
We all wear tinfoil hats now - whatami
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/we-all-wear-tinfoil-hats-now
======
deltron3030
Cultural authority got decentralized over centuries, from church to bible to
traditional media to new media, where everybody can be an author and become an
authority, gain a fellowship.

Peoples obedience to authority didn't change much in general, it's an instinct
for survival, it makes the surrounding society and feedback from a society
more predictable.

Online bubbles are often subcultures that predate the web, what changed is
that many of them became more attractive or commercially viable through
independence of location, new viable markets linked to a return of investment,
which of course motivates virtual landgrabs and people defending their
territory.

It's not a suprise that most online communities have their own authors and
authorities, stores, books and conferences, their own terminology or language,
their own culture/church basically. It's even obvious within niches like
programming. Coming up in such a community is linked to wealth. If you're seen
in church and competitors not, churchgoers will likely buy from you.

Abolishing cultural independence would lead to a China 2.0, cultural authority
in hands of the state. Likely less innovation caused by a lack of cultural
diversity, less motivation to invest into land that's already been grabbed by
others.

How can the problems that are likely caused by cultural independence be solved
without fully centralizing cultural authority? Can something like a driver
license for the web even be possible or be fair?

~~~
ptah
this reminds me of an interview i saw on the news with an elderly british
voter who was adamant that she will vote Tory as they are bound to win. it's
almost like she saw her vote as a bet and she wanted to get it right.

this interview moved me significantly towards being sceptical of current
democracies

~~~
dageshi
Most people don't care about politics that much, they vote more or less for a
continuation of what's currently going on with an occasional minor course
correction one way or another.

I imagine that was the case with that lady, didn't care about politics, wanted
things to be more or less the same, votes Conservative and when put on the
spot doesn't really have a good explanation as to why.

The most useful thing about democracy is the ability to kick people out, not
necessarily choose the best person for the job.

~~~
6510
We could do a bunch of rounds of elections where we all vote against someone
(or some party) Big spending attention whores would be eliminated in the first
round.

------
34679
I'll put my "hat" on for a moment and ask: Why doesn't the FEC enforce its
policy on the identification of political advertisements and who paid for them
when it comes to social media activity? Why is it that a 30 second radio ad
needs to have "Paid for by the Candidate X campaign", but millions of dollars
worth of paid online trolls needn't disclose a thing? According to their own
published rules, this sort of activity should require a financial disclosure.
[1]

Question 2: Michael Hastings detailed the legalization of the domestic use of
propaganda on US citizens with US taxpayer dollars. [2] How much money has
been spent on those activities since they were made legal in 2012?

[1][https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/making-
di...](https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/making-
disbursements/advertising/)

[2][https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mhastings/congressmen-s...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mhastings/congressmen-
seek-to-lift-propaganda-ban)

~~~
MR4D
There is a simple answer to this question (excellent question, BTW !)

The FEC can only do this if "political advertisement" is first defined.

And that's where you will most likely hit a wall. Let's run through a scenario
to see if we can get people on HN to agree what is or is not a political "ad":

\- Person tweeting on April 15th, "God, I hate paying taxes."

\- Person tweeting on April 15th, "God, I hate paying high taxes."

\- Person tweeting on April 15th, "Why are we paying such high taxes?"

\- Person tweeting on April 15th, "Why does anyone vote for these high taxes?"

\- Person tweeting on April 15th, "Who votes for these high taxes?"

\- Person tweeting on April 15th, "We shouldn't have to pay such high taxes!"

\- Person tweeting on April 15th, "Why wont anyone reduce our taxes?"

\- Person tweeting on April 15th, "Why wont (insert politician) reduce our
taxes?"

\- Person tweeting on April 15th, "They should vote to reduce these high
taxes!"

\- Person tweeting on April 15th, "(insert politician) should vote to reduce
these high taxes!"

