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The Guardian posted a very thoughtful article about manipulation on the Web:
Many nations already enshrine a right not to be defrauded, and even a right not to be deceived. If a company sells you a new medicine, falsely claiming that it prevents cancer, it can be punished. If a firm convinces you to buy a new smartphone, saying that it has state-of-the-art features when it doesn't, it will have violated the law. But in the current era, many companies are taking our time and money not by defrauding or deceiving us, but by practising the dark art of manipulation.
They hide crucial terms in fine print. They automatically enrol you in a programme that costs money but does not benefit you at all. They make it easy for you to subscribe to a service, but extremely hard for you to cancel. They use "drip pricing", by which they quote you an initial number, getting you to commit to the purchase, only to add a series of additional costs, knowing that once you've embarked on the process, you are likely just to say "yeah, whatever". In its worst forms, manipulation is theft. It takes people's resources and attention, and it does so without their consent.
Manipulators are tricksters, and sometimes even magicians. They divert the eye and take advantage of people's weaknesses. Often they exploit simple ignorance. They fail to respect, and try to undermine, people's capacity to make reflective and deliberative choices. A manipulator might convince you to buy a useless health product, not by lying, but by appealing to your emotions, and by painting seductive pictures of how great you will feel once you use the product. Or they might tell you an anecdote about someone just like you, who used a supposed pain-relief product and felt better within 12 hours. Anecdotes have real power – but they can be profoundly misleading.
More insidiously still, manipulators might know about, and enlist, some of the central findings in contemporary behavioural economics, the field that explores how people depart from perfect rationality. All of us are vulnerable in this regard, subject to the "cognitive biases" elaborated by Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, Richard Thaler and others, that affect our behaviour. These can be hard to recognize, and harder still to overcome.
For example, human beings tend to suffer from "present bias". We care a lot about today and tomorrow, but the future is a foreign country, Laterland, and we are not sure we are ever going to visit. Tactics like "buy now, pay later" take advantage of this. Another bias is "loss aversion"; we tend to dislike losses a lot more than we like equivalent gains. That's why advertisers might claim "you can't afford not to" buy their product. Inertia is a powerful force, and companies exploit "status quo bias" by automatically subscribing you to something in the knowledge that even if it's possible to opt out, many won't bother.
So, manipulation is all around us, and rarely punished. But if we aim to create a right not to be manipulated, we will have to specify what we are talking about. A moral right can define manipulation broadly. A legal right should focus on the worst cases – the most egregious forms of trickery, those that are hardest to justify and that are most likely to impose real harm.
[...] The underlying principle should be one of personal autonomy, which means that hidden fees and costs should be banned too. We know that rules designed to bring those fees and costs into the open can do a great deal of good. A couple of recent examples from the US: in 2024, the Department of Transportation created a rule that requires airlines and ticket agents to disclose charges for checked baggage, carry-on baggage, changing or cancelling a reservation and so on up front.
[...] But consumer protection is only the start. In 1890, two lawyers, Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis, proposed a new right: the right to privacy. [...]
The right not to be manipulated now is a lot like the right to privacy back in 1890. At this stage, we cannot identify the full scope, and the appropriate limits, of that new right. The protection of consumers and investors is urgent. How it might apply to politics is a more delicate matter, and lawmakers will need to tread cautiously there.
One thing is clear, though: manipulation is a threat to our autonomy, our freedom and our wellbeing. We ought to be taking steps to fight back.
What specific laws does your country have protecting consumers?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 31, @04:34PM (6 children)
I got into an argument with a friend a while ago, he's a manipulative asshole. Tell people what they want to hear -- to try and get them to do what you want them to do.
He was genuinely confused. I tells people comforting things -- because that makes people comfortable. Of course he tells them what they want to hear, because they don't want to hear what they don't want to hear. It's politeness.
Intent matters. Intent is nigh impossible to legislate. Basically, "manipulation" means different things to different people. How will you legislate against, "That's why advertisers might claim 'you can't afford not to' buy their product" ? Will you say that it's illegal to state an encouraging (defined how?) exaggeration? Then, are we getting into the realm of legislated truth?
As the article starts out, fraud is already illegal. Red Bull says it will give you wings. This isn't fraud because it's not plausible. "You can't afford not to," -- only you know if you can or can't, and any reasonable person will say that it's obviously not a factual statement. So - can of worms.
You can't legislate decent human interaction. It's a case-by-case basis, every case is different, and you can't even expect people to know the best possible interaction on each case. (Oh, did you mean only for advertisers?...)
