It's no secret that content moderators moderate content. Most of the stuff on HN is shaped by a few people who gets to decide what's interesting enough to get a boost or not.
It definitely feels like gaslighting when you notice it happening. For example a few times I know I made a comment on an old article the day before but it didn't get traction. But then it would be on the frontpage again the next day with all the timestamps manipulated to seem fresher, including on my own comments! I know I was sleeping at that time so then I start questioning my sanity and whether I was sleepwalking or not!
Most of HN isn't shaped by moderators boosting stories. But some of it is. The intention is just to make the site more interesting to the community. We don't always get that right, because sometimes the stories we think people will like just get flagged, and in that case we usually accede to the flaggers and unboost the thing. But most of the time it seems to work out.
Can you clarify, because while you've said gaslighting HN users is, "an egregious violation of the guidelines and a bannable offense on HN" [1], you're also saying the _questioning_ of gaslighting is allowed? Given the nature of gaslighting, those things seem one in the same, do they not?
ratww already pointed this out, but the issue from our point of view was implying that the other commenter was not posting in good faith (how much is $baddie paying you). The concept of gaslighting didn't really enter into it.
I really appreciate your supplying a specific link. It's amazing how rare that is! and makes it so much easier to respond accurately.
I thought this was going to be an exposé about how SaaS platforms changing functionality or UI design with little or no notice are undermining employee confidence and causing loss of productivity but it seems it more like Cambridge Analytica does inception?
I feel like most of the options are really only there to provide cover for the creepy ones. Another comment said that "Initiate Sex!" is their most popular campaign by far.
Oh god. Spot on! At first I was having a hearty chuckle. Then there was some disbelief. And then it hit me like a hammer. Yes, it is possible. Yes, it is being done. Yes, you are a target for these nudges and chances are, you will not notice them amidst the daily stream of garbage. And, finally... the title is spot on in a reverse kind of way: it did make me doubt my own decisions over the past few years...
It's not just the overt attempts in ad traffic... there's tweaking to how your feeds work from Twitter, Facebook and Google/YouTube themselves. There is definitely a LOT of meddling going on, much of it to shape the elections next year.
A positive way to think about it is that now everyone can be their own Rupert Murdoch and control public discourse in their own small way. It's basically democratizing the ability to influence political thought.
Of course as other commenters are positing - there are definitively many negative ways to look at it that are more realistic.
Is it though? I recently bought some clothes, if I signed up with their mailing list I got a 10% discount. The salesperson asked tentatively, afraid I was going to start shouting or something about sending me emails, invasion of privacy etc. I said sure, gave them one of my fake emails, got my discount, sweet.
Like all this internet stuff is just fake, it's more entertainment than real life. Emails you don't like? delete them. Don't want people to find you on facebook, use a made up name, get all your friends to use made up names.
My daughter recently tried to search my on the internet - I don't exist, much to her chagrin. But we're linked on facebook, we share photos etc.
The only thing that does exist is purely professional, maybe these are skills that should be taught. No doubt facebook can do something with face recognition, and google can do some tracking, but I don't leave cookies lying around long, so they're pretty weak signals.
Interesting the difference between the topline description "exposed to hundreds of items disguised as editorial content" and the one later in the page "10 articles". Could it be that a company which sells deception is playing a bit fast and loose with its claims?
Also, I think it would be very interesting to set up a honeypot for this and see what kinds of changes it drives. Anyone interested in splitting the cost for an experiment?
The HN title is incorrectly using "gaslight," and the website makes no mention of gaslighting.
> Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or in members of a targeted group, making them question their own memory, perception, and sanity.
Without trying to be pedantic, I think bombarding people with false (or "spun") information that is in contrast to their views, principles, or beliefs through a long period of time would make them question their perception(s). I get that probably wouldn't change people's memory or sanity however.
Correct - at the root of gaslighting is a bold-faced lie. From the source, it refers to a story where the husband turns down, and then back up, the gas-lights in their house continually, and denies that he is changing anything to his wife when she inquires why the light level keeps changing. Thus the term, "gas-lighting".
You never had a memory of some childhood event that feels super real, and yet you're positive that you couldn't really remember it - you've just had that memory implanted as a result of hearing the story told over and over by your parents or older siblings? There's also a solid body of evidence that this can happen sometimes to adults during police investigations when innocent people start to actually believe that they've actually committed the crime. When such double memories are encountered that can be very disturbing experience to a person, it feels like going crazy, as you don't know what is real. Our minds are fragile systems and under pressure some personalities start to decompose relatively quickly so I'm pretty convinced it's possible to drive someone insane that way.
