially advertising. New restaurants would never survive (how will anyone know you exist: Signage and logos are all advertising.)

Basically it would be North Korea with people shopping for inferior state-produced goods at inferior state run supermarkets reading state-approved messages about the greatness of the Dear Leader and his progeny.

Even word of mouth referrals would be subject to lawsuits “can you prove you didn’t get a free cookie in exchange for saying something to your friends about this bakery?”

An absolutely dystopian nightmare.

And if there were an advertising ban, you can bet politicians would exempt themselves from such a ban.

There may be some more-creative options out there too.

For example, in Washington State there isn't a blanket prohibition on signs advertising to people on the highway, but anything advertised must be available for purchase on the property. So far, that's been enough to curb companies from lining the highways with walls of giant billboards.

So--just spitballing here--imagine if people had a legal right to use and sell software that blocks ads or objectionable material from their view or on devices they own, and how that could lead to ad-ecosystem changes.

Or you can do like a few different states have done and just fucking ban billboards, and the world doesn't end, and the economy doesn't crash, and the world is an explicitly better place.

So much stupid nonsense just to not make the world a better place and I don't understand it. You don't need to be creative.

Speaking of which, at this point it's only a matter of time before some big name attempts to put a satellite in orbit that is also a billboard, so you can ALWAYS see their advertising in the nights sky, because it is not currently being used for advertising so, you know, they want to fix that. If we don't ban it now, we WILL have our night sky blocked out by advertising at some point. Companies already use big drone displays to do this.

And I guarantee you people will insist "It's not a big deal, we need advertising, we don't need to block all of it"

> Or you can [...] just fucking ban billboards

I feel this "just do X" formula is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting. Will you force most gas stations dismantle their price-signs? Will "garage sale here" signs become illegal? What zones are or aren't covered?

Vehemence is unfortunately not a substitute for planning or clear rules.

And yet several states have done "just" that! You don't even have to figure anything out yourself, you can just copy their frameworks!

Why are you so insistent on this? We figured it out decades ago! Don't make up BS reasons to avoid reality, just go read the existing rules.

https://legislature.maine.gov/statutes/23/title23sec1908.htm... Click the buttons at the top of the page to navigate this section of law.

Maine has had this all on the internet since the 90s. It's a solved problem.

That really is my dream. Advertising is a blight on humanity.

Of course, this would break capitalism. We live in a society where the foundation of the economy requires that people keep buying things, even things they don't really need and don't really want.

I happen to think breaking capitalism a bit could be a good thing, but it would likely also cause a period of economic instability that would crush people who are marginal financially.

We could make it illegal for minors to use the internet at all. It is too dangerous. Similar to driving. That would solve so many current problems.

I think it's more interesting when you scope it to mass media system. I think kids using the internet to communicate directly with their peers and family makes a lot of sense. Kids consuming an infinite amount of media and trying to broadcast themselves to the whole world is very often unhealthy.

I think this is also true if adults, but I think kids are particularly susceptible to unhealthy habits / addictions around mass media systems.

Respectfully disagree - their peers often make an unhealthy environment on the internet. Kids need in-person communication and interactions, its necessary for healthy development. The internet looks like it provides social interaction, but it actually does not provide what kids need. They should interact with their peers elsewhere, synchronously.

I feel like interacting with a moderate-sized set of real peers is workable - like chat rooms on AIM with the kids you know from school. Kids have always had unsupervised time with their peers.

Where it breaks down, is when you get a whole ecosystem populated entirely by kids and those trying to make money off of them.

No, most of the problem with internet interaction is how the human brain considers the username saying things to you on AIM is NOT the same as the dude you hang out with every day in real life, and more importantly, the usernames you don't know in real life are just vague spirits your brain is much more willing to demonize. This exact same effect is the main cause of roadrage and why everyone is such an asshole when you put them in steel boxes and have them interact on the road.

It is NOT SOCIALIZATION to talk to people on the internet. Your brain simply does not treat it the same way.

Kids are fine interacting in person at school and other public places. They don't need this social media bullshit, and even private messaging systems like AIM or MSN aren't really that great.

I agree that AIM was fine. Not as good as in-person interaction, and no real substitute for it, but as an augmentation it caused no real harm. Chatrooms could be in the same boat, but had more problems.

However, social media ever since feeds and the "like" button are an entirely different beast which is addicting, dehumanizing, and antisocial - preventing kids from developing socially.

Are you joking? Peer communication is the most toxic, Lord Of The Flies things there is. Notice how much office politics is high school bullshit? That is what happens when you have norms set by an isolated incestuous prison-mimicking subset of society cut off from experience and wisdom.

Consuming an infinite amount of media is positively wholesome by comparison.

Your high school and work experience sounds completely different from mine. I grew up in a very rural area. My options outside of school and sports (both not accounting for the whole year for me) were to talk to my friends on the internet, talk to strangers on the internet, consume infinite media from the internet, or isolating myself. I spend a very large portion of my free time either talking to my friends, or talking to strangers and my friends at the same time. I don't think you'll be able to convince me that I would have been better off choosing any other options.

As for work, I have had a hard time leaving jobs, because to me that also means leaving the people I work with. I guess my office life is similar to my high school life in the sense that I actually like(d) the people around me.

In the US, minors can get a driver's license at 16 in most places, and at 15 in a few I've seen.

And a person of any age can drive a car on private property.

People at age 12, maybe even age 10, are ready to use the internet.

This might be an unpopular take, but I remember being that age and having to jump through so many hoops to access the sites I wanted to access, and I swore to myself I would defend children's right to exist online. I'm 35 now. My opinion hasn't changed.