(Score: 5, Informative) by bzipitidoo on Thursday July 31, @08:48PM (1 child)
Like obscenity, manipulation can be hard to define. Yet we can agree that some practices are indeed manipulative and unfair. One such is making it a lot harder to quit than to join, or just making it unreasonably hard to quit. That particular one even has a term: roach motel. There's also an umbrella term: dark pattern.
Any more, to me, when a business tries to be a roach motel, it's a giant red flag that their offerings are not worth what they ask. And they know that. There is the famous recording of the man who tried to quit AOL, and the rep kept trying to steer him towards continuing. Wouldn't take "no" for an answer. The customer ended up screaming "cancel my service" at the rep, over and over. I too have had problems with ISPs refusing to let me go. There was a period when it seemed just about all ISPs were doing "roach moteling". Have disputed a local ISP's charges on my credit card. Have blown off Prodigy's scary and insulting letters telling me I am way, WAY behind on my dues, and what a low down, dirty so-and-so deadbeat I am for letting my account get into such a state, and they're going to take legal action if I don't pay up. Have told debt collectors to never call me again, which is not easy because the moment they sense you're about to tell them that, some very quickly hang up so they can claim you never said they couldn't call you again.
When the fad of automatic renewal caught on with print magazines, and I'd had a few fights with the local newspaper and several magazine publications I would have thought too respectable to try such desperate tactics, I finally responded by going nuclear. Canceled them ALL. That's been about 20 years ago now. Haven't subscribed to any of them since. Not even an online subscription.
More recently, I've had "roach moteling" from these cord blood banks. The whole thing was scammy from the get-go, and while they didn't fool me, they did scare the family into going for it. I waited a couple of years for the family to forget about it, then tried to quit. They wouldn't let me quit. So I just stopped paying. A year later, I got a nasty letter from a debt collector asserting that I owe hundreds of dollars. I didn't respond, and I have heard nothing further.
Medical in the US is just horrible. Charge 10x as much for a consumer good with the only difference being that it has been rebranded as "medical". A trick so common that Biden mentioned it in a speech is the out-of-network anesthesiologist. You think you're covered because your doctor is in-network. But the doc deliberately picks an anesthesiologist who is not in-network, they try to bill your insurer their fantasy list price that can be 20x or more the insured rate, the insurer refuses to pay that, so then they hound you for that money. I ignored that bill too, and suffered no consequences. A new trick that has become all too common is to construe the slightest bit of treatment of the slightest of physical issues, such as a tiny splinter or a little cut, as "surgery". $170 to remove a splinter. I gave the pediatrician hell for that stunt.
But where medical got me was the long term care. If you dispute something, they may take it off that month's bill, but they'll just put it back on the next month, and the month after that, and on and on, until they catch you napping and collect.
Couple of other minor things: never take a car to a tire store for inspection. They will tell you that worn but still good tires must be replaced. In places where gas stations only offer "full service", never tell them "fill 'er up!" They will overfill, spill gas down the side of your car and on the ground, to "make it come out even". You get to pay for that gas they just wasted. Not good for the paint job either, to say nothing of the environment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 01, @02:35PM
> That particular one even has a term: roach motel.
Nice, same concept as the Eagles song "Hotel California"-lyrics end with,
"Relax," said the night man, "We are programmed to receive
You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave"
> ...never take a car to a tire store for inspection. They will tell you that worn but still good tires must be replaced.
Counter example: I took my mother's car to the dealer for annual inspection and they told me the tires were dry rotted (after 5 years, very low miles) and wouldn't pass inspection. I left and took the car to a tire store and they said the tires did have a little checking on the sidewalls (this is what I saw), and they passed the tires through inspection with no problem. Same tire store continued to pass the car for several more years. At that point the tires really were worn out and I replaced them before going for the annual inspection.
I don't go to the dealer that sold the car anymore (another dealer sells the same brand, for dealer-only stuff I now go there).
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 31, @09:04PM (3 children)
Interestingly, Florida Real Estate advertising is defined as "permitting puffery." Puffery, as explained by my RE license instructor, would be advertising a beach condo as having "beautiful ocean views" and, if the condo has a balcony, and if you tie a rope to your waist and use that to lean waaaay out over the balcony railing, and if... from that vantage point, you might catch a tiny glimpse of the sand and the sea, then that is indeed a "beautiful ocean view" which you may repeat as many times as you wish, legal as puffery. Of course, there has to be a line, and if your condo is so far from the ocean that - standing on the roof atop a very tall step ladder, you are still unable to see the tiniest scrap of ocean, then that would not be a condo with a "beautiful ocean view". In more of a grey area, advertising the balcony lean-out as having "beautiful panoramic ocean views" is potentially over the line into outright falsehood.
