
The Spinner - MaysonL
https://www.thespinner.net/
======
ipsa
I found this website really weird, with no "About us", so I searched some
more.

"Elliot Shefler" (some publications put his name in quotes) is a co-founder,
but he does not want to appear in photos and online profiles himself. He is
Turkish-Jewish and spent most of his life working in ad-tech and online
gambling. He claims his algorithms were developed by an agency with links to
the Israeli military (this is repurposed military/PSYOP technology?). His
whereabouts are unknown, circling between Germany, London, and LA.

In 2018 the price was 29$, now its 49$. Elliot claims $5.1 million revenue for
2018. Most customers are men, most customers want to initiate sex with a
target. Nobody follows up to complain if it wasn't successful, since they are
very much part of the conspiracy to manipulate. Elliot plans to share
information with bigger advertisers: "A woman who wants a target to propose to
her, would be in great proximity to a person that is in the market for an
engagement ring".

This service is illegal in Europe, due to data protection and anti-tracking
laws. The site has about 10 employees and one British company who works the
contracts with bigger companies.

> “The value is in retention, not in the acquisition,” he said.

> He related a story about one insurance company he was commissioned work on,
> where he would target the insurance agents at the company to “brainwash and
> manipulate” them and change the perception of the company itself with the
> goal of retaining those agents.

> “We planned a similar campaign with a big pharmaceutical company that was
> targeting doctors (not patients—doctors) with articles about the benefits of
> a certain medicine.”

> ... if he feels the same targeting tools he leverages for The Spinner could
> be vulnerable to possible misuse, his response was matter-of-fact:

> “I would prefer using the word “effective” instead of ‘vulnerable.’ The
> answer is: highly effective.”

Very, very shady.

~~~
sizzle
This is deplorable and hopefully some day grounds for prosecution by the
people who were targeted and manipulated.

~~~
malloreon
Wouldn’t that give cause to sue every single advertiser who attempts to target
and manipulate potential customers?

Aka all of them? I agree this is despicable, but I’m curious how you make this
illegal and not all of advertising.

~~~
ztjio
Just make it illegal to target ads based on the people viewing them. You can
still target to things like contexts, venues, areas, etc. but it would rule
this out and it would eliminate the justification to farm so much personal
info.

~~~
nojvek
Ha! Twitter can target based on email. As soon as I signup for some services,
I immediately get ads. Same with LinkedIn.

Banning targeting via email address, birth date, name and other personal
identifiers would go a really really long way.

I work for a tracking company and I know how much power marketing folks have
nowadays. It’s scary precise.

------
Chickenality
For those who find this horrifying, the [typically unstated] assumption is
that it works. I'm pretty skeptical of this. Think about it: what do you
imagine the effect size is of seeing 10 articles like "4 Secrets to Losing
Weight and Feeling GREAT While You Do It!" in your Facebook feed? I'd bet it's
essentially 0. If seeing these kinds of articles is all it took to improve our
body composition, then we'd all be absolutely shredded.

I'm not trying to argue that advertising doesn't work. Clearly it does. But
there's a huge difference between being exposed to tens of thousands of Coca-
Cola ads over a lifetime, and being exposed to 10 spam articles over the
course of a month.

I'm also not trying to argue that this isn't creepy. Clearly it is. But the
real 'target' of this scheme is the person buying the ads. I doubt this has
any real effect on the person who sees them.

~~~
ipsa
For some scientific research into this subject, see:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_(psychology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_\(psychology\))
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repetition_priming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repetition_priming)

(do note that this research suffers a bit from p-hacking).

There is a good chance that you were already targeted before, since online
manipulation is used by the big militaries. Think back about 2 years, reading
about SJW, politics, neo-nazis, antifa, BLM, manspreading, immigrants, the
deep state, etc. Good chance at least some of your perception about these
subjects was molded by just a few individuals. For instance, remember that
Russian girl throwing bleach on "manspreaders" in the metro? You may have had
a strong reaction to that, and it would be the desired effect of Russian
troll-factory.

Specifically, on the effect of manipulating the Facebook feed to control
behavior, Facebook did some controversial research themselves, where they used
sentiment analysis to make a feed more or less positive. People who were fed
negative feeds, started using negative words in their own status update:
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/gregorymcneal/2014/06/28/facebo...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/gregorymcneal/2014/06/28/facebook-
manipulated-user-news-feeds-to-create-emotional-contagion/)

> The marketing study suggested companies should "[c]oncentrate media during
> prime vulnerability moments, aligning with content involving tips and
> tricks, instant beauty rescues, dressing for the success, getting organized
> for the week and empowering stories... Concentrate media during her most
> beautiful moments, aligning with content involving weekend guides, weekend
> style, beauty tips for social activities and positive stories." The Facebook
> study, combined with last year's marketing study suggests that marketers may
> not need to wait until Mondays or Thursdays to have an emotional impact,
> instead _social media companies may be able to manipulate timelines and news
> feeds to create emotionally fueled marketing opportunities_.

