and the "health food influencer" and subliminals? They're similar setups. Online advertising creates a perverse incentive and this was formerly constrained by the gatekeeping of traditional print media, but the internet does away with that constraint by making publishing a free-for-all.

We're already in a future where "news entertainment" has replaced news and journalism is inherently unprofitable because it lacks the same attention grabbing properties of not caring for the truth. The new chapter in this is that "news entertainment" doesn't need on the ground journalism, and advertising rates pay better in the developing world. This means that all the facebook grandmas and grandads as well as the children are getting hooked on foreign-based indignance mills that are not regulated in the slightest. These foreign-based "news entertainment" shows only care for impressions, so simply re-enforce the desired ignorance of their audiences and tend towards pushing bigoted world views, in some cases even encouraging racism towards the very countries that are actually producing the content! In the very worst case scenarios foreign state actors use these channels in order to push their propaganda and stir up unrest in rival nation states.

It is free will, but in the big picture, its harmful to society.

▲

card_zero an hour ago | parent [-]

Right, yeah. "Misleading", like you say. That health food guy's a shyster (like the snake oil salesmen of yore), and algorithms can sometimes send a feed into a shyster-like mode. So now we come down to terminology: addiction is the wrong word, deception is the right one. This isn't purely semantic, it's a different kind of hold over people. More cognitive.

Sidetrack: I had the idea recently that unscrupulous advertising might be a tragedy of the commons for the clients en masse, and harmful for the economy in general. Based on the intuition that lying can't be doing any good.

▲

Quarrelsome 28 minutes ago | parent [-]

> addiction is the wrong word

I used that word mostly because of the name of that book "Hooked".

> like the snake oil salesmen of yore

the problem is that you could run that guy out of town in the past and his damage was localised. Nowadays he can be the biggest player in town.

> Sidetrack: I had the idea recently that unscrupulous advertising might be a tragedy of the commons for the clients en masse, and harmful for the economy in general. Based on the intuition that lying can't be doing any good.

I'd go further and state that all advertising is bad, but I might be a touch too radical. Also it might be too late, given how strong "native advertising" and product placement now is. The content and the adverts have merged. LLMs might offer some brief respite as I think it will be hard to reliably advertise inside that content.

	▲	card_zero 10 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Defining advert is hard. Store signage saying "we sell things here" seems essential information. Standing in the street and yelling about bananas and peppers? What if I step that up and yell that I have red hot peppers for sale? People have to know what's available, and I have to be free to sincerely talk it up. Then it can get intrusive and insincere, but you can only police that at the extremes of intrusion and dishonesty.