Our memory is a unreliable narrator and sanity might change overtime too. Why do you think those wouldn't be affected if you find yourself being victim to purposefully wrong and harmful information?
What? This is just targeted suggestion/propaganda. There is nothing here to degrade the target's self-worth or make them question their own perception.
You underestimate how powerful suggestion / propaganda is. If you keep getting told you're a worthless person, eventually you'll absorb it into your own psyche.
That is a matter of content not technique; "New research suggests people that use internet handles starting with Homo have tiny penises and poor reasoning skills" - See? Targetted propaganda that denigrates...
Then any media service which lets a user deliver a message enables gaslighting. HN is a gaslighting service because it allowed you to deliver denigrating content to me.
No, gaslighting is systematically disorienting a person by staging confusing events, and blaming that confusion on the target themself. A one-way pipeline of targeted ads is not gaslighting, unless you call your wife crazy when she complains about all these weird ads she's seeing. But that's not what this service is automating.
From a utilitarian moral perspective, quite a few of the messages they present are actually good ones: quit smoking, drive carefully. Even the one about women initiating sex helps fight against sexist gender roles that women have to wait for the man to initiate everything.
But those are also things people may be comfortable just asking up front.
Of course other messages like "quit your job" for a coworker just seem spiteful and mean spirited.
Agreed. The wiki article goes further to describe common components of gaslighting:
>>Three most common methods of gaslighting are:
Hiding: The abuser may hide things from the victim and cover up what they have done. Instead of feeling ashamed, the abuser may convince the victim to doubt their own beliefs about the situation and turn the blame on themselves.
Changing: The abuser feels the need to change something about the victim. Whether it be the way the victim dresses or acts, they want the victim to mold into their fantasy. If the victim does not comply, the abuser may convince the victim that he or she is in fact not good enough.
Control: The abuser may want to fully control and have power over the victim. In doing so, the abuser will try to seclude them from other friends and family so only they can influence the victim's thoughts and actions. The abuser gets pleasure from knowing the victim is being fully controlled by them.
If targeting ads and content to an individual is 'gaslighting', then yeah - I'd say most internet/social media co's have a problem on their hands.
Oh, I’m sure many a traditional gaslighter had every intention of helping their victim.
The issue I take is with the complete lack of informed consent at play here. I’m not willing to see that as a positive. The toxic behavior in secretly manipulating for “good” far outweighs any altruism in my book.
There could be a service that does help people, but it would have to be different from this service.
When someone is struggling with something, often the most difficult step is changing habits. Them knowing they have a problem can help, and it is an important step, but it's not enough by itself.
I don't believe this was a good call. The title was accurate before, and the meaning of the submission has been substantively changed. Now it uses the title of the site - something we're explicitly asked not to do as part of the HN Guidelines.
As a reader, there's a real difference between deciding to upvote the original title (an observer's description of an inherently deceptive project) versus casting a vote on what it's been changed to (a brand name used to promote that project). I would absolutely upvote an article critical of The Spinner - while at the same time, I'd downvote a promotional submission.
OP did not intend to advertise The Spinner, they intended to expose it as a deceptive project without linking to third-party press coverage. The submission title absolutely matters.
If this changes your mind, please go with the original again.
This is a pretty rare case. I'd say the commenters made it abundantly clear that the project is not to be taken at face value, so in a way the title is not so important. Upvoting the submission doesn't mean you support what the site is saying or doing. It's more that you think it deserves attention, relative to the other articles that are in play that day.
I referred to "if the title includes the name of the site, please take it out, because the site name will be displayed after the link" but I get that this may apply in particular to "Washington Post: " etc.
Point about importance vs. endorsement is well taken; I would rather not give any publicity to this project without couching it in explicit criticism, but that's a personal choice.
This is absolutely a gaslighting, OP. The linked website even mentioned "gaslighting" several times.
You might've missed this or maybe your original perception of the concept of gaslighting was wrong.
My first thought was that it was subscription service for people who don't know how to re-light their furnace pilot light when it goes out. My second thought was - Is that a huge addressable market, but what do I know?
This is gross, shut this shit down now. There's no honest use for this. The only people who'll use it are psychopaths, we don't need to empower them, especially when it's as cheap as $50.