Words like "beautiful" "magnificent" "wonderful" "terrible" "awful" "evil" have no meaning whatsoever in this realm. I notice a lot of those kinds of words in the press releases of the current US administration, words meant to manipulate but carrying absolutely no weight.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Friday August 01, @09:28AM (1 child)
Look for greyed out print. On a computer, greyed out print usually means the option is not available under the present context, but in business, it means that this is something they don't want you to read, but most likely carries far more legal weight as it is written in precisely defined legal language.
Read carefully and likely discover just how deceiving the large print is. For insurance policies...the word "coverage" is very deceptive. You may *think* it means everything. In reality, it's something that's just a bullet point on a sales brochure. Exclusions in fine print dismiss the big things...but "100% covered" still applies to the dental exam, but likely anything the dentist finds will be an excluded item.
Apparently, if "100% covered" can be bullet-pointed as "covered", "0.01% covered" can also be bullet-pointed as "covered" as well. It doesn't cover much, though. But it still uses that magic word, "covered" as the sucker will subconsciously read it as "100% covered".
"Covered" does not imply "Fully Covered", rather it means "helps cover", where "helps" is some fraction greater than zero.
Were you painting and got a spot of it on you? I suppose by insurance definition you are covered in paint.
Oh, yes, I am fussing as I fell for it. That damn insurance did no good for me at all when the bill was presented. My monthly premium just paid for legions of office workers, fancy corporate buildings, sales reps, advertising Executives, and countless ads. It sure didn't pay much for dental care.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday August 01, @07:40PM
Dental is the absolute worst. I can't even count the number of 'policies' that are written iron clad to NEVER pay out more than you pay in per year. They literally can't lose and the policy holder can't win.
(Score: 3, Funny) by istartedi on Friday August 01, @02:31PM
I haven't been looking in a long time; but when I was, I learned how real estate has its own lingo of veiled meanings that you are forced to learn in order to avoid junk. One peculiar to our region I'll always remember was, "nestled in the redwoods". This means the house is routinely pummeled by branches the size of small trees and/or has roots heaving the foundation. Nestled in general became such a joke to me. "You see, this one was handled by a professional nestler. It's really stuck in there good, and so will you be if you buy it."
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(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 31, @04:39PM (3 children)
This will turn into something where only the state can engage in propaganda.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday July 31, @05:52PM (2 children)
I do want to kill the advertising industry. They're evil bastards.
Generally speaking, there's an inverse relationship between how useful or good for you something is and how heavily it is advertised. Like, my neighbor's farm just puts a sign out front saying "Sweet corn" or "tomatoes" and gets plenty of happy locals eager to buy what they grew. By contrast, McDonalds spends tons of time and money trying to convince us that their lousy excuse for food is better really they mean it. Or contrast the level of advertising for toilets (very useful) versus brand-name cleaners (useful but not significantly more useful than much cheaper generics).
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 31, @10:13PM (1 child)
Well, I guess everything depends on your ability to say "no". Advertising has no compelling force. I don't like the idea of censorship.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday August 01, @07:53PM
But it does have deceiving force. Consider, I am not going to say no because I genuinely do need a widget. Now to choose which widget. Now I have a pile of advertisers, most if not all with their fingers crossed behind their backs, each swearing their widget is the best. Each claiming amazing exclusive features their widget has. Most are either not that exclusive or perhaps don't even work. Even a so-called independent review might be not so independent.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Thursday July 31, @05:06PM (1 child)
Um, no, many such cases. See almost every marketing product for food nutrition or supplementation, and most big pharma "prevention" lifetime prescription meds. The heavier its marketed (and some has been marketed very heavy handedly indeed) the less likely it is to have a positive effect, or so it seems in many cases.
