Paid $75k to Love a Brand on Instagram – Is It an Ad?

Re:Paid $75k to Love a Brand on Instagram – Is It an Ad? by nine_k on Tuesday August 30, 2016 @12:38PM (#12391625)

Maybe the upside is that people are getting used to it. They start to expect that any message may be a manipulation, so they pay closer attention to it, put it under a greater scrutiny. It also applies to emotional manipulation; expecting and detecting it makes people more self-aware, and make them appreciate sincere things higher.

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Re:Paid $75k to Love a Brand on Instagram – Is It an Ad? by munificent on Tuesday August 30, 2016 @01:50PM (#12392250)

That sounds like an argument that an arms race is OK because it leaves us better equipped to defend ourselves. But we wouldn't need all of those extra defenses in the first place if we hadn't entered into an arms race.

As people get more used to it, advertisers just work harder and harder to sneak under the radar. We might get more self aware, but if anything it just leads us to be cynical and untrusting of things that are sincere.

The end result is likely a belief that there are two and only two kinds of media:

Insincere media where I can see that I'm being advertised to.

Insincere media that has outsmarted me and where I can't see that I'm being advertised to.

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Re:Paid $75k to Love a Brand on Instagram – Is It an Ad? by nine_k on Wednesday August 31, 2016 @02:19PM (#12400320)

I see it more like the immune system. Greater (self-)awareness looks like a good thing to me, just due to the way this whole world works. This definitely depends on your philosophy in a wide sense.

On a practical note, reputation works in this circumstances: if I read a piece about, I don't know, fruit jam industry in NYT, it's likely not a blatant paid ad. This is what they monetize when selling subscriptions; should they stop, their reputation, and with it the subscription revenue, would go down.

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