~~~
knzhou
Priming is one of the psychology topics worst afflicted by p-hacking. Almost
every prominent priming study has gone down in flames during the replication
crisis. Consistent, repeated _propaganda_ has real effects, priming doesn't.

~~~
ipsa
Like said by the other poster, long-term priming is not proven nor disproven:
Science needs better and more experiments. So we don't yet scientifically know
enough about long-term priming to make a judgment on its effects. Short-term
priming is well-established and has real measurable effects though. The
prominent priming studies you refer to are the "exotic" studies -- these
looked at less defined aspects of priming, and were found to be lacking.

> Amidst the recent furor over failures to replicate some empirical results on
> behavior priming, it is important to emphasize that some basic behavior-
> priming effects are real, robust, and easily replicable even if others are
> much more problematic.

For instance, your reply contains too many words starting with "p" and "pr"
for it to be a mere coincidence :). (syntactical priming is something that
authors or editors have to guard against, as it can make for poor quality
writing).

~~~
kortilla
> Like said by the other poster, long-term priming is not proven nor
> disproven:

If there is no evidence for it, there is little reason to be concerned about
it at this point given how much research has gone into it.

~~~
ipsa
Absence of evidence is no evidence of absence. You could put the Bayesian
prior to be extremely low, but a zero chance would not make you a Bayesian
anymore, it would make you a believer in that something is simply not possible
(and no amount of scientific evidence would update your priors. It really is
scientifically a mistake to claim: There exist no black swans. To proof that,
one would have to observe all of existence. Now... should you worry about
black swans, when all you see is white swans? Depends on you and the amount of
risk managing. But that poster claimed all of priming is non-scientific, when
we have clear replicated proof.

~~~
knzhou
Suppose I run a fake investment company that pretends to double your money,
but actually just steals it. Suppose you find out all my claims are lies, and
demand your money back. How would you react if I said "The absence of evidence
is not the evidence of absence. The prior probability of my investment
strategy working is nonzero. Now give me more money."

Just pointing out that priors can't be zero isn't a principled stance, it's
Pascal's mugging. You can use it to justify literally anything.

------
Torien
My immediate thought when I saw this was "Fancy scam mixed with PR bomb", a
little digging surfaced these:

[https://blogs.harvard.edu/doc/2019/02/27/spinner/](https://blogs.harvard.edu/doc/2019/02/27/spinner/)

[https://www.prexamples.com/2018/07/frustrated-husbands-
can-u...](https://www.prexamples.com/2018/07/frustrated-husbands-can-use-
micro-targeted-native-ads-to-influence-their-wives-to-initiate-sex-surely-a-
pr-stunt-please-a-pr-stunt/)

~~~
Mathnerd314
It's certainly a bit sketchy in terms of site administration etc., but it is a
one-man operation so I'd say it's understandable.

The less understandable part is that it's charging $50 for 180 impressions
such as
[https://twitter.com/RichLeighPR/status/1037066048485371905](https://twitter.com/RichLeighPR/status/1037066048485371905)
while Facebook sells those directly for a few dollars per 1000, i.e. 100x
markup.

