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Artificial intimacy, prevalence of prevalence inflation, engineering craveability into ultra-processed foods.
[10] from this week đ
Drawbacks of artificial intimacy. MIT Professor Sherry Turkle challenges AI virtual companions as posing a threat to our ability to connect, empathize and collaborate in all aspects of our lives. âWe found the pleasures of companionship without the demands of friendship, the feeling of intimacy without the demands of reciprocity, and crucially, we became accustomed to treating programs as people.â This is all part of her concerted âmovement in the effort to control AI before it controls us.â link
The majority of X Super Bowl Traffic was fake. Cybersecurity company CHEQ reports that 75.85% of traffic from X to its advertising clients' websites during the weekend of the Super Bowl was fake. This amounts to fraud for advertisers who pay social media companies based on impressions and/or clicks on their ads and expect them not to be bots. Since Elon Musk's X take over, 80% of the company's Trust and Safety team's engineers have been laid off, along with half of the company's content moderators. link
A diffusion of responsibility. Ahead of its appearance before Congress, Meta engaged in a omni-channel campaign to influence the perception that it was the one responsible for harming children. An ad read, âmore than 75% of parents agree: Teens under 16 shouldnât be able to download apps from app stores without permission. Instagram wants to work with Congress to pass federal legislation to get it done.â A similar statement was echoed by Mark Zuckerberg in his statement before congress, asking app store owners like Apple and Google to be better gatekeepers. Though restricting underage users likely requires a joint effort across tech companies, itâs also a cost. And in this case one Meta is wanting to avoid that cost by passing it along, leaving it free to collect the surplus value of having those additional underage users. link
Why gun violence is a business issue. Not that long ago, it was the norm for companies to speak out on social issues before politically motivated attacks on woke capitalism helped make it passĂ© (also purpose as a position was rightfully questioned). But gun violence is a business issue. All too often retail brands find themselves the unintended host of gun violence, and from an employee perspective, 30% of all mass shootings are workplace related â meaning shooters targeted their current or former place of employment. Advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety found that employers lose nearly $1.5 million every day in productivity, revenue and costs associated with victims of gun violence. Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc., now lists mass shootings in a list of factors that could hurt its business, the economy and consumer confidence. link
Carrefour boycott positions itself on the side of customers. Inflation is cooling, but food prices are still on the rise, and people are blaming corporate greed for it, not the economy. Playing into this cultural sentiment Carrefour delisted some of Pepsiâs products from over 9,000 store shelves across Europe, but it did so in an unusually public way citing âunacceptable price increasesâ and displaying signs in stores to explain the absence. âWhatâs notable in Carrefourâs case is that it has not only delisted products from a huge, well-known company, but has also made explicit why itâs doing so: Itâs PepsiCoâs fault. Itâs a good PR move for Carrefour, and it also handily explains why some sought-after products are suddenly unavailable.â In a related move, Carrefour started adding labels next to products showing that their package size had shrunk but their price didnât decrease. link
Benefits of being as different as possible. The now-familiar honey bear bottle was designed by Dutch Gold Honey in 1957 to âlook as different as possible.â This difference was originally pursued to make sure the company didnât get sued, but it helped it stand out on the shelves. Importantly this difference was not just for the sake of being different. The design tapped into a long history of art that brought bears and bees together and the cultural rise of Winnie the Pooh. link
The prevalence and prevalence inflation. Teens are being repeatedly told online and in schools that mental health problems are common. Paradoxically, this may be exacerbating the issue. âEfforts to raise awareness about mental health problems are inadvertently leading to an increase in reported rates of mental health problems.â On the one hand itâs good to de-stigmatize these issues, but it is basic human cognition to be drawn to things we hear about. If you are repeatedly told mental health problems are common, you may start to interpret negative feelings through this lens. link
What you do and donât do, based on brand identity. Several major news companies like the NY Times are starting are leaning into lifestyle products to grow. Dow Jones â the parent company to the Wall Street Journal, Barron's, MarketWatch and Investor's Business Daily â remains committed to its subscription strategy focused on business professionals and has doubled its digital subscription base from 2.43 million during the last three months of 2019 to 4.86 million in January. From the CEO Almar Latour "We're not going to be a lifestyle company. We're not going to be a gaming company. We're not going to be a cooking company. We are going to shed focus on how we can help people make decisionsâŠIt's about knowing your identity and knowing the area in which you play. For us, that is business and we're not confused about that." link
But who will buy it? The Vision Pro has been heaped with praise out the gate, one reporter calling it âleaps and bounds better than the previous best V.R. headsets on the marketâ. But the price tag of $3.5K has left many mockingly, and genuinely asking who it is for if not the masses, or even the affluent masses. The Times makes a list of potential segments that include office workers and gamers. But there is also a way to group people in an attitudinal way, around the motivation to buy. This includes show-offs (people who want to be noticed wearing the latest high-end Apple gadget) and shut-ins (people who rarely leave their houses anyway, so why does it matter if the device attracts stares?). All different ways to answer the question around the customer job to be done, but who is this for? Link
Deliciously addictive. For decades, the processed food industry has engineered âcraveabilityâ into its products. This translated into advertising âgoldâ like Lays Betcha canât eat just one, Lâeggo my Eggo!, and Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. Craveability however is being challenged by a new class of drugs that stand to eliminate food cravings. That, and national push to associate ultra-processed foods, made with cheap industrial ingredients and potentially as addictive as tobacco or gambling. Despite this itâs unlikely the industryâs focus on sheer irresistibility ever goes away. This industry knows weâre not at our most aspirational self, in every moment, and has a long history of marketing to it (our attitudes like âIâll eat healthyâ donât necessarily lead to behavior). Taco Bell has recently introduced a Cravings Value Menu and Iâm sure itâs horribly delicious. link