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The Next Frontier of Consumer Exploitation By Corporations
First time accepted submitter alisonuw writes "So what if Google knows where I'm planning my next vacation and suggests hotels for me? Sure, it's creepy, but is there really any harm in companies tracking my info to target ads to me? Professor Ryan Calo (UW law) is out with a new paper that demonstrates the real harm behind these practices, making consumers vulnerable to making decisions that go against their self-interest (ie: predatory lending, price inflation, etc). The Atlantic has an article today that outlines the new research."
You need a paper to demonstrate that other people making decisions for you is not necessarily in your best interest? Seriously?
And yes, they make the decisions. You are a fool if you think that it's just suggestions. I've worked in corporate environments long enough to know that the people who "prepare" the decision are really the ones making it, because by the selection you make, the way you present the alternatives and the data you choose to use or discard, you can pretty much make sure that any of the choices left is in your interest.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Isn't this obvious?
The reason companies advertise is because it influences us into giving them money (otherwise advertising wouldn't exist at all).
By definition, products advertised are not products we would seek out ourselves (otherwise they wouldn't need to advertise).
Targetted advertising means more succesfully influencing our decission making (otherwise it would be called "useless but more expensive advertising").
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
The question is not does it, or does it not matter companies are tracking us, they ARE tracking us regardless
The real question is what are we, the consumers, going to do?
We can be passive - and let them (the corporations / governments ) manipulate our lives with all their suggestions/advises via their ad/marketing/propaganda campaign (as has been happening for the past few generations)
We can be on guard and do our best to make sure that our lives stays our lives, not the lives the governments / corporations want us to have
The society in the future will have a new gap, a gap in between people who live their lives as individuals, or, people who live their lives as sheeples
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Seriously. Who here pays attention to the ads or does not have an ad blocker?
I never even see ads anymore. Even the ones my ad blocker does not block.
This only affects stupid people.
Stupid people don't need protection.... ...wait...
They don't need protection from the world. Stupid people need protection as in condoms so they stop breeding.
Oh come on, other people are not making decisions for you just because they show you an advertisement
If you think everything boils down to mere advertisement, you gonna have some big ones coming to ya !
Many times by NOT making decision you already made one, and those who are in the field know very well how to put people on the spot and, even without blinking an eyelid, the future of the sheeples have already been pre-arranged
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
This only affects stupid people
HA !
Those who think that they are not stupid, ARE
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
If you have a phone, as you walk around a shopping center or store will are being tracked.
,the future of consumer exploitation is terrifying.
If you linger in the baby aisle, expect to get baby ads and coupons without asking for them. You might even find out your teenage daughter is pregnant from coupons you get.
Very intrusive: Get served ads to your phone and all devices based on store browsing and the kind of stores. You have no choice to opt out.
Medium intrusive: Get asked if you would like coupons for what they think you like. Ads on devices or apps that are ad supported are targeted.
Low level: You get coupons on your receipt based on your walking pattern and habits. (this already happens)
Future exploitation, the terrifying final form.
Location based A.I. scans your physical body for any and all brand name clothing. Tied into the parking lot cameras, it logs your car and plate number. Using sets of data (The estimated outfit cost, car value, car color psychological assessment, insurance carrier) it evaluates your income bracket and psychological profile.
A.I. scans all store records for purchases that match what you are wearing. If the purchases is detected to have not been made at the store, coupons and ads targeted at those articles are sent (You too can get Feragamo shoes here).
Each time you stop, the time and location and nearby goods are noted. Any regular walking patterns are logged. If you walk the same pattern every time, the lcd screens change to ads targeting you along your route.
As you approach merchandise displays, eye tracker record what items you look at and what in the adverts your eyes followed.
As follows: 15seconds female cleavage, 5seconds product, 1second dog.
Unregulated
As always, responsible people should ensure they check the facts before spending money. /sarcasm
I find the Internet, including Goggle quite useful for this, actually...