~~~
hammock
>The less understandable part is that it's charging $50 for 180 impressions
such as
[https://twitter.com/RichLeighPR/status/1037066048485371905](https://twitter.com/RichLeighPR/status/1037066048485371905)
while Facebook sells those directly for a few dollars per 1000, i.e. 100x
markup.

Facebook does not allow you to build a custom audience of 1 person. I believe
it has to be a minimum size of 100 or thereabout. Which means when Spinner
says your target will get 180 impressions, they have to throw in 99 random
non-targets into the targeted audience in order to get the placement. Thus
they really aren't marking it up as much as you think.

~~~
chadcmulligan
They would batch them though, wait for 100 clients who want the same and put
them in the batch. So it does provide a marginal service, viewed from that
angle.

------
djsumdog
I laughed uncontrollably. I knew it was one of those classic 2000s style hoax
sites like Coincidence Design ($40k private investigator to find out
everything to make someone fall in love with you), or Penguin Warehouse
(penguins as pets) or Pets or Food ... all funny, none real.

But wait .. this is ... real? Like they take real money from people? .... huh
... what was that quote about how everything that was once parody is reality?

This is some serious Poe's Law stuff here.

~~~
abootstrapper
I thought it was satire. Satire died in 2016, but I still haven’t learned.

------
maxfurman
This is fucked up. At first I thought, of course this exists but no one would
really fall for it. Scrolling through the offerings, I felt a sinking feeling
in the pit of my stomach. Psychological warfare on-demand, only $50!

~~~
markstos
Having someone see more articles on the benefits of quiting smoking is messed
up?

~~~
i_cant_speel
Involuntary psychological manipulation is messed up regardless of the intent.

~~~
markstos
Ads we see can already be increasingly targeted to a very narrow group of
people, which is spun as "making the adds more relevant to you". Is it
different when it's a slightly larger group size than one?

~~~
moate
I'm not clear here: are you using this as an argument in favor of spinner and
their service or as an argument against targeted ads because they're basically
just this spinner on a larger scale?

If the latter, I'm with you.

~~~
dreamer7
I am against targeted ads at all scales because we have a lot of fallacies
that we cannot really control all the time even if we are aware of them.

But the reactions to this service is slight proof that an organisation evokes
lesser negative reactions than an individual

~~~
din-9
I think the greater reactions are due to the targetting of individuals rather
than the entity acting.

------
leereeves
Of course this is already happening on a massive scale. Perhaps having someone
openly admit to it will help make people more aware.

~~~
helpPeople
I believe HN Does not allow people to question gaslighting on HN.

I never understood why. Mods claim it "doesn't add to the topic".

~~~
dang
I don't recall ever saying either of those things.

~~~
wanderingjew
Can you clarify, because while you've said gaslighting HN users is, "an
egregious violation of the guidelines and a bannable offense on HN" [1],
you're also saying the _questioning_ of gaslighting is allowed? Given the
nature of gaslighting, those things seem one in the same, do they not?

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16608054](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16608054)

~~~
dang
ratww already pointed this out, but the issue from our point of view was
implying that the other commenter was not posting in good faith (how much is
$baddie paying you). The concept of gaslighting didn't really enter into it.

I really appreciate your supplying a specific link. It's amazing how rare that
is! and makes it so much easier to respond accurately.

------
ai_ia
I think this is called Sniper Targetting [1] or providing ads for a single
audience.

Earlier I had read about someone who tried to spook his roommate by targetting
him with heavily-personalized ads. Cannot seem to find it now.

[1]: [https://medium.com/@MichaelH_3009/sniper-targeting-on-
facebo...](https://medium.com/@MichaelH_3009/sniper-targeting-on-facebook-how-
to-target-one-specific-person-with-super-targeted-ads-515ba6e068f6)

~~~
PebblesRox
Yeah, the roommate story is great! You can read it here:

The Ultimate Retaliation: Pranking My Roommate with Targeted Facebook Ads.
[https://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-
pranking...](https://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-my-
roommate-with-targeted-facebook-ads/)

~~~
ai_ia
Yeah. That one. Thanks.

------
skrebbel
Would a service like this work on people who don't use the popular social
networks?