\- Person tweeting on April 15th, "Anyone who thinks these taxes are
reasonable shouldn't be in office"

\- Person tweeting on April 15th, "Anyone who thinks these taxes are
reasonable shouldn't be voted out of office"

\- Person tweeting on April 15th, "That's it - I'm voting these tax-mongers
out of office"

\- Person tweeting on April 15th, "That's it - I'm voting (insert politician)
out of office"

\- Person tweeting on April 15th, "That's it - I'm voting these tax-mongers
out of office, and you should too"

\- Person tweeting on April 15th, "That's it - I'm voting (insert politician)
out of office, and you should too"

\- Person tweeting on April 15th, "Vote these tax-mongers out of office"

\- Person tweeting on April 15th, "Vote (insert politician) out of office"

\- Person tweeting on April 15th, "Stop our excessive taxes!"

\- Person tweeting on April 15th, "Stop our excessive taxes, (insert
politician) !"

\- Person tweeting on April 15th, "Stop our excessive taxes NOW!"

\- Person tweeting on April 15th, "I'd vote for anyone who will reduce our
taxes!"

\- Person tweeting on April 15th, "Vote for anyone who will reduce our taxes!"

\- Person tweeting on April 15th, "Vote to reduce our taxes!"

\- Person tweeting on April 15th, "I'll vote for anyone who can beat (insert
politician) and lower our taxes!"

~~~
matmann2001
Perhaps, the "what" is less important than the "who" or the "how". Maybe any
statement made by a member of a political campaign or anyone paid by a
political campaign should be considered political advertisement.

~~~
MR4D
Great idea...until you realize you’ve just run headlong into the Citizens
United decision.

In reality, if enacted as you say, campaigns would probably just reorganize
themselves into a loose federation of organizations, and only one would
formally have a candidate.

------
llcoolv
This is an extremely one-sided and biased article. Basically, it presumes that
manipulating public opinion begins with Cambridge Analytica, being completely
oblivious to the excesive lies, public shaming, character assasinations,
alarmism that the agents of the "solid establishment consensus" (The Guardian,
NYT, BBC, Deutsche Welle, etc) routinely perform.

~~~
eeZah7Ux
Comparing a newspaper with Cambridge Analytica is simply absurd.

Newspaper will always have some sort of bias because they are written by human
beings and the bias is harmless as long as it's understood and recognized by
the readership.

Facebook manipulation, OTOH, is completely stealth because each reader gets a
completely custom newsfeed.

~~~
uk_programmer
> Newspaper will always have some sort of bias because they are written by
> human beings and the bias is harmless as long as it's understood and
> recognised by the readership.

I would agree if there wasn't coordinated hit pieces between newspapers or if
newspapers didn't appear to collectively ignore certain pertinent events.

------
jariel
Good article but strategic influencing on social can help change outcomes.

The Russians apparently have put up a lot of FB pages, invented 'movements'
with FB pages out of nothing, have agitators posting contentious content all
in the hopes that it gets picked up by secondary or mainstream outlets.

They've met with at least some success, though it's doubtful they've changed
electoral outcomes.

The issue is that sometimes elections are narrow, and more often, there's a
single 'event' or bit of publicity that can overturn momentum of a political
group.

In Canada, Trudeau has all but completely disappeared during and time when
dozens of aboriginal protesters put up blockades. Same for the Premiere of
Ontario. Same for the Ontario and Federal (ie RCMP police) police leaders.
Nobody wants to deal with the issue due to the risk of someone blaming them
for any violence that happens, or images of RCMP in riot gear with smoke etc.
having to physically disarm/dismantled protests.

Cynically, the politicians are right to run for cover because if the public
gets angry and blames them, the shift in support would have very material
consequences.

So this is one example of an issue, that if perceived the wrong way, could
have significant outcomes. Agitators who effectively try to run the narrative
might have the ability to swing the outcome.

------
DangitBobby
This article simultaneously claims that advertising is not effective enough to
subtly manipulate how millions of people think about a candidate but that an
advertising company _is_ effective enough to manipulate how people think about
it. Dubious claims at best.