If a product actually works, like, I donno, stitches in an emergency room, they don't need to spend hundreds of millions on TV ads and funded "research" with predetermined conclusions, etc. The harder its pushed by marketing people the less likely it is to help you.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Thursday July 31, @05:16PM
Marketing since 1997 [nih.gov], anyways, modulo some fine print and hastily spoken disclaimers.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Tork on Thursday July 31, @05:19PM (1 child)
I'm gonna delve a little off-topic for a moment. In my mid-20s some of my work had been noticed and I got a job offer for literally double the money on a much more serious public-facing project than I had ever been part of before. Basically it was "move to a town you dream of living in, more money, and here's a golden resume-addition." And I freaked out and hoped it'd go away like a sane person. 🥴
The ONLY downside was that I might fail and end up right back where I was, it's not like I'd suddenly have to find new employable skills or anything like that. Something in my brain was just terrified of it and I don't even really remember a single compelling reason why. I don't know why we over-rate losses over gains but it definitely applies to me. Logic and rationality took over, I took the gig, and it all ended up exceedingly well. I even participated in a podcast about it recently! Hehe. But I will never forget a few nights I had where I wished that problem would just go away. Glad to know I'm not the only defective human out there.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈 - Give us ribbiti or make us croak! 🐸
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 31, @09:14PM
I started at my first "real job" in early 1991. In 1995 a young woman joined the company as a software tester and, being a tiny company, she also did some sales, customer relations, research, etc.
In 2003 the company finances hit rock bottom, we were brought into a room Friday afternoon around 2:30pm and told "we love you all, you're really great, and you're welcome to come back any time, but as of Monday you won't be paid anymore. As you know it has been rough for some time and we were working on a way through, but there's no prospects on the horizon."
The young woman stayed with the company, worked for several years without significant pay (it helps to have a rich father), eventually the company got going again and paid her back probably with interest, but... her comment to me the next week when I was in the office using the printer to make "for sale" flyers for our house was "yeah, I'll be staying on, you know I'm not great with change."
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Thursday July 31, @05:31PM (2 children)
The term is post-Y2K however, the technique goes back a LONG way. I've never purchased a car or house without extensive drip pricing manipulation.
Cable TV and older cell phone service would see to fit.
The phone company used to be the worst at it, a POTS line for a modem used to be like $6 before all the mergers but they'd try to stack multiple $5/month charges on top of it "how can you live without call waiting" "well its a modem-only line so I actively don't want call waiting"
(Score: 5, Informative) by Tork on Thursday July 31, @06:00PM (1 child)
I had a fight with AT&T's cellular division because I had a data cap on my phone. If I exceeded 2 gigs they'd charge me $x to get another 2 gigs. But if I called them to find out how much data I've used so far, they'd tell me shit like "oh we won't have an accurate number for four hours". Which lead to the question- "How do I use my ENTIRE 2 gigs, that I paid for, without it going over? Like, how do I keep my kid from running up my bill?" To which they responded: "For $5/mo. more we can add parental controls that prevent you from going over without your approval!"
They wanted me to pay them more to avoid paying them more. Fuck AT&T and fuck nickel-and-diming.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈 - Give us ribbiti or make us croak! 🐸
(Score: 1) by krishnoid on Thursday July 31, @09:43PM
I don't know if consumer protections mean much anymore, but this sounds like a clear chronological narrative of something that the FTC or the state's consumer protection bureau should have a written record of. The way you put it, it's barely distinguishable from a shakedown.
I found a few phone apps that can warn when I'm close to my capped data limit. While I'm not thrilled with the potential privacy leaks, you at least get a choice between letting the lesser devil collect and leak your info, or letting the greater devil offer you multiple "choices".
(Score: 2) by progo on Thursday July 31, @06:27PM
Invading my privacy to send me a political campaign call to action via SMS will of course never be made illegal.
Also, are we going to make it illegal for one partner in a romantic couple to coerce the other into going to a social engagement? What about when my grandparents' cat trained my grandfather to heat up the food before serving it? Is that immoral?
Advertising that takes advantage of known ignorance of the buyer is arguably actually dishonest and not simple manipulation.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by istartedi on Thursday July 31, @06:47PM (1 child)
Manipulation is difficult to define, and thus difficult to regulate. It gets us in to some thorny issues regarding free speech. We "know it when we see it", but perfect elimination of manipulation isn't practical so I think we'd be better off focusing on what's easily defined and regulating that.
In the case of misleading health claims, this is not too difficult. You can simply ban all drug ads. Nobody likes them anyway, and people who visit the US are always like WTF when they see those ads. We certainly don't need ads for prescription drugs, and we really don't need them for OTC meds either. I'm not taking acetaminophen because I saw an ad. I'm taking it because I'm sick and it's common knowledge that it reduces fever and pain. I really don't need an ad to encourage me to use it; but we do need PSAs to remind us to be careful with it and not take too much or combine it with alcohol; but I digress.
The supplement industry is another category where we really don't need ads either, and frankly there's a lot of the industry we don't need, period. Lot of luck regulating that though. RFKjr and friends are tapped in to that MLMer supplement political base. We're going to have to fend for ourselves the next few years, and try to convince our crystal-stroking, weed-smoking neighbors they don't need $200/month worth of junk their doctor didn't tell them to take.
