Caine
Hardcore Member
This has been reality for quite a while already.
Besides, the whole point thing for gamifying behaviour...my parent were doing that decades ago.
Besides, the whole point thing for gamifying behaviour...my parent were doing that decades ago.
ClockworkCoder
Chaotic Neutral
The reality is much more insidious than this. Most of the 'games' that companies play are invisible for the most part... i.e. how your location, social group, and shopping habits are tracked by loyalty cards; how electronic poster ads record your sex, estimated age group, whether you wear glasses, and if you're smiling when you look at them; and the '57' ways that Google personalises your search results, and the hundreds of tracking information that MS put in Windows... are the tip of the iceberg.
Swordfish II
Advanced Member
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I always wondered, companies spend so much trying to determine consumer behavior...does it really pay off for them with increased sales?
PCXT
Very Active Member
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Today the general rule is that sales increase with popularity no matter how stupid the product is, it only needs to be pushed into sufficient amount of media. Consumer behavior determination works more to minimize effort to create another "product".
The thing worth thinking is why the hell people do fake PR in network communities, among people they more-or-less know, excusing this pathological lying with privacy (in ~15 years of Internet before "social media" there was almost no problems with it - it requires just not to be a moron!), but freely give their privacy to unknown companies.
The thing worth thinking is why the hell people do fake PR in network communities, among people they more-or-less know, excusing this pathological lying with privacy (in ~15 years of Internet before "social media" there was almost no problems with it - it requires just not to be a moron!), but freely give their privacy to unknown companies.
Yup, done well it pays off. Check up on Neurolinguistic programming and subliminal programming. Some stuff was so effective it has been banned (like the 1 second cocacola commercials before a cinematic break)... but others are still being implemented.
you see... there is no firewall to your brain... so they can hack it as they want...
Swordfish II
Advanced Member
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I guess I am thinking these companies are spending millions on research and consumer tracking....But the implimentation of such research might only net them in the thousands more sales. Broken down they may have spent more on the research than they got back on the slightly increased sales. So if continued it would be a net loss.
I dunno, ads really don't sway me at all. I spend money on food, my classic car, a tech item every now and then, my house, and that is about it.
Granted I may not be the typical American, since most Americans are thousands of dollars in debt...
I dunno, ads really don't sway me at all. I spend money on food, my classic car, a tech item every now and then, my house, and that is about it.
Granted I may not be the typical American, since most Americans are thousands of dollars in debt...
comradekingu
Glowing ember
Do you think this isn't a game (!)…
kuru
Laptop und Trachtenjanker
skinner box is considered a dark design pattern in gaming. Check out http://darkpatterns.org for more on the topic in web/UI design
ElPoco
Hardcore Member
The brain has some kind of immune system, though. People learn to ignore ads when reading web-pages, for example. And education can help too: critcal thinking helps resisting advertisment, and being aware of the ways salesmen try to trick you is also a good thing.
Right now, from what I've seen, all the experiments and developments about consumer behavior had underwhelming results. A simple look at the "targeted" ads on Facebook or Amazon recommendation shows that despite all the detailed information they've got about you, they mostly default to:
- things you've been looking at recently
- things that are very similar to them ("you like this book? You'll surely love this other edition of your book, or the sequel")
- ads related to very broad categories (single => dating, female => weight loss, etc.)
The problem isn't really what's happening now, it's what could be happening later, once these mechanisms start getting really efficient. Because then, all the data they're currently recording about you will suddenly become much more valuable and exploitable.
waGL
Still Fresh
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This cannot be a game. No story writer would dare to come up with a character like this.
Personally, I suspect we're in the middle of a "Big Data" bubble.
As ElPoco says, personalised marketing doesn't really work. It generates adverts that appeal to the average person (that bloke with 2.7 children and 1.98 legs on the Clapham omnibus?) or it generates adverts based on the most trivial of associations. e.g. "You're reading a site about <things>, maybe you'd like to buy a <thing>?"
The noise floor in real-world human communications is so high that we're just filling datacentres with innumerable petabytes of nonsense. People who are so dull and unimaginative as to be easily analysed can be predicted without any clever techniques. People with a diverse range of interests and behaviour are too complicated for current "AI" systems.
The only thing that does work (and creeps out even those less-techy folks) is follow-me adverts, where it shows you adverts for foo, even when you've moved onto a page about bar.
Eventually, companies and investors will stop accepting useless data as payment for online services, and the web will look very different. Maybe with more static adverts.
As ElPoco says, personalised marketing doesn't really work. It generates adverts that appeal to the average person (that bloke with 2.7 children and 1.98 legs on the Clapham omnibus?) or it generates adverts based on the most trivial of associations. e.g. "You're reading a site about <things>, maybe you'd like to buy a <thing>?"
The noise floor in real-world human communications is so high that we're just filling datacentres with innumerable petabytes of nonsense. People who are so dull and unimaginative as to be easily analysed can be predicted without any clever techniques. People with a diverse range of interests and behaviour are too complicated for current "AI" systems.
The only thing that does work (and creeps out even those less-techy folks) is follow-me adverts, where it shows you adverts for foo, even when you've moved onto a page about bar.
Eventually, companies and investors will stop accepting useless data as payment for online services, and the web will look very different. Maybe with more static adverts.
blimpsgo180
Member
I really doubt it. I think human beings are less predictable than people at companies believe.
For example, I used to buy hummus at the grocery store. Then the store started giving me hummus coupons. Then I started making homemade hummus and didn't need the coupons. Then I stopped eating hummus!
There are four major grocery store chains in my neighborhood... Giant, ACME, Whole Foods, and Trader Joe's. Giant is the only one that still does the loyalty card.
ClockworkCoder
Chaotic Neutral
It's impossible to exist without a somewhat "caged" mind whilst maintaining any semblance of sanity. Or spiralling into absolute paranoia.
PowerGod
Forum Addict!
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By now the entire data system doesn't seem so functional for me... If I just delete the cookies, Facebook and Google seems to forget everything about my interests, even while having a profile... (unless I manually told to them that I like something)
kuru
Laptop und Trachtenjanker
Oh please enlighten us
Caine
Hardcore Member
I suppose you subscribe to the theory that it are not conspiracy theories but conspiracy facts.
blimpsgo180
Member
When I eat healthy, I digest food better and maintain a good body mass index. When I brush my teeth, my teeth don't fall out. When I watch The Simpsons, I laugh. Do we really need computers tracking all this crud?
I'm tempted to call "Troll" on this one.
The idea of making a claim, then backing it up with the assertion that your audience is too narrow-minded to understand the truth of your claim, is an old one - and of no value to a debate.
Since a key component of your assertion is that I am unable to understand it, there is no way for the listener to challenge or critically consider the claim. However, if that were to shift the duty of proof to the audience, then the world would be awash with unverifiable nonsense.
If we're in the business of making unverifiable claims, might I draw your attention to a certain undetectable teapot in orbit around the sun.
There are lots of things I don't know. There are lots of things that I don't know I don't know, but pointing that out in generality achieves nothing. Explain your understanding, provide citations, or stay silent.
Slightly more on topic, I'm always puzzled by the idea of gamification. It seems to be a way of replacing meaningful goals with hollow, artificial ones. I know people will spend huge amounts on those click-counter games - but why‽