------
SergeAx
Propaganda is so old news. Brexit and MAGA today are touching the same strings
inside people's souls that fascism and nazism did a hundred years ago.
Evolution of media from newspapers and radio to TV and Internet just made
propaganda more taylored.

------
dangerface
The op doesn't seem to know the first thing about advertising and is in denial
of how it works.

Op asks head of facebook advertising if advertising influences people, their
response "No companies spend millions on advertising with us because it
doesn't work!".

> The gullibility of the latter two may have stemmed from wishful thinking: If
> Brexit and Trump could be traced to the malign influence of a single company

The media picked Cambridge Analytica as their keyword for the story but both
Brext and Trump campaigns used more than one ad agency.

> most ad insiders express skepticism about Cambridge Analytica’s claims of
> having influenced the election

Citation needed. As an ad insider I know first hand that the tactics used by
Cambridge Analytica and other agencies work, thats why people pay me to do it.

> and stress the real-world difficulty of changing anyone’s mind about
> anything with mere Facebook ads

Well no of course not, advertising cant change anyone's mine, thats not how
advertising works.

You target people who already have the mindset and encourage them to act on
it. Thats what ad men like me do and we keep making good money doing it
because it works.

The whole tinfoil hat thing is a bit dramatic for my liking the reality is
that if advertising didn't work people wouldn't pay for it.

Every election has millions spent on advertising to influence the result,
thats the truth not some tin foil hat conspiracy.

~~~
ameister14
>As an ad insider I know first hand that the tactics used by Cambridge
Analytica and other agencies work, thats why people pay me to do it.

As another ad insider I know first hand that people are willing to pay me to
do a ton of things that don't actually work. (They often continue trying to do
so after I tell them it doesn't work and it's a bad idea) People and companies
pay millions for things that don't work all the time, especially in
advertising.

The saying that 'if it didn't work, people wouldn't pay for it' is false,
provably false.

After privately doing research and testing for my own clients for years and
reading the research of others, I'm not convinced these tactics work at all.

~~~
dangerface
> I know first hand that people are willing to pay me to do a ton of things
> that don't actually work. (They often continue trying to do so after I tell
> them it doesn't work and it's a bad idea)

Hehehe very true. I tell people what works then they ask me to do random shit.
I can't deny you are right at the end of the day I do what they will pay for
whether it works or not.

~~~
QuantumGood
Evaluating what works by what the dumbest people do is not science. Marketing
results are measurable. That people will measure improperly, not at all, or
ignore proper measurement approaches is not about what is measured, it's about
the people.

Yes, there are things that can't be measured well. Smart operators tend to not
do those things, no matter how common or popular they are.

The very old joke "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the
trouble is I don't know which half" (John Wanamaker, 1838-1922) was always
more about advertising companies pushing advertising than about whether
results could be measured.

In politics, look at real people on social media sharing false information and
commenting about how they agree with it. Politics is the easiest place for
advertising to succeed, because you can use mind control techniques more
readily (where you need an "other group" to dislike to cement the self-
perception being sold).

~~~
chrisco255
That joke was made precisely because it's difficult to measure results from
advertising. Sure, online banner ads can be precisely measured for click
rates, but having spent money on things like billboards, magazine ads, etc.
It's difficult to consistently capture the particular ad or place that someone
heard about a business. It's difficult to know how many exposures it takes to
make an ad effective without going overboard (you can oversaturate, as
Bloomberg has proven).

Also, IQ is no defense for persuasion techniques. If you're not keen on the
biases influencing your decisions and filters on the world, no amount of
intelligence will save you. I think that requires practicing skepticism, both
of yourself and of others.

~~~
edmundsauto
In fact, people with higher IQs are more prone to their own biases. The
suspected cause is smarter people come up with more arguments that appear
sound to the self, making smart people believe their own b.s. more than an
average IQ.

------
tom-thistime
So to pick one example, we're under surveillance. It's a fact of life now. It
pretty much wasn't a fact of life in the 19th century.

Fine. But the author keeps changing the subject to insane conspiracy theories.
The author seems a little reluctant to distinguish between surveillance and
insanity. I think those are two separate topics.