E.g. I get my news + dopamine from the local newspaper (physical paper
edition) and HN, respectively. Ofc HN pretty much qualifies as a social
network, but it has no targeting. My girlfriend isn't on any social network at
all, unless WhatsApp qualifies as one and IMO it doesn't, unless you have a
gazillion active group chats (which sounds like hell on earth).

I'm inclined to think that this makes both of us immune to attacks like the
ones performed by this company, but I have an uneasy feeling that I'm missing
something. Anyone with a better insight in targeting hacks than me able to
chip in?

~~~
ipsa
Anywhere you can see retargeted ads online you could be targeted.

WhatsApp group chats were used to spread carefully crafted opposition memes
and fake news.

So, while you may be safe against 50$ campaigns, it could be a false sense of
security. For 5000$-50000$ I am sure I can get a special message in front of
your face: Take out local ads, plant a newspaper story, create a huge story
about your controversial 5-million-dollar-revenue website on HackerNews
(remember, no such thing as bad publicity, this website will see their
customers spike today!)

> He banked on people hate-tweeting it. “I don’t mind what they feel, as long
> as they think something”, Halib said – which is scarily like something I’ve
> said in talks I’ve given about coming up with PR ideas that bang.

------
haasted
They should add an “expose target to qanon and conspiracy theories”-option.
There was an article not too long ago about what obsessing over this can do to
personal relationships. It was not pretty.

~~~
bonerman69
Lollll

~~~
dang
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? You've
done it a lot, and we're trying for a bit better than that here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
zoba
Initially I was disgusted, but, then I realized I'd be interested in a "Make
your parents skeptical of Fox News" option.

~~~
tracker1
Considering how many stories CNN, ABC and MSNBC have gotten wrong (and
retracted the next morning), I'm not sure they're any better. At least Fox's
bias is obvious. They also tend to have a more diverse guest list in terms of
political leaning.

BTW, I really don't watch much Fox news, I tend to read about things a few
days after they have happened. When I stay active on twitter, it's all a
cesspool of lies, and I am pretty sure the news media is part of it.

~~~
learc83
>They also tend to have a more diverse guest list in terms of political
leaning.

I'm going to need to see some evidence for that one because it doesn't match
what I've seen at all.

~~~
awinder
That evidence is stored on the other side of the looking glass, you can see
them, but you’re gonna have to jump.

~~~
learc83
I watched Fox News regularly until 2015 or so, so unless the changed
dramatically since then the statement about them having more politically
diverse guests is just wrong.

------
dannykwells
This feels like a satire. But it's not. My god. We are truly living in the end
of days.

Also the title is purposely inflammatory (if not also true).

~~~
phnofive
The title is not good, but I’m not sure this isn’t satirical, based on the
”Get Your Kid A Dog!” campaign.

~~~
pier25
Also the "100% Natural" badge :)

~~~
Kye
Spinners usually say this to distinguish themselves from automated spinning
tools.

------
erikpukinskis
I appreciate the “this is evil” analysis, but I have a different take on it:

Packaging this capability for everyday people is exactly what we need to get
widespread understanding of what is being done to them, and begin to build
social defenses.

Political parties, corporations, and all kinds of bad actors are doing this
stuff all the time. People need to find ways to externally validate their
realities. I don’t see any way that can happen besides widespread adoption of
consumer psyops tools.

It feels like Pandora’s Box has been opened, and we need to get comfy with the
monsters as a first step, if we are to subdue them.

~~~
rolleiflex
Yes — this is the thing that will make it click for the ordinary people: that
when we talk about online advertising, it’s not the digital equivalent of
printed magazine ads we’re talking about, we’re talking about _this_.

This, bought en masse, by most companies on Earth.

------
Nextgrid
I’m tempted to use this as a demonstration to a friend who still doesn’t
believe me about targeted ads and the maliciousness of social media companies.
I’d pay them to target her with an obviously irrelevant idea (have kids for
example, considering she’s against kids and does not want any) and hand her an
encrypted flash drive with a message saying I did that beforehand. A few weeks
later I’d ask her about it and give her the key to decrypt the drive and read
my message.