So let's keep this service only accessible to the wealthy and influential? It might be a good thing that you can point to a consumer facing website like this and say "look, anyone can gaslight you for cheap, anyone!"
This is fucked up. At first I thought, of course this exists but no one would really fall for it. Scrolling through the offerings, I felt a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Psychological warfare on-demand, only $50!
Ads we see can already be increasingly targeted to a very narrow group of people, which is spun as "making the adds more relevant to you". Is it different when it's a slightly larger group size than one?
You're speaking in generalities. This site is dealing with real people, such as a man who wants more sex from his girlfriend (apparently the most requested "ad") and so secretly signs his girlfriend's phone up for a system where she is shown ads designed to manipulate her into giving her boyfriend what she wants.
You don't see how there's an ethical difference, between that and a corporation advertising its products towards a general demographic?
I'm not clear here: are you using this as an argument in favor of spinner and their service or as an argument against targeted ads because they're basically just this spinner on a larger scale?
To speak directly to your point, yes, actually, because now people who want to rationalize smoking can do so by being suspicious of a conspiracy to feed them slanted information.
They should add an “expose target to qanon and conspiracy theories”-option. There was an article not too long ago about what obsessing over this can do to personal relationships. It was not pretty.
Is there anything stopping someone from abusing paid ad services for any of these platforms themselves to the same effect? This is assuming that they allow you to finely target the ads which I believe they do.
No. I think they are doing exactly that: They pay ad services like Outbrain pennies to run retargeting ads. The Spinner has no own platform, they just bid on the market (and can really lowball the bid, until some will go through). Real costs are about 0.50$ - 5$ so the markup is huge.
Not really. There was a story about someone pranking their roommate with targeted Facebook ads but FB then raised the minimum amount of people targeted. However as far as I know nothing prevents you from specifying a majority of fake emails/phone numbers in addition to your target’s phone number as long as you’re happy to pay for the extra wasted fake targets.
And it literally starts by you sending them an "innocuous looking" link. How does someone actually justify to themselves that doing something like this is even slightly okay? I'd feel deeply disturbed doing this to someone even if it was for a "good cause" like getting them to quit smoking.
"The Spinner* sends you an innocent looking link. This link is sent to the target via text message. When the target presses the link, a cookie connected to the link attaches itself to the target’s phone."
Is this legal? I never click on links sent via SMS.
The person setting this up gets sent the link from The Spinner, and then has to figure out how to get it loaded on the target's device. Texting it to someone who trusts you (enough to click on a link anyway) is one way to get it done.
I found this website really weird, with no "About us", so I searched some more.
"Elliot Shefler" (some publications put his name in quotes) is a co-founder, but he does not want to appear in photos and online profiles himself. He is Turkish-Jewish and spent most of his life working in ad-tech and online gambling. He claims his algorithms were developed by an agency with links to the Israeli military (this is repurposed military/PSYOP technology?). His whereabouts are unknown, circling between Germany, London, and LA.
In 2018 the price was 29$, now its 49$. Elliot claims $5.1 million revenue for 2018. Most customers are men, most customers want to initiate sex with a target. Nobody follows up to complain if it wasn't successful, since they are very much part of the conspiracy to manipulate. Elliot plans to share information with bigger advertisers: "A woman who wants a target to propose to her, would be in great proximity to a person that is in the market for an engagement ring".
This service is illegal in Europe, due to data protection and anti-tracking laws. The site has about 10 employees and one British company who works the contracts with bigger companies.
> “The value is in retention, not in the acquisition,” he said.
> He related a story about one insurance company he was commissioned work on, where he would target the insurance agents at the company to “brainwash and manipulate” them and change the perception of the company itself with the goal of retaining those agents.
> “We planned a similar campaign with a big pharmaceutical company that was targeting doctors (not patients—doctors) with articles about the benefits of a certain medicine.”
> ... if he feels the same targeting tools he leverages for The Spinner could be vulnerable to possible misuse, his response was matter-of-fact:
> “I would prefer using the word “effective” instead of ‘vulnerable.’ The answer is: highly effective.”
I think we can agree that this site's existence is overall a good thing for privacy and security awareness. More people will look into how targeted advertising on the web works.
It's very creepy but relatively harmless. It's simply democratizing what anyone can do with a bit of effort thanks to ad networks.
