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83% Of Consumers Believe Personalized Ads Are Morally Wrong (forbes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Forbes:
A massive majority of consumers believe that using their data to personalize ads is unethical. And a further 76% believe that personalization to create tailored newsfeeds -- precisely what Facebook, Twitter, and other social applications do every day -- is unethical.
At least, that's what they say on surveys.
RSA surveyed 6,000 adults in Europe and America to evaluate how our attitudes are changing towards data, privacy, and personalization. The results don't look good for surveillance capitalism, or for the free services we rely on every day for social networking, news, and information-finding. "Less than half (48 percent) of consumers believe there are ethical ways companies can use their data," RSA, a fraud prevention and security company, said when releasing the survey results. Oh, and when a compan y gets hacked? Consumers blame the company, not the hacker, the report says.
At least, that's what they say on surveys.
RSA surveyed 6,000 adults in Europe and America to evaluate how our attitudes are changing towards data, privacy, and personalization. The results don't look good for surveillance capitalism, or for the free services we rely on every day for social networking, news, and information-finding. "Less than half (48 percent) of consumers believe there are ethical ways companies can use their data," RSA, a fraud prevention and security company, said when releasing the survey results. Oh, and when a compan y gets hacked? Consumers blame the company, not the hacker, the report says.
I think you can drop the personalised "Consumers believe Ads are morally wrong". Ad's used to be kinda ok, but now companies like Google and other Ad purveyors have become such arseholes and so intrusive that I think you would find a majority think they need to be blocked. It seems they think it is their right to intrude on us and how dare we look to stop them. I think it was about 2 years ago when they broke the camels back with the sound and video Ad's, especially the automatic playback or mouseover ones, now all my browsers have an Ad blocker installed, hell even where I am currently contracted is looking at putting an ad blocker into their corporate desktop image.
I find 'personalized' adverts to be morally wrong, profoundly so.
Aside from violating my dignity as an individual who can make my own choices, the sheer volume of advertising guarantees that I will block them out, either mentally or technologically, which means they are misrepresenting the value of the services to the businesses buying the advertising. So two strikes against them on the question of morality.
But more often than not I am finding them to be factually wrong, in the sense that whatever guess their algorithm is making about me is wildly inaccurate. For example a few Google searches for the price of an object is far more likely to mean that I have made a purchase of one than it is that I will be highly motivated to make new purchases daily for the following six months.
Or their inference is so exact and narrow as to be transparently absurd. E.g. Local women seeking 53-year-old!
And then there's the ones where I try to find a restaurant in a city I'm going to visit and I can't block out adverts for restaurants for the area where I live (you know, the one place I'm guaranteed not to physically be in any time I travel).
This type of advertising is much more insidious. http://www.americantable.org/2...
If they can do that with something as simple as breakfast. What else have we been manipulated into?
The two combine.
1. The picture of the dollop of shaving creme on the 90's - 2000's cans of Gilette Foamy show a fist-sized mound of creme. Amount you really need to get proper coverage: 1/4 that. Half a ping-pong ball, not a fist-sized mound.
2. THe long-ass string of toothpaste shown on Aqua Fresh (and i'm sure others too) toothpaste adverts is about 1.5 inches long and curled at both ends. Amount you truly need: 1/2 inch or so. They're encouraging one, subliminally, almost, to use so much more product than is needed that a 10-oz can of shaving foam that should go for half a year is spent in 3 months.
Got Milk? is an example of what you speak of. So's "Beef, it's what's for dinner." That they used Rodeo by Copland as the music was just inspired. Steak and Copland, all you need is a slab of apple pie to finish off the Classic Late 20th Century American Dinner.
The only defense against this shit is to teach children from early on to think critically and not to trust everything they see / hear / read at face value. To always ask themselves "Who benefits from my actions? Am I putting too much money into the seller's pocket?"
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
I see this sentiment widely on Slashdot. And only on Slashdot. I've never once had a face-to-face conversation with anyone and had them say they want more personalized ads. I've been baffled by this Slashdot thinking for a long time.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Actually, I'd say that there are advertisements that aren't morally wrong. A company that advertises its product by simply stating what it is and how it compares to its competition is doing nothing wrong -- and, in fact, that's how advertisements basically worked before the 1920's. People writing advertisements assumed that other people were rational actors, and that if you wanted somebody to buy your product, you simply had to demonstrate that you made the best product.
That is, until Edward Bernays, arguably the second most evil man of the 20th century, discovered the concept of exploiting peoples' emotions in order to convince them to buy things they didn't need. That turned out to be shockingly effective, and it's all been downhill since then.
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)