
Brainwashing your wife to want sex? Here is ad tech at its worst - sbachman
https://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2018/07/23/brainwashing-your-wife-want-sex-here-adtech-its-worst
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anotheryou
This is satire, no?

more funny examples:
[https://www.thespinner.net/packages](https://www.thespinner.net/packages)

e.g. "Message: Get your kid a dog! Target: Mom/Dad".

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emodendroket
Do satirical Web sites typically accept payment?

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anotheryou
I didn't dig so deep before.

It actually asked for and validated a CC number O_o

it might be real, oh my.

It uses [https://www.payplus.co.il/](https://www.payplus.co.il/)

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sbachman
PayPlus is registered to a media group in Israel that is being sued by the US:
[https://twitter.com/SWeinglass/status/1021428223136149508](https://twitter.com/SWeinglass/status/1021428223136149508)

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Omnius
If this isn't a joke thats messed up. If your not having the sex life you want
with your SO figure out why generally there is something wrong in the
relationship and fix it.

Is SO just tired and dead at the end of the day? Help them more, delegate out
anything that you can to 3rd party services (not as expensive as you would
think).

The obvious one, send the kids somewhere, go out on date.

That all being said. if this real i highly doubt it even works.

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fipar
I hope this is satire. If not, the fact that anyone could think this a) works,
and b) is a good way to get more intimate time with their SO, makes me very
sad.

This line from Heavens to Betsy never felt more relevant to me, if this story
is true: "You wanna know how I feel? You could never just ask me"

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rootlocus
> the fact that anyone could think this [...] is a good way to get more
> intimate time with their SO, makes me very sad.

This doesn't surprise me at all. There are plenty of rednecks all over the
world. There's no point in being sad for them.

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BlackLotus89
This smells of satire maybe even something to spread awareness about tracking
and targeted ads. I'm not even sure how this should work and how people would
react to seeing so many suggestions I would be confused and annoyed mostly.
"Funny" idea nonetheless even thought it wouldn't work for me and my wife
(adblocker anyone?). Would be interesting for advertisers how well adds really
work.

Anyway in the spirit of this article I will now order naptime
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF_nfazQaek](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF_nfazQaek)

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SiempreViernes
Is it satire if they take your money too?

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jobigoud
Fascinating. I don't know if this company's claims are real, the journalist
was so offended she didn't do a full test of the service, but aquaintance
manipulation by way of surveillance/targeted content will certainly find a
market.

The tools of Infowar available for personal use. Newsfeed manipulation, psy
ops, personalized propaganda, targeting your boss for a raise, targeting a
competitor into a mistake, a teen targeting his parents so they be more
lenient, parents targeting their kids to nudge them in a wanted direction,
etc.

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2sk21
This is a ridiculous example but the weaponization risks for adtech are
interesting to contemplate. Do ad networks take any steps to verify who is
placing ads?

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simias
I immediately though that this might be somehow more successful (and somewhat
less creepy) if this was used to prank other people. "Send this link to your
friend and they'll get ads for dragon dildos everywhere". IIRC there are
online services to glitter bomb people, it would fit in that niche I suppose.

I'm utterly doubtful that sending your wife ads like "3 reasons to initiate
sex with your husband" would have any effect at all (besides making it more
likely to install ad ad blocker) but it is definitely one of the creepiest
things I've read in a while. They're really preying on desperate people with
that thing. Utterly immoral.

The only positive thing that can come out from this is making people even more
aware of the risks of online tracking and how far it can go. After all if your
creepy husband can use it to send you targeted ads in an attempt to change
your habits, what can Google and friends do?

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emodendroket
They can basically do the same thing -- if you ever have looked at a product
on a Web site and then saw ads for that exact product for weeks you'd be
familiar with it.

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SAI_Peregrinus
The really dumb one is when you've bought a product and then get ads (or
recommendations) for the same thing for weeks. Thanks, Amazon, I really don't
need another framing hammer, I've got one already.

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emodendroket
I was more focusing on the way ads can already be highly targeted on the
retailer's behalf; it seems to me that there is nothing technically
implausible about what the wife seduction service advertises.

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fastball
Hahaha, this "journalist".

    
    
      What my investigation found
    
      Perhaps my cynical, journalistic spidey sense is awry 
    
      As someone who is half-Israeli, lives in Tel Aviv, and speaks Hebrew, I take personal offense to this sketchy operation
    

Someone should tell him about satire.

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amai
Brainwashing your wife to vote for a republican president? Old News!

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emodendroket
> “We should all be thanking the Valley Bros that made The Spinner – it might
> just be what it takes for folks to sit up and take note of (a) how this crap
> works (b) what it is designed to do (c) how fucked up it all is,” Aral
> Balkan, a self-described cyborg rights activist, added. “The Spinner is
> surveillance capitalism in its purest… The Spinner is surveillance
> capitalism’s Martin Shkreli moment.”

Well, that's an interesting choice of example, because Shkreli went to jail
and nothing much else has changed (in fact the Trump administration is talking
about forcing prices up outside the US too).

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jlebrech
queue downvotes but isn't dating the same thing? brainwashing each other.

~~~
simias
You'll have to explain to me how surreptitiously manipulating somebody's
internet in order to influence them to have sex with you can be likened to
dating.

