This is because a politically active group knowing your religion could reasonably lead to being murdered or expelled from a country on a mass scale (eg, the world's rich history of kicking Jews out of various places [0]). That could happen anywhere because change is quick. A for-profit corporation knowing my religion ranges from a non-issue to inconvenient except that it is likely to leak to political actors.
The government moving in to fix these issues has a pretty solid risk of doing more harm than good. Countries who had bad SARS scares tended to do well at handling the coronavirus, and other countries tended to do poorly. Similarly I really only trust the European governments to handle privacy at all well because they still have recent scars from what happens if the government can discriminate easily between its citizens.
The people who are of most concern in the privacy debate are much more likely to be hiding out amongst the vocal "oh no there is disinformation" crowd than a credit card company or medical insurer.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Expulsions_of_Jews
People that say "oh ads don't affect me" have always confused me and reminded me of a line
> The greatest lie the devil ever made was convincing everyone that he doesn't exist.
But I'm also from a society that's traditionally been far less consumeristic than the West. (Although we're slowly getting there, yay!) I'm often dumbfounded when I read anecdotes on here and other forums about the stupid shit Americans buy. Not casting a value judgment or anything, just reporting how it feels from over here.
That said, I've seen some compelling ads this year - it seemed more a function of correctly guessing my interests and tastes than successfully influencing my behaviour.
While the actual product being advertised may be irrelevant, do remember the names of the companies selling them? Congratulations, the ad was successful
I can't think of any company names that I'm not a customer of. I can think of a few products (Raid Shadow Legends), but it seems like that's a pretty huge investment just to make me remember a product I know I'm not going to use.
I actually find this hard to believe.
I can name at least several car companies that sell cars I can't afford and probably never will (Porche, Ferrari, Lotus, Aston Martin, McLaren, or even Tesla). I prefer Coke over Pepsi and don't buy soda unless I'm at a fast food place yet I recognize at least a dozen brands. I don't shop at Walmart when I don't need (< once a year) to and never been to a Sam's club. I don't own Cyberpunk or even a Windows machine. I haven't been to a McDonald's in the last 5 years except when presented with no alternative (~3 times?). I've never played CandyCrush yet you can't open a Windows machine or a phone app without being bombarded with it (Angry Birds used to be like that too). You can't open Reddit without political memes (many are actually ads). Every single one of these companies/products has also advertised to me and I'm willing to bet you as well.
Either you're able to afford a lavish lifestyle or I'd like to know how I could live in this blissful world that you found (and escape the advertised filled one I live in).
I think the difference is that I live in a different country. I don't consume much local media and even if I did there are few enough local products that you would've heard of all of them by word of mouth. Take the soda as an example. I've certainly seen Coke and Pepsi ads, but I've not seen (or at least can't remember) ads for about half the sodas in my local supermarket. Even when Coke released Coke Zero the first time I found out about it was seeing it on a shelf in a store.
But let's say that all of what you're saying is true. The effect from it seems quite small. I'd estimate that I spend at least 5 minutes a day seeing ads.
So what I'm trying to say is that you think you see 5 minutes of advertising but I'm fairly confident you see substantially more (and if not, you're not just an outlier, but an extreme outlier). I'll give another example: the link from this post not only contains several ads on its page, but is an ad itself([0]). And I want to re-emphasize that many memes you see are also ads (again falling under the native category).
Ads have changed a lot in the last decade and if you think ads are just popups, the things on the side of your screen, or what plays between your favorite show, then you're not keeping up[1]. And more importantly, you have to think beyond products (I think this is our major disconnect).
There are only a few brands of toothbrushes in supermarkets here. I've seen ads from them, but the reason I know the brands exist is because I've used their toothbrushes or paste. In the store I pick whatever's cheap.
But I guess some things to look out for. There are far more than just "you might be interested in this product" type of ads. There are political ads, public awareness ads, moral campaigns/religious ads. There are ads that aren't intended to get you to buy a product but rather to be satisfied with your purchase (see coke). There are ads that are used to sell prestige and status associated with a brand (see cars and watches). There's native advertising[0] which often goes unnoticed and is a frequent guest on HN. The tricky things of ads is that they come in a wide variety of flavors but people think "coke" is the only kind of soda. It is also a cat and mouse game. Old Spice created their ridiculous ads (called anti-advertising) to stand out because saturation of one type took over. Native advertising has been growing over the last decade and taken prominence in the space and the entire intent of native advertising is to be an ad without the reader/viewer knowing that they are watching an ad.
