It's not about technology. It's about power, capital, and society.
We already know that Facebook/Instagram can manipulate your real-world emotions and thoughts by what it chooses to show you.
We also know that susceptibility to ads for different products varies depending on emotional state and context (pre 'surveillance capitalism' it was well known that you could get much bettter responses to aspirational products as the weekend approached, and to products like make-up on Sunday evenings as the work-dread sets in).
The question is, if you have a load of high-value inventory to shift, but your audience isn't susceptible to it, why not treat this as an optimization problem and make them?
It's the right thing to do for your shareholders, completely legal, and near undetectable.
The question is, if you have a load of high-value inventory to shift, but your audience isn't susceptible to it, why not treat this as an optimization problem and make them?
Susceptibility to action is binary. If the audience isn't susceptible then they won't ever convert, or take action.
I'll never buy a Yoni Egg [1], and no amount of targeting or putting advertisements in front of me will cause me to make a purchase of one.
However there might be a world in which I would buy a box of feminine products, even though I am a man. For example if my daughter is sick or incapable of getting them for herself. In which case, a social or other network knowing that
1. I have a daughter
2. That she is sick
3. What her time based need of these products is
4. That there is a preference for a certain product in this category
5. I can get the product cheaply or easily
Makes my life easier, by saying: "Hey [user] we see that you may be in a scenario that this particular product/service would be helpful right now"
Even though at that point I might not even know that I need to help get that when I go to the store because of social anxiety or embarrassment preventing from asking.
So yes, I believe in an all seeing all knowing AI god that will guide and optimize our behaviors. That is not a sarcastic comment.
Your example is laughably contrived, unrealistic, and so full of plot holes that my fingers would tire from typing all my thoughts out. By contrast, the very real privacy invasion damage that invariably occurs in the kind of world that you're advocating for is well documented, and dystopian in the extreme. The never forgetting Internet, the different insurance rates, the illegal files on every citizen etc. I want no part of such a world.
And it is a world where non participation might equate to a negative profile, so the bay we can do is understand the enemy and curate perfection, while engaging in a real way only when anonymous (so far as that can even be achieved).
It can be regulated against, more transparency can be enforced. Despite the enormous lobbying from Facebook and Google in the EU, I could imagine it happening there within five or ten years for example.
There's a real tendency on HN to get all Ayn Rand and forget we live in a society. In relative terms, this is a very new business model. Companies will push for more power, and they get it unless people push back. As people close to the problem, we need to see ourselves as responsible for influencing the discussion about type of society we end up with.
> So yes, I believe in an all seeing all knowing AI god that will guide and optimize our behaviors. That is not a sarcastic comment.
We already use much less powerful things, words and images, mostly to manipulate. Plenty don't hesitate to trying to make people feel bad or unpopular for not having a product they don't actually need, and your susceptibility doesn't matter, that they also don't blink doing it to a mentally handicapped or psychologically unstable person is. But sure, just give marketing more power and at some point it will wrap around to being all nice and fluffy... I'm also not being sarcastic when I say you can live in that world over my dead body. It's not enough for you to want it, you need to want it more than I don't want it, and I doubt anxiety or fear of embarrassment is going to be enough motivation, not by orders of magnitude.
We already know that Facebook/Instagram can manipulate your real-world emotions and thoughts by what it chooses to show you.
We also know that susceptibility to ads for different products varies depending on emotional state and context (pre 'surveillance capitalism' it was well known that you could get much bettter responses to aspirational products as the weekend approached, and to products like make-up on Sunday evenings as the work-dread sets in).
The question is, if you have a load of high-value inventory to shift, but your audience isn't susceptible to it, why not treat this as an optimization problem and make them?
It's the right thing to do for your shareholders, completely legal, and near undetectable.