Yes, Amazon Echo Is an Ad Machine

Re:Yes, Amazon Echo Is an Ad Machine by BrandiATMuhkuh on Wednesday January 03, 2018 @11:31AM (#16062363)

During my PhD I ran simulations and experiments with robots + humans to explore the effect and possibility of it. The scariest part is, a small amount of companies might now be able to effect with just one update how a huge amount of people think/behave. The reason why Alexa is more powerful than normal advertisement is, people create a social connection to Alexa. Which is needed for "trusted" influence like recommendations from a friend.

My thesis in case someone is interested: https://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/handle/10092/13598

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Re:Yes, Amazon Echo Is an Ad Machine by whateveruser on Wednesday January 03, 2018 @01:06PM (#16063338)

If we've learned anything about advertisers in the past, is they WILL get greedy, and start exploiting human brain in more and more ways. Eventually it reaches uncanny valley, and more and more people start noticing how messed up and over the top advertising has gotten and find ways around them or to avoid them, or in the end, neglect them.

Of course, this assumes people still 'own' their devices, at that..

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Re:Yes, Amazon Echo Is an Ad Machine by BrandiATMuhkuh on Thursday January 04, 2018 @02:53AM (#16068688)

Yes they will exploit it. But I think the real problem is, when you don't know if what you see/hear is advertisement. Like seeing a news paper article which is actually advertisement. Or a blogger who says a phone/shoes/etc. is the best she/he every tried. While it's actually bought advertisement.

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