Recently I got a much better price for renting a car via a specialist site than I could on the renter's own website, and it's often the same for hotels.
So yes, I can believe that you may not get the best deal if, say, Hertz partners with Google to target you.
But nobody is forcing you to click on the ad...
Yet.
Can you imagine a world where everybody has the moral flexibility and the greed of a used cars salesman, but is backed by asymmetric knowledge about every detail of your life, things you don't even know about yourself, and predictive psychological and economical algorithms? Or shorter: Would you like to pay more than you have to for practically everything?
when will these pie-in-the-sky Progressive academics learn that no amount of Nanny State legislation will prevent the stupid from being stupid - and con artists and grifters will exist until the end of time
ignore the facts, many folks are just dumb as a box of rocks - you have to educate, protect, and think for yourself!
Am I the only ad-blind slashdotter around?
Besides having adblock and noscript, it's been a looong time i have "seen" an ad, even if itìs there.
Am I illuding myself?
I cannot find the word "inflation" anywhere in the paper, but by "price inflation" I suppose the submitter might have been referring to the practice of charging higher prices to people based on their utility preferences, ie. capturing more of the surplus between the marginal cost and marginal utility curves - so more of the surplus is producer surplus and less is consumer surplus.
Are we supposed to be concerned by this? Why or why not?
Another thing, from the intro:
Jon Hanson and Douglas Kysar coined the term “market manipulation” in 1999 to describe how companies exploit the cognitive limitations of consumers. Everything costs $9.99 because consumers see the price as closer to $9 than $10.
So they coined the term "market manipulation" to refer to something for which "cognitive manipulation" would have been a more obvious coinage.
Looking at the number of people with iphones and no clue instead of Android and cranking up permissions controls I think the most realistic course of action is to allow the majority of people to suffer the consequences while taking action ourselves to take advantage of (hopefully) lower prices we can achieve by gaming the system in various ways.
The only problem with this might be if maintaining privacy or gaming the system starts costing more than it's worth.
A blog I run for the wealth
Not a word on political freedom and social order based on new technologies.
There is so much more there than a hotel price and location. That kind of debate is part of the problem as it is so narrowly focused on economics that it tries to to make us blind to everything else that is going on.
Brick and mortar stores are legally barred from overtly providing different pricing for customers based on age or gender. They can't have a price tag on an item that reads:
Women Over 35 - $32.99
Women 35 And Under - $29.99
Men 38 And Over - $28.99
Men Under 38 - $26.99
However, common loyalty programs at stores profile customers by age, gender, purchasing habits, and all sorts of other demographic criteria and selectively issue coupons and promotions that have the same result (e.g., a drug store might print out a coupon for a male customer for lady's perfume to incentivize a purchase before Mother's Day, but wouldn't issue such a coupon to female customer who is inherently more likely to buy the product).
I don't know what all the fuss is about. Get Firefox with Add Block Plus and clear the cookies at program end. Use Ixquick for searches.
I'd be more worried if this stuff actually worked. Take bogeyman Facebook. I've been on Facebook since 2009. I post regularly - Links, photos. I check in regularly at various locations. FB should have a wealth of information about me - Should know where I live, that I have two kids under 5, that I'm male, Gen-X on and on. Yet FB has NEVER been able to serve up an ad for ANYTHING I care about. Never. All I get is Candy Crush garbage, vocational colleges and credit cards.
It's Saturday morning. I'm about to head out with the kids to give my wife a break. Facebook 'knows' I do this most Saturdays. If someone gave me an ad with a coupon this morning, I'd go there. Instead Facebook wants me to know where to get eyeglasses. I'm 20/20, morons, unlike these omnipotent 'tracking servers.'
Just wait for the next generation of employee exploitation. We keep stripping away worker's rights and reinforcing the rights of the "job creators". You will look back fondly at times when we worried about companies tracking their customers when we arrive at a time where companies are working their employees 60 hours a week for 30 hours pay without benefits and able to blacklist them permanently for the most minor of infractions.