~~~
slig
You can also write your message locally and just email her the hash, then you
can prove you had the original message.

`echo -n "MESSAGE" | shasum -a 256`

~~~
mkl
I think encryption is much more readily understood by nontechnical people than
hashing, though.

~~~
joshstrange
While I agree with you 100% for the general public I think if someone is
manually decrypting a file (assumedly with gpg) they understand enough to get
hashing. Now if you want to get into the realm of really "understood" by the
public you should just send a Word doc or zip file with a password on it.

~~~
mkl
Yes, the latter is the kind of thing, no need for gpg complexity. The original
comment talked about an encrypted flash drives, and that's usually done in a
fairly accessible way.

------
calibas
I was curious as to how it all works, from the FAQ:

>The Spinner* sends you an innocent looking link. This link is sent to the
target via text message. When the target presses the link, a cookie connected
to the link attaches itself to the target’s phone. From that point on, the
target will be strategically bombarded with articles and media tailored to him
or her.

So it's using a tracking cookie and the victim needs to click a link before
anything happens. More from the FAQ:

>Thanks to an online advertising technique called "retargeting", the service
makes sure that only the target sees the content chosen for her or him.

I assume Google Ad's remarketing (or SaaS, "stalking as a service") is what
was meant: [https://support.google.com/google-
ads/answer/2453998?hl=en&r...](https://support.google.com/google-
ads/answer/2453998?hl=en&ref_topic=3122875)

So as far as I can tell, the whole thing is just using marketing features
built into Google Ads.

------
deweller
What? How are they controlling what articles the target sees via a cookie?
What am I missing here?

~~~
jefftk
It's based on remarketing technology. Just like Amazon can drop a cookie on
your browser so they can later show you ads to convince you to come back and
complete the blender purchase you have sitting in your cart, this site is
offering to drop a cookie on the target and then show them ads for whatever
message you would like to show.

------
eweise
Wish they had a campaign to convince my boss that working from home is a win-
win situation.

~~~
GreenJelloShot
Sounds like a great opportunity for a GoFundMe campaign.

------
defertoreptar
OP, what do you think "gaslighting" means here?

------
debatem1
Interesting the difference between the topline description "exposed to
hundreds of items disguised as editorial content" and the one later in the
page "10 articles". Could it be that a company which sells deception is
playing a bit fast and loose with its claims?

Also, I think it would be very interesting to set up a honeypot for this and
see what kinds of changes it drives. Anyone interested in splitting the cost
for an experiment?

~~~
phkahler
The hundreds of items could be links to the 10 articles.

------
w_t_payne
Frankly I'm surprised this isn't augmented with some sort of hyperlocal
lat/long or zip-code based targeting to, for example, influence all the
workers at a specific office building. It wouldn't take much for a company to
bombard it's competitor's staff members with wacky conspiracy theories and/or
other things to make them less effective.

------
leovander
I think I have seen this link[0] posted a few times in related posts (I might
have shared it as well).

[0] [http://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-
pranking-...](http://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-my-
roommate-with-targeted-facebook-ads/)

------
heyyyouu
You can do the same exact thing with facebook advertising. People have done it
(job ads, apartments, etc.). This is just targeted at banner/Web vs. social
media.

Doesn't make it any more or less icky, just saying that it's not the only
method/it's happening already.

------
ryacko
Reminds me of something about a true crime case on TV.

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/48-hours-drawn-to-
murder/2/](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/48-hours-drawn-to-murder/2/)

>But the plan went still further: at one point, police duped a newspaper
reporter into writing a phony story saying an arrest was imminent. They even
left a copy of Tim's mother's obituary on the windshield of a friend's truck.

>"That's torture," says Tim's former attorney, Erik Fischer. "They're trying
to get this poor kid to relive his mother's death. They're trying to make him
snap! It's a psychological experiment to try to make him snap!"

------
markstos
I regularly use seven browsers: Three different ones at work, two different
ones on my home desktop and three different ones on my phone.

My webmail intentionally runs in it's own browser profile which is only used
for opening links in email. If the tracking cookie attached there it wouldn't
apply to nearly any of my usual web browser usage.

