This isn't theoretical, it's happening right now. The boom in digital detoxes, the dumbphone revival among young people, the shift from public feeds to private DMs, and the "Do Not Disturb" generation are all symptoms of the same thing. People are feeling the manipulation and are choosing to opt out, one notification at a time.
That disengagement metric is valuable, I'm not gonna give it away for free anymore. I'll engage and disengage randomly, so no one knows what works.
> The boom in digital detoxes, the dumbphone revival among young people
That's a market now. It doesn't mean shit. It's a "lifestyle".
> People are feeling the manipulation
They don't. Even manipulation awareness is a market now. I'm sure there are YouTubers who thrive on it.
---
How far can you game a profiling algorithm? Can you make it think something about you that you're not? How much can one break it?
Those are the interesting questions.
Sure it does. The salesman may have information you were not aware of. They could even tell you something which satisfies your needs better and is cheaper. Not all salesman are out to screw you, some really care about a happy customer.
I’m reminded of an old Hypercritical episode. If you ever heard John Siracusa, you know he does his research and knows what he wants. Yet when it came time buy a TV, which he had intensively researched, the salesman mentioned plasma and how the tech had improved and it threw a wrench in Siracusa’s whole decision.
It's not 100% but if you follow the heuristic you save a lot of money and generally have higher quality goods in your life.
The reason we got into this mess is because advertising on the internet broke all the rules. Now lying is de-facto allowed. So then everyone else followed suit to compete. If your competitors are lying, you cannot afford not to lie.
So now all advertisement and sales are compromised and should not be trusted. Even large, previously trusted corporations are running scams in America. Professionals making six figures are acting as con artists. It's unbelievable how fast the situation has deteriorated.
I laugh when people say "I use site:reddit.com to scope my Google searches for product information because I'm getting impartial information from real people."