[TheOtherHobbes]

People want dopamine hints, gamification, addictive distractions, and a culture of competitive perma-hustle.

If they didn't, we wouldn't be having these problems.

The problem isn't AI, it's how marketing has eaten everything.

So everyone is always pitching, looking for a competitive advantage, "telling their story", and "building their brand."

You can't "build trust" if your primary motivation is to sell stuff to your contacts.

The SNR was already terrible long before AI arrived. All AI has done is automated an already terrible process, which has - ironically - broken it so badly that it no longer works.

[bluGill]

> You can't "build trust" if your primary motivation is to sell stuff to your contacts

That is false. You build a different type of trust: people need to trust that when they buy something from you it is a good product that will do what they want. Maybe someone else is better, but it won't be enough better as to be worth the time they would need to spend to evaluate that. Maybe someone else is cheaper, but you are still reasonably priced for the features you offer. They won't get fired for buying you because you have so often been worthy of the trust we give you that in the rare case you do something wrong it was nobody is perfect not that you are no longer trustworthy (you can only pull this trick off a few times before you become untrustworthy)

The above is very hard to achieve, and even when you have it very easy to lose. If you are not yet there for someone you still need to act like you are and down want to lose it even though they may never buy from you often enough to realize you are worth it.

[theturtlemoves]

> All AI has done is automated an already terrible process, which has - ironically - broken it so badly that it no longer works.

Evil contains within itself the seed of its own destruction ;)

Sure, sometimes you should fight the decline. But sometimes... just shrug and let it happen. Let's just take the safety labels off some things and let problems solve themselves. Let everybody run around and do AI and SEO. Good ideas will prevail eventually, focus on those. We have no influence on the "when", but it's a matter of having stamina and hanging in there, I guess

[leviathant]

It boggles my mind when, despite my general avoidance of advertising online, I see the language being used. Call me old fashioned, but "viral" is a bad thing to me. "Addictive" is a bad thing. "Tricks" are bad! But this is the language being used to attract customers, and I suppose it works well enough.

[onion2k]

If they didn't, we wouldn't be having these problems.

That assumes people have the ability to choose not to do these things, and that they can't be manipulated or coerced into doing them against their will.

If you believe that advertising, especially data-driven personalised and targeted advertising, is essentially way of hacking someone's mind to do things it doesn't actually want to do, then it becomes fairly obvious that it's not entirely the individual's fault.

If adverts are 'Buy Acme widgets!' they're relatively easy to resist. When the advert is 'onion2k, as a man in his 40s who writes code and enjoys video games, maybe you spend too much time on HN, and you're a bit overweight, so you should buy Acme widgets!' it calls for people to be constantly vigilant, and that's too much to expect. When people get trapped by an advert that's been designed to push all their buttons, the reasonable position is that the advertiser should take some of the responsibility for that.

[cal_dent]

That’s true…but I do think people need to learn more that avoidance is a strategy too. The odds are too stacked against the average person to engage properly so just don’t. I don’t know. Sure there are certain unavoidable things but for a large part I think you can just choose to zone out of a lot of the consumerist world now

[phantasmish]

> That assumes people have the ability to choose not to do these things, and that they can't be manipulated or coerced into doing them against their will.

Within the last year I opened an Instagram account just so I could get updates from a few small businesses I like. I have almost no experience with social media. This drove home for me just how much the "this is where their attention goes, so that's revealed preference" thing is bullshit.

You know what I want? The ability to get these updates from the handful of accounts I care about without ever seeing Instagram's algo "feed". Actually, even better would be if I could just have an RSS feed. None of that is an option. Do I sometimes pause and read one of the items in the algo feed that I have to see before I can switch over to the "following" tab? I do, of course, they're tuned to make that happen. Does that mean I want them? NO. I would turn them off if I could. My actual fucking preference is to turn them off and never see them again, no matter that they do sometimes succeed in distracting me.

Like, if you fill my house with junk food I'll get fatter from eating more junk food, but that doesn't mean I want junk food. If I did, I'd fill my house with it myself. But that's often the claim with social media, "oh, it's just showing people more of what they actually want, and it turns out that's outrage-bait crap". But that's a fucking lie bolstered by a system that removes people's ability to avoid even being presented with shit while still getting what they want.

[everdrive]

I do think that in general people are just conditioned by advertising in a general sense. I have family (by marriage) where most conversations just boil down to "I bought [product] and it was _so_ good." or "I encountered a minor problem, and solved it by buying [product]." It's pretty unbearable.

[bluGill]

There are times I need a widget but I don't know it exists and so someone needs to inform me. Other times I know I need a widget, but I don't know about Acme and I will want to check them out too before buying.

Most ads are just manipulating me, but there are times I need the thing advertised if only I knew it was an option.

[Refreeze5224]

The core of this issue is a power imbalance. Advertisers have the full power of American capital at their disposal, and as many PhDs who know exactly how to exploit human psychology as need. Asking people to "vote with their wallet", or talking about "revealed preferences", or expecting people to be able to cope with this system is nonsense in the face of the amount of power available to the marketers.

It's fundamentally exploitation on a population scale, and I believe it's immoral. But because it's also massively lucrative, capitalism allows us to ignore all moral questions and place the blame on the victims, who again, are on the wrong side of a massive power imbalance.

[lucianbr]

Who else can and will stop the infernal machine other than the people? Can't see anyone. I hope you're wrong and expecting people to cope is not nonsense, because expecting the FDA or UN or Trump or Xi to do it is even more nonsense.

What authority are you going to complain to to "correct the massive power imbalance"? Other than God or Martians I can't see anything working, and those do not exist.

[kitku]

> People want dopamine hints, gamification, addictive distractions, and a culture of competitive perma-hustle.

The people yearn for the casino. Gambling economy NOW! Vote kitku for president :)

PS. Please don't look at the stock market.

[ModernMech]

Tired: "Build things people want"

Wired: "Build things society needs"

[_DeadFred_]

Fixed it for you: People are most easily manipulated into dopamine hints, gamification, addictive distractions, and a culture of competitive perma-hustle.