~~~
banads
>seems a little reluctant to distinguish between surveillance and insanity. I
think those are two separate topics.

Paranoid schizophrenia is often defined as having symptoms such as "the
government is spying on you"

[https://www.webmd.com/schizophrenia/schizophrenia-
paranoia](https://www.webmd.com/schizophrenia/schizophrenia-paranoia)

~~~
mcshay79
Isn't that convenient? The government is not spying on you and if you think
otherwise then you are a paranoid schizophrenic.

------
walrus01
If you look at examples of mental illness in non technological cultures,
delusions manifest as djinns, demons, succubus and so forth.

I once had the opportunity to discuss this with a journalist who spent some
time researching and reporting on mental hospitals in Afghanistan. Some of the
people at the facilities they visited were deeply disturbed, so the extent
that their families had resorted to tying them to a tree with a rope so that
they wouldn't wander off and hurt themselves or other persons.

Almost universally none of them had delusions along the lines of the CIA
putting radios in their dental fillings, antivaccine nonsense, or "5G causes
cancer" stuff. Their delusions were all based on traditional cultural
references such as djinns.

~~~
Nasrudith
Reminds me of one cultural interaction - patients from western cultures tend
to have far more negative and evil voices perhaps related to more Judeo
Christian possesion by demons cultural baggage and descendant myths like
"slasher who kills because the voices tell him to" (which defense attorney
strategy cases aside are ironically real manifestationd of the culture bound
delusion).

Interestingly those other cases tend to be more positive or neutral despite
other posession myths in the host culture.

I guess anxiety and paranoia makes the "demons" whatever is believeable to the
cultural zeitgeist.

------
6510
When talking about basic income I noticed a pattern where people who didn't
like the idea would drop off the same comments seen 100 years ago then leave.
You could bother answer the query but they didn't read it and a new comment
would appear repeating the same statement.

It gave me an idea for a discussion platform. For example politics, each
candidate delivers their election program AND a list of multiple choice
questions for users to answer. The questions are reviewed for sanity.

THEN when someone writes a comment about candidate X we display under their
post if they completed the test for X or not. (with 100% score) Other users
can then see the person doesn't know what he is talking about. :-)

------
mech1234
I strongly urge all people who wish to be informed citizens to consume news
sources from diverse sources. Selection bias of what events get covered is a
huge source of political spin, and using diverse sources is the only way to
eliminate selection bias.

Consider any statement with morally-significant wording to be the spin, and
whatever is left over to be the facts on the ground worth considering. The
vast majority of the time, reliable news sources get the facts on the ground
right and, and only introduce spin with the moral phrasings and choosing what
to omit. This is still true if the source is from the evil other party, and
only starts disintegrating once you really get to the fringes.

~~~
jfengel
By way of alternative, I'd suggest not consuming news at all. Or at least,
delaying your consumption of news to sources that have had a chance to digest
and consider the news, such as a weekly news magazine.

It's very, very rare that you require up-to-the-minute news. Continually-
updated news sources, like Internet sources or 24 hour news channels, are more
for entertainment than information. They focus on keeping your attention,
which pushes them to pick up unverified stories and magnify their importance
out of proportion.

You will lose very little actual knowledge by hearing about the news a week
later. Switching to a delayed news source doesn't automatically remove
political spin, but the people most interested in manipulating your views have
mostly switched to more immediate media, which are more powerful.

~~~
yboris
I strongly encourage people to reduce / remove news consumption as well.

News is not a good way to learn about the world - news is precisely what is
unusual. Consuming news gives you a distorted sense of what real life is like.

~~~
dennnis
Also don't just rely on your own experiences. Not everyone is like you

------
caseysoftware
On one hand, we've had a generation of persona-based sales/marketing where it
is key to understand your customer, numerous multi-billion dollar companies
like Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc, etc that function because they let you
target your ads down to excruciating detail, the entire Obama campaign's 2012
micro-targeting data efforts, and the rise of communities based on every
interest, habit, and niche.

And on the other hand, we're supposed to believe that ad targeting doesn't
work.

