Towards a bra-free Instagram experience

Re:Towards a bra-free Instagram experience by oculusthrift on Sunday December 31, 2017 @04:57PM (#16043228)

devils advocate, but what’s so wrong about this? why is it a corporations fault if you feel insecure about yourself? if you’re unhappy you’re the only one who can chance that, why complain to a corporation to fix your insecurities by avoiding them?

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Re:Towards a bra-free Instagram experience by analog31 on Sunday December 31, 2017 @05:04PM (#16043262)

I'm thinking of an analogy, maybe it isn't a good one, but it's if you're trying to quit smoking, and somebody is deliberately applying stresses to you, that are known to be associated with the desire to smoke.

I don't think it's OK for anybody -- corporation or otherwise -- to saturate me with messages that are tailored to my psychological characteristics that are only partially under my own control.

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Re:Towards a bra-free Instagram experience by jji990 on Sunday December 31, 2017 @06:42PM (#16043680)

It's not as if the advertisers are blind to the your insecurities. They are targeting your insecurity with ads.

I should know. Worked for a small agency. First did print ads. Then specialized in PPC. Find the thing that keeps your target market up at night. That's what gets them to click. When I ran campaigns for "wellness" companies (which were scammy to begin with), the "stay healthy" angle never worked. The ads that performed the best were the ones that made the user feel anxious: Feeling tired? Weak? Gaining weight? Looking older? That sort of thing.

Think about that for a second. Is that nice? To intentionally make someone feel bad about themselves, to sell them something? Of course not.

Is it legal? Yeah. Should it be? Probably. But just because you can, doesn't mean you should. Unfortunately, that's not the win-at-all-cost mentality of business.

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Re:Towards a bra-free Instagram experience by dannyw on Sunday December 31, 2017 @11:25PM (#16044692)

Allowing opting out of “interest based” (aka surveillance based) advertising would be good regulation.

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