Research has a lot of policies and systems set up to ensure that if your testing involves people, you must get informed consent from the persons before even trying to do the test, and it's really not hard to imagine why this is a stringent standard -- it's very easy to miss how "simple tests" can and often are adverse to those participating in the test or have unintended consequences that the researchers didn't accommodate for, regardless of the reason they did not.
Ads are often portrayed as harmless but, like, there's a reason there are restrictions on advertising for certain highly addictive products and regulations against false or misleading advertising, or certain tactics aren't allowed.
If this is based on the possibility that one or more of the ads is harmful, how is it less ethical than the time-honored alternative, which is skipping the study and just running the ads?
Why? Is it false?
I get that reaction a lot. People have directly called me unhinged. I don't really mind.
Many of my ideas I developed by discussing this stuff with people on this site. I guess not every idea is socially acceptable. That's fine. I still want to express them.
> is that unethical non-consensual experimentation?
Yes. It's really not any different than some published psychology experiment. In fact it's much larger in scale, has much uglier interests behind it, has proprietary and unpublished results. Social sciences wish they could get away with shit like this!
Only reason it's "legitimate" is everyone depends on it to make their millions. Because money excuses everything. Just like unending amounts of first party malware corporations ship to users on a daily basis. We used to recognize that stuff as the malware it is: adware, spyware. But then corporations started doing the same thing and suddenly it's "legitimate" because they put some clause in some terms nobody reads.
If I put two different marketing messages on two different billboards to test whether one is more effective than the other, is that unethical non-consensual experimentation? If not, how is it different from A/B testing?