When I took my kid to New Zealand with me on a book-tour, I was delighted to learn that grocery stores had special aisles where all the kids'-eye-level candy had been removed, to minimize nagging. What a great idea!
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/25/accountability-sinks/#work-harder-not-smarter
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Related: countries around the world limit advertising to children, for two reasons:
1) Kids may not be stupid, but they are inexperienced, and that makes them gullible; and
2) Kids don't have money of their own, so their path to getting the stuff they see in ads is nagging their parents, which creates a natural constituency to support limits on kids' advertising (nagged parents).
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There's something especially annoying about ads targeted at getting credulous people to coerce or torment *other people* on behalf of the advertiser. For example, AI companies spent millions targeting your boss in an effort to convince them that you can be replaced with a chatbot that *absolutely, positively cannot do your job*.
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Your boss has no idea what your job entails, and is (not so) secretly convinced that you're a featherbedding parasite who only shows up for work because you fear the breadline, and not because your job is a) challenging, or b) rewarding:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/19/make-them-afraid/#fear-is-their-mind-killer
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Cory Doctorow
spacebarbarian
Kim Spence-Jones 🇬🇧😷