Distracting the average American from the real problem is just one step towards establishing fascism for the people.
I hope you're right. The pessimist in me tells me, though, that you won't have the option to live and not be sheeple
Sir, I do feel what you feel
I too am very pessimistic over this, but still, life has to go on, and, as long as I am still living, I will try my best to not let them decide my life for me
At the very least, I will try to apply what I learn from critical thinking in my daily live, particularly in the aspects which I think they could influence me
To live as an independent individuals has become more and more harder
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
we're going to do absolutely nothing. We're too busy living our daily lives. You're guard will slip as daily life grinds you down, and you'll gradually join the sheeple. My history teacher said it best. "I was a radical in high school. Then I got a job, a car, house wife kids, the works. One I had something to lose I got real conservative real fast".
Me? I pick my poison. I'd rather have a strong central gov't I can at least try to influence and use. Maybe if we can get the schools to indoctrinate kids on the importance of democratic participation instead of the intrinsic beauty of capitalism....
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Just wait for the Columbia House of vacations where if you don't say no to the trip of the month or year you get billed for it and it's non refundable after that.
at least they can get their own health care plan under the law if there job does not offer it.
not saying it _does_ work, but I think you'll find people are too busy living their day to day lives (work, family, kids, social networking) to monitor all the bad things companies do. There's a reason we started regulating companies. They did really bad things until we did.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The concept of exploitation of consumers by corporations is a distraction. First, no corporation can force you to buy anything. Second, customers can easily avoid and boycott a company if they think it is mistreating them (costs/harms larger than benefits), so competitive pressure is effective.
/. title), I think this quote from the paper captures its essence well: “Once one accepts that individuals systematically behave in nonrational ways, it follows from an economic perspective that others will exploit those tendencies for gain.”
What is this supposed "exploitation" distracting us from? First, consider that government can force you to buy something. Second, consider that only government can literally prohibit new entrants and exclude competition.
So while corporations do have some power over consumers (marketing influence, switching cost and other stickiness), government is where the real power is at. Corporations still are limited to influence and persuasion, but cannot literally force you to buy their products.
A quote to illustrate this fact: "Let me suggest an experiment. [...] [In one year] don't buy or use any of Microsoft's products. [...] At the same time, send the government no money. That is, don't pay your taxes. Then wait. Watch who comes after you for your money and how and with what weapons." -- Richard M. Salsman
To address the paper (rather than the sensationalist
While that is a reasonable observation, it sadly applies beyond corporations. Politicians and regulators will similarly be tempted to take advantage of those tendencies for their own gain, as well as they will be vulnerable to those tendencies themselves in their role as politicians and regulators.
Even in a democracy, I would think those two effects are worse in the realm of politics because consumers are more trapped there (government has legal monopoly of coercion power) than they are by corporations. See Bryan Caplan's "The Myth of the Rational Voter".
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Until you are on somebodies bad list because their database says you called someone who they have labelled as a terrorist, once too many times (whether you knew it or not) and find yourself the target of a drone attack... I mean... it is perfectly legal for the US gov to assassinate its own citizens now thanks to America's complacency towards their gov.
But whatever... those internet shutin's that still live in their mom's basement can finally be productive members of society employed operating those remote controlled drones which raises drone demand and increases competition between drone manufactures.
See how all this spying helps the economy !!! :D
WIN!! WIN!! WIN!!
Does it matter?? Hell ya it matters what ever happens to asking for permission Or asking what people would like? I think its very fair that they have advertising on web sites but not advertising that flashes blinks takes focus. just normal text advertising. Commercials on TV dont take focus away from the program running do they? Follow me on there site sure thats fair but once i leave that cuts the bind i owe them nothing but yet they continue so i use ad blockers, cookie removers, clean out the Internet folder after every close thats what ya get for being dishonest and taking too much.