If you use Chrome for your browser, you can create a new profile and "web app"
to run your web mail in. In Firefox, pin your web mail to a container.
(Hopefully links followed from there stay in the container?)

On your phone, open links from email in chat in Firefox Focus unless you have
reason to do otherwise. In settings disable third party cookies. (Firefox
Focus still allows normal cookies by default)

~~~
ryacko
The real trick is to search for brands advertised in a magazine meant for a
different demographic as you.

Beyond that, IP addresses are the primary identifier on the internet, and all
other tracking is meant to differentiate between different users on a single
IP address.

Temporary containers are a nice plug-in for Firefox.

------
somethoughts
My first thought was that it was subscription service for people who don't
know how to re-light their furnace pilot light when it goes out. My second
thought was - Is that a huge addressable market, but what do I know?

Then I clicked the link.

------
VectorLock
Didn't Facebook for a while have the ability to target a single individual for
ads? I seem to remember seeing some things on HN about people doing this a
while back. Makes sense that someone would turn it into a service.

~~~
davinic
Yes, and I think they still technically do. At some point they changed it from
a single target email to requiring 20, but you could get around this by
uploading 19 others of a different gender, then use gender as a filter later
on when creating the target list.

------
wedn3sday
In the next couple years a couple things are going to happen:

1) This (or something like it) will go open source. 2) An AI will be made to
generate campaigns automatically. This can either use articles selected with
some sort of sentiment analysis, or by generating the content itself with the
next gen GPT-2.

Neal Stephenson talked about this more then 10 years ago in the book Anathem,
calling them "Artificial Inanity Engines."

------
PhasmaFelis
> * According to The Spinner's terms of use, if the initiator of the Spinner
> service (i.e. the party that ordered and/or paid for the service) sends the
> 'targeting link' to any user via any digital media, it’s the initiator’s
> responsibility to refer the recipient to The Spinner's terms of use and
> privacy policy.*

Uh huh.

------
ocdtrekkie
And it literally starts by you sending them an "innocuous looking" link. How
does someone actually justify to themselves that doing something like this is
even slightly okay? I'd feel deeply disturbed doing this to someone even if it
was for a "good cause" like getting them to quit smoking.

------
anaxag0ras
I don't know why but the Spinner video reminded me of the Friendface ad[1].
Maybe because both are hilarious in some ways and horrifying.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rNgCnY1lPg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rNgCnY1lPg)

------
neom
FT has an interesting article on it from last year:
[https://www.ft.com/content/944d068c-8a99-11e8-affd-
da9960227...](https://www.ft.com/content/944d068c-8a99-11e8-affd-da9960227309)

------
sideshowmel
"The Spinner* sends you an innocent looking link. This link is sent to the
target via text message. When the target presses the link, a cookie connected
to the link attaches itself to the target’s phone."

Is this legal? I never click on links sent via SMS.

~~~
sp332
The person setting this up gets sent the link from The Spinner, and then has
to figure out how to get it loaded on the target's device. Texting it to
someone who trusts you (enough to click on a link anyway) is one way to get it
done.

------
legionof7
I wonder if it's possible to build a defense service to this.

Counter PsyOps as a service (if built, social networks should probably build
it in for free).

Make something that can detect if your stories seem to be manipulated and show
stories that counteract that.

~~~
rabidrat
Maybe something like an Ad-blocker would work.

------
paulddraper
> Message: Prevent Phishing Attacks!

> Target: Employeess

Hmmm

------
Absor
The site took so long to load that I thought it was for showing the loading
spinner tab icon, which also fit the name of the site. I had to go wait it out
after reading the comments which seemed unrelated to the first experience.

------
methodin
Is there anything stopping someone from abusing paid ad services for any of
these platforms themselves to the same effect? This is assuming that they
allow you to finely target the ads which I believe they do.

~~~
Nextgrid
Not really. There was a story about someone pranking their roommate with
targeted Facebook ads but FB then raised the minimum amount of people
targeted. However as far as I know nothing prevents you from specifying a
majority of fake emails/phone numbers in addition to your target’s phone
number as long as you’re happy to pay for the extra wasted fake targets.

------
jbob2000
This is gross, shut this shit down now. There's no honest use for this. The
only people who'll use it are psychopaths, we don't need to empower them,
especially when it's as cheap as $50.