The hidden costs and fees are also easily defined and regulated. Just frickin' ban communication to "up sell" things. Holy crap. I could heat my home burning those glossy cards that come from the cable company trying to get me to bundle phone services and increase my monthly bill to them. No thanks. I have a $20/mo T-mobile deal going. It's pretty sweet. The cable company can pound sand. So much junk mail just needs to go away... except that it's keeping the Postal Service solvent; but that's another issue.
So that's the low-hanging fruit but then you get us to the elephant in the room (pun intended!): Political manipulation. There's just not going to be any good way to regulate that without having serious 1A issues.
Best we can do is educate people. Sigh... How have we dropped the ball so badly on that?
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(Score: 2) by aafcac on Thursday July 31, @08:06PM
Yes, but things like banning the use of fine print to negate what's being said would help, as would requiring that all the material terms be presented in a straightforward and easily understood fashion.
Having a right to not be manipulated is indeed difficult to properly regulate and enforce, but it's a lot easier to require things like prior notification before autorenews trigger and that all the terms be laid out in a way that the user can understand. A lot of this would fall apart rather quickly if the courts would stop allowing companies to bury terms in the fineprint using language that requires an attorney to work out in order to buy a cheap media file online.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Dr Spin on Thursday July 31, @07:47PM
.. to keep their right to be lied to.
Don't expect them to give up now!
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by YeaWhatevs on Thursday July 31, @08:11PM
Where's the circumspect view? Like many others, I don't give much surface area for exposure to manipulation. I block ads, skip the sponsored section, look for a deal before I buy. Then of course there's the ultimate weapon, apathy. A threat to my autonomy? I don't think so. Sure there's a sucker born every minute, and news sources are owned by people who are not out for my interest, but debt has a much greater impact on my autonomy than what people say to me.
(Score: 2) by jman on Friday August 01, @01:36PM
Simple, right? It's illegal to lie, so when asked you if you did it, your reply must be accurate.
In many cases resolution would be simple. Video evidence of the crime being committed. Overwhelming testimony by disparate witnesses. The defendent simply admitting they did it.
For those other cases lacking such evidence, without some form of coercement by the People, (physical, drugs, threat against a loved one, etc.), the difficulty would come in proving the defendent was following the law.
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Friday August 01, @01:43PM
Consumers is not really at core here. Otherwise the entire cosmetic industry falls flat on their face.
defrauded, deceived, manipulated .... all are synonyms to some extent. And they bite both ways. For one, manipulation is for another free speech and the truth. Take religion for example vs. science. The onus is really here on the consumer of said information. And by bite both ways -- the soviets built the Berlin Wall to keep the fascists out, at least by official reasons. History repeats, eh?
Perhaps a better opinion would be "everyone should have a right not to be stuck in an echo chamber", be that political or religious or societal. As for the rest, it's your life. We should be free to persuade people of things without being worried about going to jail or get fined, thank you very much. The alternative is next dark ages.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Undefined on Friday August 01, @02:04PM (1 child)
Here in the US, our manipulation begins with political lies, misdirection, and misrepresentation.
And these are the people who create our legislation.
Somehow, I don't see them providing any worthwhile protection along the lines of "Web." After all, they're the primary source of a great deal of it.
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(Score: 2) by Undefined on Sunday August 03, @03:24PM
I see the Soylent sig feature applies to old posts... hence the duplication.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 02, @02:05AM
Yes, so if you're an adult and not a child being taken care of your nanny/momma you should take responsibility for your own failings. Like being so easily manipulated when not under duress and when fraud is not being committed.
If you don't like that Freedom of Speech thing, there are other countries which clamp down on speech and do that nanny state thing.
People with guns and/or cars are a far bigger threat to your life.
There's this cooling down thing which should cover such stuff well enough. If you're still think you haven't been manipulated/scammed after X weeks then maybe you really do want/deserve what you bought/signed up for.
FWIW parents manipulate their kids all the time. The main foundation of modern civilization is not concrete and steel but people. If your country has too many scammers and people who are easily scammed then maybe too many parents weren't "manipulating" their kids well.
Maybe the Government should get a bunch of top educators and come up with free/affordable evidence and science based training programs for guardians/parents who want to raise up children well. Then see which ones produce better outcomes. There are many parents or prospective parents who actually want to do a good job raising children but can't and just need some guidance and training.
Of course if your orphanages are doing a significantly worse job than the average parent then maybe your country doesn't have good enough people in this field to create such programs.