Jack of all trades,master of none
One false choice that women are constantly presented with is "abort or ruin your life by becoming a poor single mother!" The pro-abortion crowd is loathe to inform women that there are huge waiting lists of people who want to adopt her baby -- and that adoption agencies would cover all her pregnancy-related expenses, and that choosing adoption has no downside for her career or education.
Is everything you put in your body wholesome and nutritious? Unless you can honestly state that you never have a beer, or a slice of birthday cake, STFU about someone who chooses to enjoy a cola now and then. Even if you are a puritan freak when it comes to what you ingest, STFU.
I love that certain services, like Gmail and broadcast television, are paid for by advertising instead of by me. And targeted advertising is nothing new. If you tuned in to a soap opera in 1965, you were far more likely to see an ad for cookware than for a pickup truck.
Since I have chosen to accept advertising in my life, by using ad-supported services, I prefer to see targeted ads. They're far better than the alternative: random ads that have no relevance for me and are a poor match to my interests, location, and culture. Best of all, because targeted ads are more effective, it takes fewer of them to fund the service that I'm using.
If an advertised product does not meet my needs, or is not an exceptionally good value, my spine and willpower are strong enough to resist the advertiser's appeal. TFA asserts that "profit-seeking corporations are gaining an insurmountable edge in their efforts to get people to part with their money." Hardly. I am just as tightfisted with my dough as I ever was, and it's inconceivable that will change. I laugh in the face of their so-called "insurmountable edge." By contrast, the author of TFA wrote, "There may be nothing particularly embarrassing or personal about my vulnerabilities as a consumer, but I do not especially want to share them with companies so that I can be manipulated for their financial gain." It's profoundly sad that her confidence in her own ability to be a discriminating consumer is so paper-thin.
If some people lack the fortitude to resist advertising, they are the true sheeple. I support efforts to teach them critical thinking skills and provide consumer education. Beyond that, keep your hands off my freedom to use advertiser-supported services.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Note well, some media outlets have praised the Obama campaign for using "Big Data" tools to target voters. Do you want or expect this chief executive to hypocritically discourage business from using the same techniques? http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/508836/how-obama-used-big-data-to-rally-voters-part-1/
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
to keep your unemployment money, you have to jump through the hoops presented to you.
When you give someone money that they didn't earn, it's fair to attach strings to that money.
It's ironic that you are complaining about targeted ads, and also about job training that was not targeted to the recipients' interests or aptitude. If the purveyors of job training used some of the same techniques that sellers do when they create targeted ads, the recipients of the training would have been much better off.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
There have been times that I wasn't aware of a genuine deficiency -- let alone that there was a product or service that could correct that deficiency -- until an advertisement made me aware.
Are some advertisers slimeballs who attempt to manipulate you into falsely believing that you have a need? Sure, and consumers should be educated to develop defenses against this. That doesn't change the fact that on the other end of the integrity spectrum are advertisers who raise awareness about genuine needs.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Very intrusive: Get served ads to your phone and all devices based on store browsing and the kind of stores. You have no choice to opt out.
Sure I do. If I find a store's marketing technique creepy, I am free to never enter that particular store. If enough consumers do likewise, the store will rapidly stop using that technique.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
your problem is more that you have no say on when and how the charity is given, but you would if you gave it yourself, instead of hoping that somebody else, the government even, would take that responsibility from you
To the exact contrary of your assertion, I do give charity myself, and I hate that the government has, to some extent, taken that responsibility from me. I give to highly efficient charities, but when government administers the redistribution of my wealth, a large fraction of it is consumed by the bureaucracy and does not reach the persons in need.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
So, you would take away the freedom to advertise one's products or services, on the grounds that it's a parasitic activity.
I myself have advertised my services, when I sent résumés to prospective employers.
Have you ever sent out a résumé? You parasite!
That that is is that that that that is not is not.