~~~
edmundsauto
I think the mistake is conflating all types of advertising. Direct response
ads can work, no doubt! But branding ads and things more subtle, are trying to
influence behavior that has many inputs.

------
jiofih
> _Those who attributed the political upsets of 2016 to secret algorithmic
> influence were unwittingly echoing Matthews’s hi-tech conspiracy theory. Two
> hundred years ago, envisioning a scheme like this was such a drastic dissent
> from common sense that it landed you in the madhouse. Today, similar notions
> are among the default ways we think about technology._

This article is infuriating in how it tries to dismiss the manipulation that
happened. We saw the Facebook ads, fake events, profiles and dissent
propaganda. You can argue how _effective_ it was, but waving it off as a
delusion is nothing short of malicious.

~~~
ttctciyf
>> attributed

Attribution to a single cause may be an indicator of unrealistic thinking
about these events, but to dismis all concerns about the subversion of
democratic processes by algorithmic influence as delusional is a staggeringly
uninformed position to take.

As Emma Briant wrote[1],

> this isn’t just a scandal about an obscure, unethical company. It’s a story
> about how a network of companies was developed which enabled wide deployment
> of propaganda tools - based on propaganda techniques that were researched
> and designed for use as weapons in warzones - on citizens in democratic
> elections. It’s a logical product of a poorly regulated, opaque and
> lucrative influence industry. There was little or nothing in place to stop
> them.

> Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, SCL, and its founder, Nigel Oakes,
> have done everything they can to distance themselves from Cambridge
> Analytica but politics was important to SCL’s work far earlier than many
> thought. And SCL’s main clients - NATO and the defence departments of its
> member states - have managed to get away without being asked how much they
> knew about what one of their key contractors was up to.

the "SC" in Cambridge Analytica parent company SCL's name is _Strategic
Communications_ \- the modern military term for information warfare designed
to sway and influence populations both in regard to acts of war and terror and
in their behaviours as members of a democracy. It encompasses a range of
activities such as psychological operations, propaganda, and so on.

See Briant's article[1] for an indication of how SCL activities and state
sponsored strategic communications are intertwined.

The point is not that SCL / CA are some kind of government conspiracy, but
rather that the present author would, by dismissing fears of democratic
subversion as delusional, be denying the efficacy of an entire industrial
sector devoted to meeting the "strategic communications" needs of governments
around the world.

1: [https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/as-
cambridg...](https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/as-cambridge-
analytica-and-scl-elections-shut-down-scl-groups-defence-work-needs-re/)

------
swsieber
This is mostly off-topic but:

An author made a book series with a metal based magic system in which aluminum
was inert/block magic effects. And there was emotional magic there, so wearing
an aluminum foil hat could block covert attempts at influencing you. He was
really proud of that :)

------
arminiusreturns
It's not a very good article and others have criticized it fairly, but I just
want to harp on the constant degradation of anything even remotely resembling
"conspiracy theory" as innately batshit crazy, delusion, and based on some on
some other reason than any form of logic (as the author attempts towards the
end dismissing it as entertainment). Of course those versions of "conspiracy
theory" exist, but there is a vast and lengthy history of the world chock full
of evidence that conspiracies of various types and degrees have been
sucessfully (and sometimes not) executed regularly. I have taken to Michael
Parenti's labeling of those who constantly take this approach as "coincidence
theorists", and in particular his criticism that incompetence theories
distract from proper understanding and analysis of malice.

>In retrospect, the entire story starts to look like a classic conspiracy
theory, attributing complex, multi-layered events to the secret machinations
of shadowy behind-the-scenes operators deploying cutting-edge technology.

As if this is so far fetched. I can name countless cases where this is exactly
what has happened!

> “technical delusion” — a term that may encompass any and all delusions about
> technology, but usually designates a belief in machines that can control,
> surveil, harass, and deceive humans.

Machines and technology enable and empower the humans with the desire to do
these things. The technology of the authors over-abused reference of James
Matthews may have been fanciful then, but the things that concern those with
"technical delusion" today exist in reality.

The author even later admits that there is a basis in reality of "elites were
secretly manipulating political events behind the scenes".

>Suspicions regarding the hyper-concentration of wealth and power have
attained broad bipartisan currency — in part because they are grounded in
reality.

I've been down so many rabbit holes and have read so many conspiracy theories
I will admit some of them border on psychosis manifesting, but I have also
found the ones that aren't, and the constant attempt to label all or almost
all of them under the label of psychosis or some variant itself reeks of
conspiracy. The irony being that the oft-abused term itself was largely pushed
into modern parlance by the CIA seeking to discredit critics of the Warren
commission[1], or for example the 2008 Cass Sunstein paper [2] prior to his
appointment as the head of White House Information affairs that called for
cognitive infiltration of discussion boards et al.

I could blather on about this kind of out in the open subversion for a while,
but that's not the point. The real point is that it is a fact that
conspiracies are real and that they happen rather frequently, even if not
always on the scale or level of impact often purported by those in that realm
of discussion. Another note that I have tried to emphasize is that it is
important to distinguish the type of logic used to reach conclusions. We
generally should always prefer deductive logic, which is evidence based, but
in many of the topics discussed there simply is no or is a dearth of evidence
to be had, which is where the importance of inductive logic comes into place.

Unlike the authors proposition that those who think some conspiracies to be
true must be rooted in anything but truth, my anecdotal experience has been
from starting with only one maxim. That I would rather know the truth than the
lie, in particular the ugly truth over the beautiful lie. What started out for
me just as the meager attempts of a USMC Iraq combat vet to understand his own
place in what could truly be called a vast conspiracy (the war), became a
lifelong journey of transformation in understanding the bigger picture of the
realities of this world. Let me tell you, it is so much more conspiratorial
than most would ever want to know (and I base this upon good, strong evidence,
and where that is lacking, good inductive logic). I think most people honestly
would prefer the beautiful lie. My problem always has been and probably always
will be when those who prefer the lie try to tell me the lie is truth, and
then attack when incredulity inevitably rises as a reaction.

[1][https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Document:Countering_Criticism_of...](https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Document:Countering_Criticism_of_the_Warren_Report)

[2][https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1084585](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1084585)

