SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the psychological-warfare-in-peacetime dept.
The Guardian has an article about a whistleblower from Cambridge Analytica, who claims to have devised a strategy to "weaponize" Facebook profiles, in order to use those profile for targeted advertising to sway the US elections in 2016.
(The Guardian headline titles are often crap). I read a few older articles, presumably by the same author: she had a series of articles in March--May 2017 about Cambridge Analytica being used as a weapon to convince British voters to vote for Brexit in the referendum. It seems that her investigative journalism encouraged this wistleblower to "come out" and be interviewed by her.
Here's one: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy
Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others (Churchill), but when does advertising cross the line into psychological warfare against your own population?
Additional coverage at The Register
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Monday March 19 2018, @03:51PM
If you don't need it, you convince yourself to buy for your own reasons. You know your own circumstance and you're a thinking human being; you have independent agency. This, in and of itself, is very far from from convincing you to do something to hurt yourself, such as presenting a choice falsely where the pitch is it won't hurt you, but it actually will. Elsewhere in the thread [soylentnews.org], C0lo put a finger on the issue of the lie very well.
But let's roll with that as you continue:
No, this is not at all the same. This is convincing you to buy a TV against your interests. The pitch is it won't hurt you; but it will.
You have specifically called out putting the buyer into interest-bearing (I'm reading "far too much" to indicate interest-bearing) debt without including a counterweight of an investment that provides returns equal to or more than the debt service; this is always, without exception, against the buyer's interests: TVs, homes, cars, etc., you are always worse off as compared to buying without going into uncompensated debt. It's unfortunately very common, but its a choice that defrays the buyer's financial state more than actually needed for the purchase at issue.
Circumstances can force these choices: For instance, you don't have a car, or your car dies, you have to get to work, you don't have adequate savings to purchase the replacement – you may be forced into an interest-plus debt-bearing purchase. But it will do you more financial damage than if you had been able to make the purchase outright, or if you have a compensating investment that returns equal to or more than the interest on the debt.
As is entering into debt without a corresponding investment that returns equal to or more than the debt service.