Whoever controls the ad networks themselves however, can achieve far more invasive and nefarious things.
Those are a far more dangerous threats to individual freedom than the distrust in ads and random web articles that this site could cause.
Just make it illegal to target ads based on the people viewing them. You can still target to things like contexts, venues, areas, etc. but it would rule this out and it would eliminate the justification to farm so much personal info.
I too am in favor of bankrupting Google and returning to the old model of advertising where you put the car ads on car magazines and computer ads on computer magazines.
In the next couple years a couple things are going to happen:
1) This (or something like it) will go open source.
2) An AI will be made to generate campaigns automatically. This can either use articles selected with some sort of sentiment analysis, or by generating the content itself with the next gen GPT-2.
Neal Stephenson talked about this more then 10 years ago in the book Anathem, calling them "Artificial Inanity Engines."
This is very much akin to the "weapons-grade" tools used by the likes of Cambridge Analytica and AIQ to manipulate the minds of Trump and Brexit voters, using ill-gotten Facebook data to work out exactly what pushes people's buttons.
Tools like this will now be used during every election/voting cycle, forever.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 264 ms ] threadI never understood why. Mods claim it "doesn't add to the topic".
It definitely feels like gaslighting when you notice it happening. For example a few times I know I made a comment on an old article the day before but it didn't get traction. But then it would be on the frontpage again the next day with all the timestamps manipulated to seem fresher, including on my own comments! I know I was sleeping at that time so then I start questioning my sanity and whether I was sleepwalking or not!
Most of HN isn't shaped by moderators boosting stories. But some of it is. The intention is just to make the site more interesting to the community. We don't always get that right, because sometimes the stories we think people will like just get flagged, and in that case we usually accede to the flaggers and unboost the thing. But most of the time it seems to work out.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16608054
I really appreciate your supplying a specific link. It's amazing how rare that is! and makes it so much easier to respond accurately.
Also the title is purposely inflammatory (if not also true).
Of course as other commenters are positing - there are definitively many negative ways to look at it that are more realistic.
Like all this internet stuff is just fake, it's more entertainment than real life. Emails you don't like? delete them. Don't want people to find you on facebook, use a made up name, get all your friends to use made up names.
My daughter recently tried to search my on the internet - I don't exist, much to her chagrin. But we're linked on facebook, we share photos etc.
The only thing that does exist is purely professional, maybe these are skills that should be taught. No doubt facebook can do something with face recognition, and google can do some tracking, but I don't leave cookies lying around long, so they're pretty weak signals.
Also, I think it would be very interesting to set up a honeypot for this and see what kinds of changes it drives. Anyone interested in splitting the cost for an experiment?
> Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or in members of a targeted group, making them question their own memory, perception, and sanity.
Our memory is a unreliable narrator and sanity might change overtime too. Why do you think those wouldn't be affected if you find yourself being victim to purposefully wrong and harmful information?
I’m pretty okay with their use of the word by your own definition.
No, gaslighting is systematically disorienting a person by staging confusing events, and blaming that confusion on the target themself. A one-way pipeline of targeted ads is not gaslighting, unless you call your wife crazy when she complains about all these weird ads she's seeing. But that's not what this service is automating.
In the opposite direction, you could choose to reinforce current ideas. Which, due to confirmation bias, would probably be easier than gaslighting.
But those are also things people may be comfortable just asking up front.
Of course other messages like "quit your job" for a coworker just seem spiteful and mean spirited.
>>Three most common methods of gaslighting are:
Hiding: The abuser may hide things from the victim and cover up what they have done. Instead of feeling ashamed, the abuser may convince the victim to doubt their own beliefs about the situation and turn the blame on themselves.
Changing: The abuser feels the need to change something about the victim. Whether it be the way the victim dresses or acts, they want the victim to mold into their fantasy. If the victim does not comply, the abuser may convince the victim that he or she is in fact not good enough.
Control: The abuser may want to fully control and have power over the victim. In doing so, the abuser will try to seclude them from other friends and family so only they can influence the victim's thoughts and actions. The abuser gets pleasure from knowing the victim is being fully controlled by them.
If targeting ads and content to an individual is 'gaslighting', then yeah - I'd say most internet/social media co's have a problem on their hands.
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting#Usage
I mean, that opinion is pretty in-vogue right now, isn't it?
Just because the copy doesn't mention it doesn't mean it's not there.