~~~
jstewartmobile
Amen.

Tell any given hall-monitor type about a seemingly coordinated effort toward a
single goal, then watch them scoff and dismiss. It is so tiresome.

Then reveal the steady paychecks behind the effort--that the endeavor was
ordinary commerce all along--and watch the same awful people hamster up even
more fantastical conspiracy theories to support the original take.

------
Barrin92
Very strange article for several reasons, predominantly on the politics of it
all.

The first problem I have with it is comparing CA manipulation to schizophrenic
delusions. fact of the matter is that _there was a conspiracy_. CA really was
hired by wealthy elites trying to shift politics by engaging in mass
influencing campaigns. Whether it was technically effective is another matter,
but the thing happened, that's not a delusional person talking to the radio.

The second big issue is the flat-out rejection that manipulation is possible,
mocking 'mechanistic' views of individuals and politics. This is a very
romanticized story of decision-making and arguably close to being debunked.
Bartels and Achen in _Democracy for Realists_ showcase how incoherent and
flimsy political decision making is, behavioral research has shown the
effectiveness of nudging in policy, Nick Chater in _the mind is flat_ drawing
on lots of research casts doubt on the narrative of 'deep beliefs' and so on.

The idea that we're inoculated against manipulation because we're all deeply
complex people with coherent ideologies is not really tenable.

Overall much of the article really strikes me as a rant against 'centrism'.
The author seems to think that the focus on CA is a product of people wanting
to blame tech or shadowy organizations and builts up a strawman likening it to
delusion, without offering a compelling reason to buy that argument.

------
danielovichdk
I do believe that most people need to be manipulated into anothet truth or
belief, otherwise they would become truly insane - in the clinical matter.

The more harsh truth is, the more manipulation is needed.

~~~
someguyorother
That's a nice variation on the theme of Lovecraftian fiction. Not just that
delving too deeply into the truth of the universe will make you insane, but
that it's far too easy to get there unless you're actively being manipulated
away from it.

------
luxuryballs
Let’s not ignore the even greater influence: Clinton was a terrible candidate
and people like Trump. The article reads as if the outcome of 2016 was
primarily because the public was duped by advertising. I’d argue that even if
(or especially if) all we got was video clips or live streams of each
candidate speaking, it would have gone the same way.

In fact if I put my tinfoil hat on I’d say Hillary Clinton ran to make sure
Trump would win ;)

------
tic_tac
The idea that targeted political advertising is unreasonably effective to the
point of constituting mind control is ridiculous. It assumes people have no
independent agency. While advertising can be effective it's definitely not
mind control.

It's the same story with money on elections. People were and are extremely
paranoid about monied interests dominating elections, but we have seen Trump
beat Hillary with half her money and now Bloomberg will inevitably drop out of
the Democratic primary even though he is outspending everyone else combined.

People have far more agency than armchair psychologists and sociologists would
like to believe.

~~~
banads
Obviously advertising is not 100% effective, anyone claiming that is being
silly. Likewise it's silly to think that ad surveillance companies such as
GOOG, with its near trillion dollar market cap, and the hundreds of billions
of dollars spent on advertising each year in the US does not have a
disproportionate influence of the consciousness of society.

~~~
tic_tac
But Google's, influence on society comes from its ability to control all the
information you see - if you use Google for all searches - over an extended
period of time.

Crucially, we are exposed to political advertising from many different sides
of the political spectrum. I regularly see both Bloomberg and Trump ads. The
_domain_ in which we see political advertising is not controlled by the
advertisers themselves, so that is a fundamental difference from Google's
influence.

------
pjc50
Bleurgh. I don't like the conflation of unsupported-by-evidence talk of
telepathy and that kind of "mind control" with the heavily-funded and somewhat
evidenced effect of targeted political advertising. It acts to discredit
conversation about the latter by conflating it with the former. They even
manage to quote Foucault on the process of labelling people as delusional in
order to exclude them from politics.

I hate to bring the big hammer of logical positivism down on someone who is
having fun with a literature review, but the difference between delusional and
non-delusional thinking is important because figuring out the truth and
maintaining the ability to operate as a rational society making decisions
based on evidence is important.

> Under present conditions, is “paranoia” — a term Sconce deploys frequently
> but does not interrogate at length — still a recognizably distinct
> phenomenon? Or has it become mostly indistinguishable from the average
> person’s worldview?

Could do with considering [https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-
style-in-am...](https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-
american-politics/) (note date)

~~~
raxxorrax
Careful, the hammer of logic is quite small. It is a mighty but very
restricted tool.

Cambridge Analytica was made responsible for large scale social media
manipulation. I don't think logical positivism lets you confirm this widely
believed story. At least not without even identifying the type of
manipulation.

What kind of message was employed? Who and how many were targeted? Did it
really change the opinions of people and influenced their voting behavior?

These questions were just left unanswered.

Additionally and maybe a completely different angle, but rational society
doesn't mean that much.

