Ads are no more psychological manipulation at scale than words in general. Your entire post is FUD. What form is communication that is disseminated at scale not "psychological manipulation at scale?"
Words in general are not specifically crafted by teams of sociologists, psychologists, and marketing professionals to elicit a particular feeling at a particular moment in time to make me more psychologically susceptible to a particular belief or outcome by the end of the ad spot. Advertisements are.
Words in general don't go through endless focus grouping and internal company debate to ensure the exact choice of words, tone of voice and cadence in uttering them, elicit the correct emotional response. Advertisements do.
You are being disingenuous in your response to me and trying to set up a strawman.
I realize a lot of highly paid tech workers on HN work in adtech or adtech-adjacent. It's even helped to pay my salary at different points in my career. It doesn't change the fact of the matter. The /entire point/ of advertisements is to psychologically manipulate the person viewing the ad. That is immoral, full stop.
Some "journalism" is immoral, most of which falls into that category effectively /are/ advertisements being put into the public eye under the cover of journalism. You are painting so broad a brush in order to create a fundamental category error in your constructed straw man. You might fool others, but your argument holds no sway with me because it is utterly inane and transparent for what it is.
If you cannot articulate an actual point in response to me, I'd advise barking up another tree.
You presented a very concrete set of attributes that you call immoral.
> Words in general are not specifically crafted by teams of sociologists, psychologists, and marketing professionals to elicit a particular feeling at a particular moment in time to make me more psychologically susceptible to a particular belief or outcome
I have presented something, journalism, that does the same things. You claim that some journalism is not immoral which is true. It must follow for the same reason that some advertisements are not immoral either.
Seems like you don't have an actual argument - posting on a Y Combinator MARKETING page, no less.
Believe me, if journalists could tap the same set of resources as advertising does, they would. A really good editor can turn a mediocre piece to a good one, but it takes time, and 3-4 rounds of back-and forth. The same editor, working with a prodigiously talented writer, can turn a rough diamond into something absolutely incredible.
Disclosure: I've done about a decade of freelancing, and during that time was trained by old-school practitioners on how to structure my writing.
People having a visceral hate of advertising and a vast swath of the internet's users block them in every permutation because advertising is good for ones mental health?
Car ads selling sex appeal, power, status and freedom are provable features of the car? Same goes for influencers pushing products, submarine marketing, etc... It is all psychology and it is manipulation at scale. Words at scale designed to manipulate people into doing something is psychological.
People block ads because they like to have control over the content they see. Not because of this nebulous fear of manipulation. If ad blocking was made impossible tomorrow then I'd learn other ways to tune out advertisements. It's because ads are boring and intrusive. Not because they're manipulative.
Tin foil hat time: I've started writing down companies behind ads that happen to slip through my defenses that are obnoxious/offensive/etc. Because, as you mention, so much of advertising is psychological manipulation. It'll be helpful to have a list of offenders to reference to before making a purchase for example.
The idea occurred to me after someone here proclaimed that they're simply unaffected by ads, reasoning they don't make rash purchases. Someone naturally countered with the extreme subconscious effect of ads.
This list thing is imperfect (I mean look how omnipresent car logos are for example) but it's an improvement from thinking you're immune to ads. Memory is fickle, and why Memento is my favorite movie.
Do you believe all words are equally manipulative? That if we categorize speech by funding and intent, no category would be more manipulative than any other?
> Ads are no more psychological manipulation at scale than words in general.
"no more" in your sentence implies the impact is roughly the same (not that I agree with your premise that all communication is manipulation, unless your definition of "manipulation" is so vast as to be useless).
No more does not imply equality, just that it's not greater than, which is simply the truth. Advertisements are not inherently more manipulative than words in general.
If the subject was propaganda, instead of advertising, then sure.
You have weighed "words in general" against ads. For me that is comparing an average with those ads. The average of generally used words/speech is very, very far from Trump's tweets and similar communication, IMHO.
Words in general don't go through endless focus grouping and internal company debate to ensure the exact choice of words, tone of voice and cadence in uttering them, elicit the correct emotional response. Advertisements do.
You are being disingenuous in your response to me and trying to set up a strawman.
I realize a lot of highly paid tech workers on HN work in adtech or adtech-adjacent. It's even helped to pay my salary at different points in my career. It doesn't change the fact of the matter. The /entire point/ of advertisements is to psychologically manipulate the person viewing the ad. That is immoral, full stop.