The regulations ask websites not to target advertising to children. Websites don't like that because advertising is their main means of profiting or breaking even, so they try to pull their site offline for minors, and limit their ability to communicate with others. COPPA doesn't require that you limit the ability for minors to communicate with others, but websites err on the side of caution because of the very real threat of pedophiles.

Children age 12-ish are bored out of their minds, and a lot of them are really smart and would contribute to the internet in a positive way. See the story of Aaron Swartz. He contributed so much to open software before he was even 16.

There should be operating systems just for minkrs that are devoid of tracking and using software for kids like the kiddle search engine and social media for kids (not the one we all know of)

the number of websites that would complain such OS and browser is unsupported, is skyrocketing. thats a blight that requires mitigation any time soon.

This is already the case for e.g. gambling ads in certain countries. Recently I saw the first website that was basically begging the user to "please be honest" on the age popup, indicating a good number of people have caught on to just clicking "under 21". Of course I still clicked "under 21".

Heaven forbid someone being shown ads for things that interest him. All this hand-wringing about privacy seems to me to be producing a lot of noise for minimal practical benefit. I don't see harms in ad targeting.

The harms, in my opinion, is that hyper-consumerism is an addiction. These methods are intended as a way to get impressionable and vulnerable groups hooked on various products, for the benefit of the manufacturer.

Children cannot make good decisions (generally) and they often have poor impulse control. Building the habit of spending money on random sparkly shit they don't need ensure that, as adults, they will be good consumers. And by that I mean materialistic and poorer than they have to be.

It's no surprise that these ads play into the most intrinsic human emotions for manipulation. They target social status, perception of self, pleasure. I see it as no different than sparkling lights on a slot machine. A way to manipulate the mind and build a money-burning addiction.

This sounds eerily familiar with how big tobacco targeted underage kids to get them hooked on their products in the 60's and 70's.

You don't even have to go that far back. Remember Juul in the 2010s?

Juul sent representatives to schools who told kids that Juuls weren’t addictive.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/health/juul-teens-vaping....

> sent representatives to schools

This seems like something that should need to be positively justified by the organization which wants to send salespeo^W representatives to schools, in a way that is publicly auditable.

I remember a ton of vaping threads extoling the idea vaping was totally safe on Reddit. When people brought up the possible negative side effects of vaping they were routinely downvoted into oblivion. Nobody wanted to believe vaping was dangerous are could have harmful side effects.

What are the harmful side effects if you don't have a preexisting health condition?

Besides a crippling nicotine addiction?

We don't know yet. But besides the nicotine addiction, there are other components in the vapor which we have no long-term data on, because it's just so new. But we know that there are components in the vapor that are harmful to your health, and nicotine itself is cardiotoxic, so there's that [1].

We do however have studies showing that vaping can be implicated in lung cancer [2].

[1] https://www.moffitt.org/cancers/lung-cancer/faqs/lung-cancer... [2] https://www.news-medical.net/news/20240520/Study-reveals-inc...

I can only answer anecdotally from my personal experience but: frequent coughing while not vaping, chest pain, very obviously reduced cardiovascular capacity and increased fatigue during my workouts.

Your body has no mechanism for purging oil residue from your lungs. The frequency at which vape users would be flooding their lungs with those vaporized oils was akin to someone starting out as a pack a day heavy smoker.

Tar as I understand it does break down very slowly over time but many smoke at a greater rate than it can be broken down and smoke itself is a worse irritant than oil vapor.

Tobacco companies have always targeted kids. In the early 20th century most baseball cards were produced by sweets and tobacco manufacturers

Howso? This seems like a separate situation than the one you mentioned.

I remember from my 80's/90's childhood candy cigarettes [essentially sugar compressed into long cylinders]... just the other day, at a Southern US sporting goods store, I saw "Big Chew Gum," which had a baseball player with a wad of tobacco ("gum") in his mouth.

Thought this was strange, as chewing tobacco is probably more addictive than cigarettes, and the gum's packaging was clearly set at child-height.

Looking at the stories here in the last two days, lots in HN are more worried with the location of Twitter headquarters...( Will never mention that letter...)

Don't want to go too off topic, but I legitmately don't understand the fuss. It went from California to California. If there's any forced moves to SoCal, my condolances, but I didn't get that vibe from that thread that there were a bunch of disgruntled workers.

Are people still that interested in trying to join Twitter c. 2024? I'm desperate enough in terms of money to accept if I was just handed an offer, but I sure as hell am not doing anything more than 2 interviews before my interest nosedives.

For all the speculation about the move, the reason is simple. Twitter is going to launch a payments system, San Francisco has a tax on gross receipts, which is so unfair to payments processing companies that several others - square, stripe, and block - moved out of SF to avoid paying that tax, and Twitter is simply following suite. it's too inside baseball for the average reader to follow, so we're left with baseless speculation and conspiracy theories on why they're moving HQ when it's a subplot business decision that has made made by others already.

> we're left with baseless speculation and conspiracy theories on why they're moving

Sounds like Elon, so it's on-brand.

Google has yet to experience significant penalties due to their Jedi Blue price-fixing scheme ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue ). Perhaps this story covers some other set of claims that will be broken out of the larger Jedi Blue case.

Edit: this is actually a recent campaign, the story says 2023 but some other outlets said it executed this year in 2024.

After all, Google fought very hard and farted out a cashier's check to the US Gov to avoid a jury trial in one of their ad monopoly cases https://apnews.com/article/google-antitrust-ad-tech-virginia...

> “We’ll also be taking additional action to reinforce with sales representatives that they must not help advertisers or agencies run campaigns attempting to work around our policies.”

Useful would be a chronology of when:

* Individuals learned/knew about the rule violations.

* Individuals were arguably rewarded.