~~~
Const-me
I don’t disagree, but how is it different from corporations, who’s using
exactly same methods to deliver the message “purchase our crap”?

The only reason they are paying more than $50, they’re buying more than 180
impressions.

------
WarDores
Keep in mind that large companies are already using the surveillance and
advertising complex to influence behavior, and have been for years. This just
puts it in the hands of anyone with $50 to spend.

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bamurphymac1
Hmm, I’m curious using this on oneself to encourage pro-social behavior or
reinforce new habits.

Would it have a known placebo effect where even if you knew it was spun you’d
still be influenced?

~~~
markstos
Sign up for the "eat less meat" campaign and let us know how it goes.

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ferCats99
Well, I just opened the link and Facebook started showing ads related to
"Marrying my partner", "Initiate sex", funny thing because I'm single

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manjana
This is manipulation and quite despicable imho.

Besides I'd rather make my own "nudging" (or spearphishing) campaign and save
a few bucks if need ever showed.

~~~
uoaei
Advertisement is manipulation.

~~~
manjana
I never said it wasn't - this is manipulative against someone you have a
relationship (of some sort) with.

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kkotak
I think Darren Brown claims to use short term persuasive power to influence
people to drastically change their mind about intimate things.

~~~
driverdan
He claims that but it isn't true. He's a magician doing tricks.

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serkanh
Poor man's Cambridge Analytica!

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sixtypoundhound
Product suggestion: bump the price to $99 and 20 x the traffic over a longer
delivery window. You need more impressions than offered to meaningfully affect
target beliefs. You can mix in cheaper ad space as well.

None of these have a direct call to action.... thus you need additional
impressions to build recall or trigger inception.

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newshorts
Would be interested to hear someone who actually had success with this.

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safwan
Firefox will block all the tracking cookie! So can not apply to me! ;)

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fidla
Apparently the guy who set it up is from Turkey but lives in Germany

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flimflamm
Illegal in Europe. You need to agreement for this kind of tracking.

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sebastianconcpt
Fascinating. This is propaganda war at a micro scale.

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ilaksh
Sounds like an episode of Black Mirror.

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Oblouk
This is like a shitty SecretNudge.com

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ourcat
This is very much akin to the "weapons-grade" tools used by the likes of
Cambridge Analytica and AIQ to manipulate the minds of Trump and Brexit
voters, using ill-gotten Facebook data to work out _exactly_ what pushes
people's buttons.

Tools like this will now be used during every election/voting cycle, forever.

Extremely worrying, but inevitable.

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fidla
This has got to be a joke

~~~
djsumdog
Exactly what I though. It's very Poe's Law.

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serkanh
lol Poor man's Cambridge analytica!

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typeformer
I think I know who built this

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luhn
The HN title is incorrectly using "gaslight," and the website makes no mention
of gaslighting.

> Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person seeks
> to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or in members of a targeted
> group, making them question their own memory, perception, and sanity.

~~~
oneshoe
Without trying to be pedantic, I think bombarding people with false (or
"spun") information that is in contrast to their views, principles, or beliefs
through a long period of time would make them question their perception(s). I
get that probably wouldn't change people's memory or sanity however.

~~~
mrfredward
Gaslighting usually involves lying about past interactions, not surrounding a
person with persuasive material.

~~~
GhettoMaestro
Correct - at the root of gaslighting is a bold-faced lie. From the source, it
refers to a story where the husband turns down, and then back up, the gas-
lights in their house continually, and denies that he is changing anything to
his wife when she inquires why the light level keeps changing. Thus the term,
"gas-lighting".

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kd3
Looks like the CIA finally got some competition.

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redoaoura
This is crazy but cool

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seamyb88
Right, so it's malware? Good old malware which once upon a time was frowned
upon. Keep on top of that really special person who has a restraining order on
you.

~~~
evan_
I don't think it's malware, it sounds like it's just using retargeting ads.