The criticism in your link seems valid, but I see it can be applied to the
behavior described in the original article.

~~~
pjc50
I think the distinction I was looking for was between statements like
"advertising affects behaviour" and "propaganda affects behaviour" which, in
the 21st century, are generally considered true and almost obvious even if we
can't identify the specific pump handle to remove to stop the cholera
epidemic; versus "wifi is beaming images into my brain".

Certainly "person X made a political decision based on the information they
saw on the TV news and on Facebook, despite that information being either
false or grossly misleading" isn't delusional in the same way that "person X
made a political decision because the electromagnetic radiation of wifi
disrupted their mind" is.

(I can sort of see if I squint how they're drawing an analogy between being
affected by having images "beamed into your head" via some kind of scifi
process and the plain old regular one of having them beamed to some kind of
screen then interpreted by your eyes into images which have an effect on your
mental and emotional state. But the former is witchcraft and the latter is
media studies.)

> rational society doesn't mean that much

Only if you care about, say, coronavirus, and taking evidence-based
interventions like handwashing rather than faith-based or panic-based ones.

Edit: someone downthread has provided the name of Bernays that I was thinking
of and couldn't remember.

~~~
raxxorrax
There certainly is a qualitative difference, I agree. But the societal
relevance cannot be derived from the degree or order of irrational thought.
Someone believing he is regularly abducted by aliens is perhaps more
irrational than someone saying a company distorted and manipulated voters on a
large scale. The latter allows you to dismiss a whole plethora of different
opinions without effort and it was used for political talking points while the
former might summon some smiles from others.

On the other hand it is quite rational for people getting angry if they are
told they are the victim of propaganda or anything really. And this is where
both cases you presented can converge. I think the author of the article was
hinting at this. A case where both perpetrator and victims can be dismissed as
irrational.

> even if we can't identify the specific pump handle

I think we often can and it is shocking we use the handle excessively and with
glee. We know it for classical advertising at least. Although today there are
more empirical approaches because social media allows to conduct various
tests. In these cases the handle is indeed yet unknown.

>> rational society doesn't mean that much > Only if you care about [..]
evidence-based interventions

I was thinking more about the self perception as a rational actor. The
18th/19th century had a lot of rationalists and they were instrumental in
secularizing societies. But in the end their approaches fell flat somewhat.
Some went the way of utilitarianism or egoism because they were lacking
answers they thought could be rationally derived. I think the criticism of
Kant is on spot here.

I don't think that many people would want to live in a purely rational society
on that matter, because it would be horrible. But you see it resurfacing a
lot. You like the color blue more than red? -> Irrational, your mental state
needs fixing... Exaggerated of course.

~~~
jancsika
There's one candidate who has spent billions of his own money laying the
groundwork for his campaign. He's spent hundreds of millions on both
traditional ads and "gray area" social media stuff like paying influencers to
post memes.

Wouldn't a rational back-and-forth about the efficacy of his spending happen
_after_ the election results come in?

~~~
pjc50
Couldn't we have a postmortem about the previous elections first? People are
still happily claiming that the advertising and use of Facebook had no effect.

------
tuco86
“In the ads world, just because a product doesn’t work doesn’t mean you can’t
sell it.” - arguing that targeting does not work and can be sold no the less.

Seems self refuting when talking about selling _Ads_.

~~~
Nasrudith
Well I have pointed it out before - the person they need to convince to sell
ads is the client and not the end customer.

We see that all the time with "not advertiser friendly" content that is
popular and their foolish attempts to shape it because they fear the backlash
of the irrelevant noisy "church lady" types upset that Coke advertised to a
musician who admits to having had premarital sex once. The New Jazz/Rock and
Roll/Heavy Metal/Rap being shunned at first until it gets huge and the
opportunity always being missed by the one who captured the prior wave comes
to mind as a reoccuring generational foolishness.

In order to sustain technically all that needs to be done is to convince the
adseller that you are responsible for success and the adseller's situation to
be sustainable. The performance itself is irrelevant until they can actually
audit the effectiveness.

------
greendestiny_re
Advertisements are mind control.

Look around you. How many brand logos do you see? Each brand logo is an
attempt to influence and manipulate how you feel, think and spend your money
but your subconscious blocks them all out.

~~~
moosey
I believe advertisements should be declared illegal psychological
experimentation and manipulation: abusive tools of gaslighting designed to
shape our identities and perception away from healthy norms.

~~~
grecy
In certain countries billboards are illegal (New Zealand) and for example
cigarette advertising of any kind is illegal in Australia.