Sure, maybe they don't affect you. But how sure can you be? Especially with the knowledge of native advertising. But let's assume they do not work on you. Does it matter if they work on others? It would be an absurd notion to suggest that they don't. With hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on ads per year (by single companies!) it would be a bit odd for them to be throwing this money down the drain. It would be a bit odd for politicians to do this as well. And once you accept the notion that political ads are a thing I think you have to accept that ads can persuade people to do things beyond buying a product. Carnegie and Rockafeller both used advertising to increase their public image in the early 20th century.
It would be odd for people to spend so much money on something that isn't effective.
Edit: I wanted to give a good example. If you watch "The Boys" on Amazon Prime (great show) you can see how Starfire's memes are all in fact a part of a marketing scheme and about brand awareness. This would be a version of native advertising, and one we've seen quite frequently, especially around political campaigns. But I don't think these types of memes even register as ads in most peoples' minds.
On YouTube we’re up to 2 pre-rolls these days along with an interstitial per 10 minutes, the in-stream advertising by the programme itself, the youtube page furniture ads and the obligatory roll of affiliate links in the description box.
I see none of it because i know how to avoid it but i’ve seen family members change how they use youtube as a result. E.g. opening an episode of a show on their phone, putting the phone down to go do something else then come back and rewind to the start and begin watching. I totally see how they got there but its absurd.
I think we're finally back to how it used to be on video sites: ads everywhere. This was the norm before YouTube, because video hosting is expensive.
Today you can buy it but it’s more expensive here $16-$22 despite lower median household incomes than in the US and i think it might be missing some features - Iirc the US version includes YouTube Tv.
No, it never has. YouTube TV is $65/mo in the US, YouTube Premium (formerly Youtube Red) is $12/mo.
According to this logic, consumers are helpless children. If we accept this, (I don't) the nanny state managing the purchases of childish consumers easily follows.
Perhaps drug addicts would be a less inflammatory comparison. Drug prohibition has arguably done more damage, and failed to eradicate drug addiction. We aren't talking about protecting helpless victims from violence. We are talking about using violence to prohibit individuals from freely trading with each other.
We are back at the core of the issue which I presented above. Who should decide what is a 'legitimate' purchase?
I’m only pointing out that there is an imbalance of power: a company can use a drone strike on your mind, you can defend yourself with a popsicle stick. Good luck.
I’m not proposing a solution but seems clear to me that individuals don’t have the power nor the weapons to defend themselves from what corporations with teams of psychology trained employees want them to do or think.
The problem is not whether we should make the product illegal, it’s whether instilling the need/want for the product in the consumer, especially with creepy tracking, profiling, micro targeting techniques available for cheap nowadays should be regulated (I think it should, for full disclosure)
>(sales) techniques available for cheap nowadays should be regulated
If I am reading you correctly, you're saying that some sales techniques are illegitimate?
Aside from outright coercion, marketing is not violence. Comparing it to a 'drone strike' sounds like hyperbole. Fraud and violence should be regulated. Segmenting an audience and targeting them with products is neither of those.
I have trouble with, "there ought to be a law!". We have so many laws already. Regulations increase each year. The Internet has been a free and open place. It created so much growth because it was a new, largely unregulated frontier.
We've observed regulatory capture in other industries. More laws will do little to protect consumers. Gov has almost no incentive to punish those who are collecting data for them. History shows that the big players will gain an advantage, while smaller publishers won't be able to afford the compliance costs. More platforms and walled gardens will follow.
If regulation were a panacea, the developed western world would be a utopia. Perhaps individuals would be better served by educating themselves and thinking critically about advertisements, propaganda and the media they consume.
> Fraud and violence should be regulated
Fraud is just "fraud" because a law says so, otherwise it would just be a entity taking advantage of some other entity (that has a disparity of information about what is going on). It's not violence either, so I'm surprised you would want fraud to be regulated.
I was going to respond further but I think we are in agreement that in the ideal world there would be less regulation. In the real world regulation not always works and has side effects.
Some people still think that that imperfect solution is better than letting corporations do whatever they want, and that yes education is good, but (in my opinion) it's not only long term "solution", it might not be enough against psychology.
if people don't want to be abused, they won't stay near abusers? I think we are beyond the point where we need to recognize that psycology is a weapon and even knowing how it works won't make you immune to it