> In the 1970s, Congress passed a law to make a particular form of subliminal advertising illegal because it was believed to be morally wrong. That advertising technique is child’s play compared to the kind of personalized manipulation that companies do today. The legal question is whether this kind of cyber-manipulation is an unfair and deceptive business practice, and, if so, can the Federal Trade Commission step in and prohibit a lot of these practices.
Three things here:
1. Nobody has ever proved subliminal messaging can actually subvert a person's will, which was reflected in court cases. Even a modern experiment set up by the BBC (apparently the only such study since the 50's) showed no effect.
2. The FTC has never said anything about subliminal messaging, so it's unlikely they would now.
3. Subliminal messaging never helped pay for users' free services.
Let's face it - we live in a different world. The old ideas of privacy, whatever they were, are erased when there's a carrot attached to it, and no stick. Schneider is doing a great deed in trying to drum up support for increased privacy regulations, but this is a stupid argument toward that end.
Three things here:
1. Nobody has ever proved subliminal messaging can actually subvert a person's will, which was reflected in court cases. Even a modern experiment set up by the BBC (apparently the only such study since the 50's) showed no effect.
2. The FTC has never said anything about subliminal messaging, so it's unlikely they would now.
3. Subliminal messaging never helped pay for users' free services.
Let's face it - we live in a different world. The old ideas of privacy, whatever they were, are erased when there's a carrot attached to it, and no stick. Schneider is doing a great deed in trying to drum up support for increased privacy regulations, but this is a stupid argument toward that end.