* Individuals were disciplined.

That might give a sense of how bad the infection is, and whether their immune system is on top of it.

So this was about ads for Instagram on YouTube, targeting people under 18?

I am surprised that this is something that has to be kept secret. What is the main problem with it?

The main problem is that it's targeted advertising of children.

So is all the advertising run during morning cartoons, and that targets an even younger demo than 13-17 year olds.

Those ads are bad, but instagram and its ilk are quite addictive. If don't think it's ok to turn a large group of children into screen zombies because "ads during cartoons".

And it's frankly disgusting that some countries allow such ads.

Yes

What does wad mean? Dead?

Children can't interact with these ads to get into the wheel of more ads targeting their specific tastes. Very different level, and degree.

> The project disregarded Google’s rules that prohibit personalising and targeting ads to under-18s, including serving ads based on demographics. It also has policies against the circumvention of its own guidelines, or “proxy targeting”.

Aside replying to the eroteme:

I believe one can observe the targeting by only observing the children. I ALSO believe this applies to all children in a social network where X between 1 out of 100 000 & 9 out of 10 have access to sites that are the works of the corporate.

The entirely new mechanics seems to be that most humans' will run on metaphorical stimulants & steroids on the metaphorical Wheel of Status. Humane behaviour (e.g. honor, respect, sincere curiosity) will become subject of learned helplessness. Before the child realizes that their toys are not the real things and the real things may be much more interesting; or before the child realizes they don't need to use the toys to satisfy X desires, they will have learned that status, EG pretty videos of using the toys, gets them what they want EG toys & attention from companies, parents & peers alike.

I'd be very grateful if you could elaborate or link to a relevant source as this is rather interesting.

Second this! Quite interesting. @Xen9 please follow up!

My mind would be the source. This is actually one of my least confident comments; I was almost not going to post it. I consider putting a text together later.

Regardless—I've observed, to one example, a young girl I know wanting to buy horse toys to make YouTube horse videos with play & interest in horses being a side motive. The adults are proud of her basically being an instrument of marketing. On one hand, making your own video's at young age is of course something to be proud of and encouragement for children sounds healthy.

Yet this behaviour also has no principles outside "status games." Even knowing that girls of young age are particularly prone to socialization & conformity, one can compare this to "cool new toy everyone has" trope to notice that this dark evolution would be closer to "being a popular advertisement like everyone else" which partly the South Park movie Cred portrays aptly.

Re: confidence

> My mind would be the source.

In the coming flood of AI slop and faked "scientific" studies I'd say there is no better source. Real science always starts with anecdata of n=1, so trust what you see. And I'll just add; regardless of the truth of your observation, regardless of any supporting work, these kind of observations are worthwhile as discussion in themselves so do investigate more and write about it, please.

FWIW my interest was piqued by your claim that "learned helplessness" eclipses humane interpersonal behaviours.

That sounds hard to evaluate, especially in children, but I think you may be on to something and that ubiquitous AV technology is the cause of a reward "short circuit". Once kids get AI servants that simulate their achievements for them I think child mental health will implode. (which of course is Jonathan Haidt's thesis)

I noticed many years ago, if someone is 25 then, they'd have grown up with social media, and its trappings of social validation through likes and comments. Facebook was opened to everyone from 13 years old in 2006. Instagram went big in 2012. If you were a teen in late 00's/early 10's, you were probably on these networks, and didn't experience any time growing up without them...

In the same vine, people "doing it for the 'Gram": you go to a fancy vacation or restaurant not to enjoy the experience, but to enjoy the validation from the thumbs up, hearts, comments of your friends social media...

I wonder if that's a valid craving after all, a craving for social contact, sadly a craving being answered not by real life interaction, but by a mobile client hitting some API endpoint called something like /post/{$ID}/reaction/heart , ending on your phone pinging with the notification "$friend liked your post"...

> but to enjoy the validation

Absolutely. It makes me think about the things in life that don't need "validation".

Maybe it's a cliche but my dad would say about Korea and other wars "no pics, no words, you had to be there". So that was a teenage trope in the 80s and 90s too for my generation, if you were trying to be cool just say "you had to be there". It draws a circle around a personal or group experience that explicitly does not or cannot be shared. I think maybe it somehow earns more respect and interest than a photo, and I think with ubiquitous AI image manipulation the currency of "pics or it didn't happen" and "for the Gram" is going to vanish in a puff of incredulity. Now you can just text-prompt for a picture of you and some celebrity you "randomly met" in front of Buckingham Palace or the Taj Mahal! You can probably rent some bots to "auto-like" you on social media, right? So who is fooling who now?

> Maybe it's a cliche but my dad would say about Korea and other wars "no pics, no words, you had to be there". So that was a teenage trope in the 80s and 90s too for my generation, if you were trying to be cool just say "you had to be there".

sounds like a partial retroactive justification to me. sure, you wouldn't get the full experience via a photo or verbal anecdote, but it's not like camera smartphones were ubiquitous in the 80s either.

> retroactive justification

Oh I'm not "justifying" it, because I don't need to. This isn't that conversation. I'm just remarking on a difference of culture over time for those who are interested. As you say, there were no cellphones back then, so a quite different world.

It's always so easy to spot these people at restaurants.

Thanks for your answer!

Very interesting mindset. Thanks for sharing.

Adolescents are particularly sensitive to addiction. And guess what instagram tries to do?

Is it to create a utopia of peace and harmony for those who live on this planet?

No? I didn't think so either.

The problem, at least in some countries, is that the laws regarding targeting children and teenagers are VERY strict, to the point where it almost doesn't make sense to do it.

By having an "unknown" category, you could argue that you had no way of knowing that you where targeting children, so you can't be responsible. The other party could also easily argue that they put those under 18 in that group to protect their privacy and age.

If you however DO know that these are primarily children and teenagers, then you have to follow the rather strict laws. In Denmark for instance, that means that you cannot encourage purchasing or even advertise certain products. Take the stupid product that is Prime (the drink), health professionals argues that it's harmful to children, but their are also the only ones who really buy it in any meaningful volume. If you knew that you where targeting Prime ads to those under 16 in Denmark, you would be breaking the law.

If advertising companies where to follow the laws online (technically they have to, but tries to avoid it), you could effectively reduce the number of ads you see on social media by stating that you're only 16, because you couldn't be targeted in the same way.

> they put those under 18 in that group to protect their privacy and age

That's not how it works!

People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.

You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.

Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.

You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.

– Banksy

"Advertising Shits in Your Head" is a good book for further reading on this

If the executives figure out a way to actually guarantee no ads targeting children, Mr Beast will be crushed.

Wait... Nintendo and Disney targets children, including those too young to know what Ads are.

Why are these different ethics?

(They are not, both of those companies have created literal fanatics by adulthood. Even I cannot avoid beating each Zelda game despite not enjoying a single Zelda game since WW)

Should they show adult ads to children instead?

Here in Sweden it's illegal to do so and you only find advertisements directed at children on stations operating from abroad.

I live in an area where advertising is not allowed to target children directly.

As a result, the adverts don't show children playing with the toys, but present the toys in a bland setting as potential gifts for adults to buy. They will show an adult happy with a purchase. In short, they simply cannot address children directly through television. However, it's a fine line and you hardly ever see advertisements for toys unless there's a clear educational value. That's my understanding at least.

Most Nintendo adverts show young adults playing on a sofa or on the go in a train.

Wow, that's really interesting.

Having grown up on cartons filled with ads for toys showing kids playing with the toys, it literally never even crossed my mind that anyone would consider that objectionable, let alone pass laws against it.

At most parents would be annoyed because their kid would pester them for a toy, but I've literally never heard anyone suggest that the advertising should be banned.

(Advertising alcohol or tobacco of course is today different.)

You've definitely made me wonder how childhood might be different without ads for children. On the other hand, when I grew up you couldn't avoid commercials. Now kids watch everything through streaming where you can generally eliminate the commercials anyways.

I have definitely heard it from parents, some kids get really insufferable during holiday season with all the frantic toy ads on tv (back when they still watched tv, I guess).

  The Instagram campaign deliberately targeted a group of users labelled as “unknown” in its advertising system, which Google knew skewed towards under-18s, these people said. Meanwhile, documents seen by the FT suggest steps were taken to ensure the true intent of the campaign was disguised.
   The project disregarded Google’s rules that prohibit personalising and targeting ads to under-18s, including serving ads based on demographics. It also has policies against the circumvention of its own guidelines, or “proxy targeting”.
  …However, Google did not deny using the “unknown” loophole, adding: “We’ll also be taking additional action to reinforce with sales representatives that they must not help advertisers or agencies run campaigns attempting to work around our policies.”

Yup, those crafty sales reps orchestrated a multimillion dollar agreement between a chief competitor. While also adapting the code to find the gaps and target the desired under 18s.

> Meanwhile, documents seen by the FT suggest steps were taken to ensure the true intent of the campaign was disguised.

I read the article, but it didn’t go into the content of those documents. Would be interesting to know.

As always with these massive corporate failures/crimes it turns out no one in any important position knew anything and it was a small group of low-level bad actors causing all the trouble. How sad that all these companies are plagued with this while the leadership is just trying to virtuously do good business!

I wouldn't be surprised if upper level people tend to hire reports with discretion, people who let them keep their hands clean.

Dictator: "You mentioned a... reeducation project of some kind...?"

Minister of Internal Affairs: "Yes sir, it's been taken care of already."

Market data science is tragically fascinating. It's a superpower, capable of being used for eithger good or bad.

What would it look like when it is being used for good? Not being a smartass implying its existence, legitimately wondering.

From what I hear the chinese Tik-Tok equivalent Douyin does manage to educate and raise STEM interest and help... https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/10i4gks/tiktok_in_c...

There's lots of products that people really need and could help improve their lives, but they don't know about the existence of the problem/solution.

For example

"Hey do you have hip pain when walking down the stairs? Turns out this is extremely common and we solved it with this special walking stick. Click here to buy the walking stick"

"Were you an Iraq war veteran who served between 2004 and 2006? Turns out the government owes you money. Click here to get it"

"Do you like Blink 182? Turns out they are actually touring again and they are in your city next weekend. Buy tickets now"

There's tons of stuff out there that would be a win-win transaction, if only ppl knew about it.

> Hey do you have hip pain when walking down the stairs? Turns out this is extremely common and we solved it with this special walking stick. Click here to buy the walking stick"

This is where a forward thinking marketer would say "we have a database of email addresses of people reporting hip problems, how much will you pay me for access to them?", aka what Google did.

>"Do you like Blink 182? Turns out they are actually touring again and they are in your city next weekend. Buy tickets now"

I don't like Blink 182, but there have been many times when a band I would have liked to see was in my city and I didn't find out until too late. LiveNation has a feature to warn you about upcoming concerts but it doesn't work well in my experience.

Honestly, it would be really nice to have actual useful advertising like this, but instead we mostly get abusive and intrusive advertising.

I can not recall a single time in my 28 years on this earth where I have seen an advertisement I deemed useful. It is safe to say that falls in this category, would make homeopaths question it's existence.

Anyway, this argument falls flat in a world where the internet exists. All the world's information is easily accessible out there.

By good you mean profit?

Funnily enough, this is one case where contextual advertising would actually work better than what we have now.

With contextual advertising, you could very easily target children with very specific interests and/or in specific age groups by targeting the ads at the videos they most often watch.

> this is one case where contextual advertising would actually work better than what we have now.

No. No. No. That a) would involve tracking and b) what we have now are ads based on what you bought/ have looked at. I already have an 'x', why would i want more ads for it...or ads for what some algorithm thinks i might be interested in, related to it. Unless I choose to.

Contextual ads wouldn’t require tracking as it’s just advertising based on the page context, ie a video about a videogame will have different ads than an article about remortgaging.

There should probably be laws in place to prevent advertising targeting children though, regardless of the advertising mechanism.

This might violate the policy against "proxy targeting"

> There should probably be laws in place to prevent advertising targeting children though, regardless of the advertising mechanism

How would you even implement that? Do you mean no ads on TV channels for children and websites that are rarely frequented by adults?

Same way you implement all the other advertising laws - make it a law, identify companies breaking the law. Anyone could run a commercial where someone drinks alcohol, but that would be illegal.

>Contextual ads wouldn’t require tracking as it’s just advertising based on the page context

This sounds similar to the "you might also be interested in..." ads/recommendations you see on Amazon or Aliexpress. Those are actually pretty useful at times. If I'm looking at product X from brand A, and it shows me there's a competing product X from brand B, that's lower priced or a better product, that's useful. Or a product that works with the one I'm looking at. Of course, these aren't 3rd-party ads: these are just more products being advertised to you by the shopping site you're already browsing and looking for product X on, and not too different from going to a physical store and finding similar products placed next to each other.

> No. No. No. That a) would involve tracking and b) what we have now are ads based on what you bought/ have looked at.

Contextual advertising is what's in print magazines. Audience ads next to articles, topical ads mid-story, or category ads grouped with like ads.

unpaywalled: https://archive.ph/20240808040427/https://www.ft.com/content...

Works where archive.ph is blocked:

https://on.ft.com/3WyKE85

When I was a child, the conspiracy theory among kids was that Coca-Cola inserted subliminal ads by interlacing a can of Coke within TV series or movies. I cannot believe reality surpasses all those fantasies without scrutiny.

Even political propaganda between left and right wings, 1984, and other similar scenarios sound like satire.

> When I was a child, the conspiracy theory among kids was that Coca-Cola inserted subliminal ads by interlacing a can of Coke within TV series or movies. I cannot believe reality surpasses all those fantasies.

Reader: Yeah, that happened...

Narrator: It did: https://www.businessinsider.com/subliminal-ads-2011-5

No, the idea that you can insert a single frame into standard video formats and have it subliminally influence you is an urban legend.

You can try it with any video editing software. A single frame at 30 or 60 fps is extremely visible. It's not passing by your conscious awareness undetected. The flash is obvious and you can easily read a word of text or recognize a logo or someone's face.

Yes, scientific source "Beyond Vicary’s fantasies: The impact of subliminal priming and brand choice" [1].

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00221...

That link literally starts by describing how the idea of flashing a frame of Coca-Cola was a hoax. It completely supports what I said.

Like I said, test it yourself in a video editor. You'll immediately see how implausible it is.

Yes, I agree and added a reference. That's why I told my story.

Ha, sorry. It must say something about my mood today that I just (for no reason) assumed a reply was disagreeing. Never mind, thanks!

I'd argue an urban legend is not the same thing as a hoax.

Compare "vampires walk among us" versus "Theranos works".

It did happen, and it didn't work, are not mutually exclusive.

Theranos happened, and subliminal advertising happened.

"We're sorry."

This is not surprising. Google has a history violating the privacy of and targetting ads to not only teenagers, but children:

- https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/23/business/youtube-ads-kids...

- https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/09/business/media/youtube-ki...

- https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/20/business/media/google-you...

- https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/04/technology/google-youtube...

- https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/17/technology/youtube-google...

When will governments wake up and put a stop to this? Their inaction is simply a sign of complicity. Absolutely disgraceful and criminal behavior.

Everyone working at these companies: you're partly to blame, whether you're directly involved or not. Reconsider the behavior you're supporting, and quit.

Not allowing advertising to children I think isn't the correct route for society.

Instead we should prevent children having money. Until you're 16, you may not handle money. You may not buy things for money. You may not sell things. You may not enter into contracts to exchange money.

Your parents however can do all of those things on your behalf.

At that point, advertising to children no longer is relevant - the children cannot buy the advertised things.

Yep, drawing red lines around age of consent has worked so well in the past, I think this is the way.

I'm so glad we have simple and effective solutions like this. Otherwise can you imagine the kinds of problems we'd have with kids vaping, buying lootboxes and scrolling social media designed to hijack their not-yet-fully-developed-brains?

... And by "age of consent" I meant "minimum legal age recognized to make decisions pertaining to topic X". Is there a proper term for that, so I don't sound so stupid in future?

You perhaps want the term "age of majority".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_majority

I guess you don't have children.

But e.g. getting children hooked on instagram will pay off later.

I think this is exactly the opposite of how it should be. Teach children to engage in trade and sensible use of money and currency early, but shield them from the immense leverage that corporate advertising has on the developing mind. I want well rounded children who are good independent critical thinkers, not brain-hijacked and inept with money.

Speaking of the corporate advertising, I just saw an ad today that basically grooms kids into credit card concept. This bank has a prepaid card and app that's being managed by parents.

The ad story is "charming": busy parents forgot to pack his son properly for a summer camp, so he calls them and says he misses item x that is crucial. So they both leave their jobs and in a rush through city they're trying to save their boy. While he just orders stuff online with a help of a card, app and smartphone. And with "plastic money" little guy saves the day on his own.

Sure, its 21st century, we're living in the 20s and you can't avoid technology in banking, finances and pocket money for your kids but this barely teaches any responsibility - that ad deep between the lines sells the idea that money are magically "there". Just go for the limit, next month daddy and mommy will charge the card again.

I have seen an ad for that, and I felt mixed about it. I think such a "children's learning" type card which actually allows real purchases is a good idea for financial responsibility, but you'd have to be really cognisant of perverse incentives set up by a financial institution that can profit in this space.

Ah yes, why let children learn about money and responsibility, much better to treat them like pets so that advertising scumbags don't have a reason to target them.

The mental gymnastics people will do to avoid having to admit that daddy Google is a creepy advertising company never ceases to astound me.

There are so many things wrong with your post!! In your spirit, we should be able to sell heroin to kids, just not give them money, only the first free dose (that's that all the blinking and sounds on the ads do to their brains). I had a colleague once that said exactly that (and he effing meant it) "if selling heroin to kids was legal, I would be outside a school right now - it's their parents' problem" (yes he has kids)(at the time he was a IT contractor making GBP 1200 per day - and that was 8 years ago)(there are scum and scum.. and then there was him).

Anyway.. we (should) protect kids as much as possible from as many possible risks and threats (old and new).

(also, go see a therapist, you need help)

It is already the case, more or less. Parents manage their children assets, including money, and children abilities to enter into contract is very limited. They can manipulate money, but only if they parents let them, and they usually do, because it would be crazy not to.

It changes nothing to the situation with ads. Ads for children actually target the parents, manipulating children so that they can in turn manipulate their parents. It can be terrible, for example by advertising for something fashionable to wear at school, too expensive for the child allowance, they expect their parents to buy it, because if they don't their kids may get bullied. Not giving children access to money won't solve this problem, quite the opposite actually, if it was their money, they could realize how overpriced the thing is and how much they could do by spending it elsewhere.

I remember when I was a kid (a long time ago now...), Dr. Martens shoes were the fashion, that my school forbade them. We had uniforms, but the rule with shoes was just that they had to be black. I think the ban was on the technicality that the stiching was yellow, so they're not black shoes. And a student tried to loophole the loophole by coloring the yellow stitching black.

I wonder if some brands give out free stuff to "child influencers" so other kids would moan to their parents about buying the items...

> I wonder if some brands give out free stuff to "child influencers" so other kids would moan to their parents about buying the items...

See Ryan's World on Youtube for example, it's a huge industry.

They are called brand ambassadors and they go back to to before Internet.

The best looking person at your college didn't pay for their iBook.

Ah yes, don’t give children _any_ responsibility with money until they are 16, and then just throw them into cold water and expect them to know how to manage spending.. Sorry for being sarcastic here, and I know how to raise children is a divisive topic, but this sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Let’s give children responsibility and agency as early as possible, so they can learn to make decisions.

You can still get brainwashed by ads without spending a cent

Having ads targeted at children can be seen as a good thing: it trains the children in what advertising is like, about how they can be manipulated and exploited. It's good for them to get this experience while young when the stakes are low.

Of course, this might also train children to be the exploiters and manipulators. Maybe their parents would think that's a good thing too, at least in the long run.

Wouldn't it be better to remove exploitation and manipulation than to subject children to it in the hopes that it somehow makes them resistant to more of it later?

I don't see how that would work.

If the reason that you think it's good to allow advertising to children, despite it being bad in and of itself, is that it prepares them to be subjected to ads as an adult, wouldn't it be better to instead remove the ads for adults as well?

Ads serve a useful function, particularly if one can filter out deception.

To be frank thus sounds like a replay of purity idealism about shielding kids from anything even remotely connected to sex. Not being capable of manipulation or exploitation or dealing with them would be rightfully classified as a severe social disability.

Personally, I plan to prepare my kids by keeping them away from as many sources of advertising as possible and teaching them how to do the same when they're older. e.g. they're completely unaware of the existence of anything Disney-related.

Do you have kids now?

I was in the same boat (try to avoid any branded toys etc), but it’s just impossible, unless you avoid any socialization.

I see that on the example of Frozen. Kids in daycare, wearing Elsa dresses. Kids in playgrounds, wearing same dresses. Backpacks, t-shirts with sisters from Frozen… unfortunately, that battle seems to be lost already.

Huge bookshelves at book stores with books with Taylor Swift.

My wife stays at home and we may end up homeschooling, so with any luck we'll be able to filter peers some. Right now they're still young, but cartoon brand shirts on kids at the playground don't register because they have no idea what e.g. Frozen is. It's just a girl or a snowman or whatever.

That just means advertisers need to manipulate children into pressuring parents. Not a good social dynamic.

In case anyone replies with "well all companies are bad in some way"... scale is also a factor here. Even if Google does the same things as a small family owned business, they have significantly greater ability to inflict harm.

And I'm not sure I buy that all companies are bad. A lot of companies are earnest and customer-focused when they're smaller and desperate for more users. And I've worked at many companies which were bumbling but not really manipulative or malicious.

It's like saying all gov are bad in some way. But Spain gov and North Korea gov are definitely not bad in the same way.

> In case anyone replies with "well all companies are bad in some way"... scale is also a factor here.

Even disregarding scale, plenty of large companies providing critical service struggle to find good people to do their job.

Sure, they don't pay as well. But if the rebuttal is that you can't find a honest company that pays equivalent salaries, maybe we should call that wage-gap corruption money.

remind me, why was "do no evil" scrubbed from the mission statement?

There's always going to be a lot of money/profit in amoral behavior that's legal -- while being moral means passing on that behavior and money. It's possible to run a business morally and successfully, but rarely as successfully as someone who runs one amorally.

IME, most people in the US will happily take a job with the extra money at an amoral company, even if the lesser paying job at a moral company would still be enough for a comfortable life. (Folks in the US are very price conscious; I don't know how that compares to other cultures/ societies.)

Why are you quoting "We're sorry."? Who apologized?

"I didn't do it. Nobody saw me do it. You can't prove anything." is not "I'm sorry."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiL2AjOtjZI

> Everyone working at these companies: you're partly to blame, whether you're directly involved or not. Reconsider the behavior you're supporting, and quit.

I used to think like this, until I got married and started a family.

I’m no longer so quick to judge folks for not doing what I believe to be the most ideal (or even ethical) thing in these types of circumstances.

For many of us who have families, our top priority is making sure we can continue to take care of our households and not risking that in any way unless absolutely necessary.

This is also true of people with chronic medical conditions or disabilities. I don’t know if the next company’s insurance will cover my doctors or my medication.

Getting a job while having an obvious disability puts you at a disadvantage, regardless of discrimination being illegal.

There are tons of tech jobs out there. That excuse doesn't work so well when you're in one of the most lucrative careers there is. Creating a dystopia where everyone is spied upon 24/7 is also not something someone with kids should want to do.

There _were_ tons of tech jobs.

Much harder to jump ship nowadays since layoffs have flood the market with high skilled job seekers and borrowing money is no longer free for tech firms.

Life is complicated, employees can be just as much locked in to their jobs at Google as most people are to their products.

Exactly. I was about to respond with something similar, but you did it for me!

Not only are folks getting laid off left and right, salaries have gone down significantly and it’s very difficult to secure a new job in this market (no matter your skills, experience, etc.).

There are still tons of jobs. They might not pay as well, but "I need to provide for my kids" might mean you take a crappy IT job that pays 60k, not that you build global surveillance/propaganda systems to be used against them and their peers. This isn't the depression.

And up until recently, there were tons of really good jobs. What's the excuse there?

If you have kids, you're presumably a few years into your career. Do you not have savings? My oldest is 3 and I wouldn't really have to start worrying for years if I lost my job.

Forgetting about pay, are those jobs intellectually stimulating? Do straight conventional E commerce compared to testing infrastructure for video conferencing software? A lot of the appeal of a FAANG is the interesting work you can do at one. The only thing better would be a less secure startup working on something really novel.

So now instead of "I need to do it for my family to survive", it's "I enjoy building panopticons"?

hmmm, hopefully you can find a job that does both? Feed the family and is something that is fun to do.

If you are a social justice warrior, you might prioritize that instead. To each their own.

> I enjoy building panopticons

> hopefully you can find a job that does both?

Hopefully we quit building panopticons?

I mean, I build testing infrastructure for video conferencing software. I guess I can see how video conferencing can be misused, but my conscious is relatively clear.

You are just doing the social justice warrior thing, which is great and all, but I've seen it before and it never seems very effective. Vote for political change if you want to see things really happen.

> testing infrastructure for video conferencing software

There's lots of companies out there that aren't Meta/Alphabet/etc. that also do things like video conferencing software if that's your jam. Smaller companies like BigBlueButton, Whereby, and ClickMeeting; more mid-sized ones like and Zoho Meeting, and the larger players like Webex and GoToMeeting and what not. And this isn't an exhaustive list of non-FAANG video conferencing systems.

Its not like the only "tech" (software?) jobs out there are small mom and pop e-commerce sites or FAANG companies.

There are medium-sized profitable tech firms, but they are like the worst of both worlds: you have the politics of a FAANG with the pay of a mom/pop firm, and your work isn't going to be very interesting. I really liked working for a non-profit research lab for one year (YCR even!), but it didn't last.

That's why we need regulations. Against people actually to blame, but also against ourselves. Basically, just so that being unethical isn't profitable for anyone.

Isn't putting ads on children's programming, as has been done since the dawn of television, "targeting children"? This seems like bullshit targeting of the competition to me.

Are commercials during saturday morning cartoons not ads targeted at children?

When I was growing up at least, it was all for candy, toys, and sugary cereal, and often had kids or cartoon characters featured in the commercial.

it's a matter of threshold. There's a point up to which targeted advertising doesn't cause harm, after that, it does. Ads on smartphones cross that threshold. Doesn't matter if TV also does: if it does, it should be limited too, otherwise, it doesn't matter.

Why smartphones and related software cross that threshold? They're specifically designed to increase use time, i.e. to be addictive. It's a drug.

What are the thresholds for tv and the web? Does FCC have any specific guidelines? How about other countries?

The fact that companies making sugary cereals haven't gone out of business and the current obesity crisis suggest to me that those TV commercials are also quite harmful. Something causes people to switch off their brains and feed their kids cookies and marshmallows for breakfast as long as the TV says it's okay and normal.

Maybe also TV. But that doesn't mean that targeted web advertising doesn't also, or that it's more harmful, or at the same level. Let's cut both.

On another note, obesity isn't widespread everywhere there are TV commercials.

There's a difference between placing a sports shoes ad in front of a gym, and getting to know the history and habits of every person that ever entered that gym, and showing each a different ad.

I mean, 30 years ago, we were horrified by the extent to which Stasi spied on their own people. Now, we'd call them amateurs.

People were horrified because of what they did with the data. This is why it is different when there is a person listening, as their interests get involved. If it is just something telling me the shoes I looked at last week are on discount, instead of some random ad, who cares?

I used to get a long distance phone bill in the mail with the list of every number I called so I could verify the charges. Was it wrong for MCI to have this data?

MCI retaining your phone call records for billing purposes has a legitimate use: they need to be able to justify charging you.

Where it gets controversial is retention time and reuse: ten years from now, there’s no billing justification but you might not want President Donner to demand they turn over the list of everyone who called a political rival. Similarly, you might not care if they have that data but still object to them sharing it with marketing partners (they called LL Bean, you can advertise your outdoors wear to them!) or making it available to other companies who can use it to look up your interests when you are on the phone or applying to something. This can be deeply personal: your car insurance company would definitely pay to know who calls alcohol addiction treatment numbers, an employer of a certain vein might be interested in calls to adult services, etc. Once that data is out, there’s no way to un-breach it.

Of course, Google would never give this data to a government that engages in targeted killing, Meta would never help out a junta repress their population, etc.

The extent of the data collected and systemic consolidation between different sources is the problem, because we've seen again and again any data collection is dangerous regardless of the original intent.

Absolutely, pretending like this is some Google/Meta only thing.

Newspapers filled their for kids sections with advertising targeted at children. Comic books featured scammy ads targeted at kids.

Some of the most popular nostalgic shows were outright blatant toy advertisements (see: Transformers). This is absolutely not a new problem and its sad to see it hasn't really been addressed.

Yes those are also bad and should not be allowed.

I honestly don't think our current "implementation" of government has the required momentum to do anything to stop this or enable the will of the people to be enacted on such large corporations. Our government is a highly-reactive machine that's no longer driven by humans, but rather the internal algorithms and processes (bureaucracy).

Just look at the sheer number of "congressional" and "senate" hearings we've seen into everything from AI, to border crossings, to privacy breaches, to antisemitism in universities, to data breaches, etc. Pretty much 0 effect happens anywhere in response, despite us all (including the media) seeing the internals and the problems. You would think some of these problems are pretty easy to solve or at least get consensus on, but you'd be wrong. We've co-evolved our public discourse and media with government such that nothing can happen. If I wasn't so anti-left, I'd say the amount of partisanship in existence is precisely because it disarms us against this government automaton.

I think that nowadays industry flavored joke of “you either die a hero or live long enough to become…” should end with Google/Meta.

What a dirtbags.

Funny enough, fireship had a good take on it just the other day. "As a tech company you either go bankrupt as a hero or live long enough to become an illegal monoply"

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jx2dDV2eWBM

Remember when everyone cheered when Google was winning lawsuits because they were the small guys?

Yes. How gray is your beard?

"Don't be evil."

There's plenty of marketing targeted towards children outside of Big Tech. What's the difference when they do it?

They aren’t new players with potential electoral influence, and the old media players are in decline.

TV, radio and newspaper ads are regulated by the FTC. Advertising on these mediums is limited (24 hours in a day, X number of pages in a paper) and illegal content can be easily tracked and archived, and prosecuted.

Big Tech serves an ungodly number of ads from all kinds of scrupulous and unscrupulous parties. Ad content is almost impossible to track and monitor. Big Tech says "let us self-regulate" while also saying "it's not possible to ensure thaf every single ad we serve complies with the law, we're doing our best".

Since I got kids I realized how they are the weakest link in the chain and are targeted by everyone. From tobacco (at the end nobody starts smoking at 30), to "free" cartoons (peppa pig backpack is not free, though), school book sellers. Heck, even the school this year pressured to put my kid in their social media.

There is a whole world of people making their living out of your kids.

Sorry for the rant. This is just another two. Does not surprise me.

Also sugary sweets are aimed at children, for whom a dose of sugar probably hits much harder. As someone who managed to quit sugar, it was like a drug addiction.

Yes, indeed it is a drug addiction.

It is worse than a drug addiction because drugs aren't basic biochemical building blocks. Going cold turkey on all carbs isn't exactly mainstream nutrition.

> This is just another two.

These two control around half of the online ad industry, though

Yes. And as parent one must fight against multiple multibillion dollar industries. Starting with food ending with toys, games, influencers and everything in between.

I was neutral when I started working in cellphone industry and kids were small. Now when I see how teens siting in the corner watching worthless stupid YouTube videos on the phone for hours I don’t feel well. Luckily I quit that industry and think it’s a cousin of big tobacco at the end despite advertisements telling some other things.

> even the school this year pressured to put my kid in their social media.

Wow

Nothing will change as long as C-suite roles keep breaking the law and walking away scott free. Also goes for the investors promoting this behavior at startup level.

It's all a natural consequence of capitalism. Heavy regulation is needed for even a semblance of a healthy society, but unfortunately capitalism's incentives themselves make regulation an uphill battle.

A mixed economy with strong regulation seems to be the best system we've come up with so far. Unfortunately it's a tough sell because we're obsessed about GDP numbers and making like go up instead of actually improving our lives. We prefer having a couple trillion-$ companies wreaking havoc on our societies and especially on teenagers and children than not having those companies.

This seems to be the motivation of EU regulators. However, regulation also needs to be enforcible in a global setting. Also one needs to understand collateral damage to smaller enterprises (recent EU regulations only tries to target large platforms) and economy as a whole by leaving large legal uncertainties. In the end also with heavy regulations often the most ignorant players will survive. We should rather make sure try that taxes are paid where the potential damages occur.

The "big company clauses" as you say do solve most of those issues: they avoid burdening small enterprises with unreasonable amounts of regulation, but they ensure (very) big companies with huge influence which act for all purposes as public platforms, and not merely as "normal" companies which happen to be very big, do have extra impositions.

Teenage mental health crisis is web scale!

"How we scaled depressify.js to over 100 million consumers"

Still waiting for cookies to be removed

Let's call the practice "pedomarketing". Half of the US, you know which half, would be soon voting for a ban on it.

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