The issue I take is with the complete lack of informed consent at play here. I’m not willing to see that as a positive. The toxic behavior in secretly manipulating for “good” far outweighs any altruism in my book.
When someone is struggling with something, often the most difficult step is changing habits. Them knowing they have a problem can help, and it is an important step, but it's not enough by itself.
As a reader, there's a real difference between deciding to upvote the original title (an observer's description of an inherently deceptive project) versus casting a vote on what it's been changed to (a brand name used to promote that project). I would absolutely upvote an article critical of The Spinner - while at the same time, I'd downvote a promotional submission.
OP did not intend to advertise The Spinner, they intended to expose it as a deceptive project without linking to third-party press coverage. The submission title absolutely matters.
If this changes your mind, please go with the original again.
The HN guidelines do ask submitters to use the site's title "unless it is misleading or linkbait" (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). That's why we changed it.
Point about importance vs. endorsement is well taken; I would rather not give any publicity to this project without couching it in explicit criticism, but that's a personal choice.
Then I clicked the link.
The only reason they are paying more than $50, they’re buying more than 180 impressions.
You don't see how there's an ethical difference, between that and a corporation advertising its products towards a general demographic?
If the latter, I'm with you.
But the reactions to this service is slight proof that an organisation evokes lesser negative reactions than an individual
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Would it have a known placebo effect where even if you knew it was spun you’d still be influenced?
Is this legal? I never click on links sent via SMS.
"Elliot Shefler" (some publications put his name in quotes) is a co-founder, but he does not want to appear in photos and online profiles himself. He is Turkish-Jewish and spent most of his life working in ad-tech and online gambling. He claims his algorithms were developed by an agency with links to the Israeli military (this is repurposed military/PSYOP technology?). His whereabouts are unknown, circling between Germany, London, and LA.
In 2018 the price was 29$, now its 49$. Elliot claims $5.1 million revenue for 2018. Most customers are men, most customers want to initiate sex with a target. Nobody follows up to complain if it wasn't successful, since they are very much part of the conspiracy to manipulate. Elliot plans to share information with bigger advertisers: "A woman who wants a target to propose to her, would be in great proximity to a person that is in the market for an engagement ring".
This service is illegal in Europe, due to data protection and anti-tracking laws. The site has about 10 employees and one British company who works the contracts with bigger companies.
> “The value is in retention, not in the acquisition,” he said.
> He related a story about one insurance company he was commissioned work on, where he would target the insurance agents at the company to “brainwash and manipulate” them and change the perception of the company itself with the goal of retaining those agents.
> “We planned a similar campaign with a big pharmaceutical company that was targeting doctors (not patients—doctors) with articles about the benefits of a certain medicine.”
> ... if he feels the same targeting tools he leverages for The Spinner could be vulnerable to possible misuse, his response was matter-of-fact:
> “I would prefer using the word “effective” instead of ‘vulnerable.’ The answer is: highly effective.”
Very, very shady.
It's very creepy but relatively harmless. It's simply democratizing what anyone can do with a bit of effort thanks to ad networks. Whoever controls the ad networks themselves however, can achieve far more invasive and nefarious things.
Those are a far more dangerous threats to individual freedom than the distrust in ads and random web articles that this site could cause.
Aka all of them? I agree this is despicable, but I’m curious how you make this illegal and not all of advertising.
Banning targeting via email address, birth date, name and other personal identifiers would go a really really long way.
I work for a tracking company and I know how much power marketing folks have nowadays. It’s scary precise.
1) This (or something like it) will go open source. 2) An AI will be made to generate campaigns automatically. This can either use articles selected with some sort of sentiment analysis, or by generating the content itself with the next gen GPT-2.
Neal Stephenson talked about this more then 10 years ago in the book Anathem, calling them "Artificial Inanity Engines."
Counter PsyOps as a service (if built, social networks should probably build it in for free).
Make something that can detect if your stories seem to be manipulated and show stories that counteract that.
Tools like this will now be used during every election/voting cycle, forever.
Extremely worrying, but inevitable.
> Target: Employeess
Hmmm
Earlier I had read about someone who tried to spook his roommate by targetting him with heavily-personalized ads. Cannot seem to find it now.
[1]: https://medium.com/@MichaelH_3009/sniper-targeting-on-facebo...
The Ultimate Retaliation: Pranking My Roommate with Targeted Facebook Ads. https://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking...