I'm not in California, so I don't know anything about Proposition 65, but it occurred to me that this law might have been citizen initiated and it was. So when you guys are complaining about "government," you are complaining about voters. So what do you want to do about voters who pass laws you don't like? Keep them from voting?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sometimes it's the citizens insisting government be more pro-active
The problem is not the technology, it's groups of people thinking they know better than anyone else what everyone needs to know and seeing it as their duty to "do something about it".
Of course, conservatives have been doing the same thing. That's why I view with a lot of skepticism the commitment by most people and their elected officials to actually stop telling people want to do.
Yes, I know that true libertarians are much more inclined to eliminate laws that hope to control social behaviors than conservatives are, but true libertarians are still relatively small in number.
The alliance of libertarians and religious conservatives doesn't really work for me because they seem to represent vastly different philosophies about personal freedom.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sometimes it's the citizens insisting government be more pro-active
Except we've had an "info delivery system" capable of this kind of refinement for years now and exactly ZERO attempt to refine anything along these lines, just more and more and more "warnings" that 99% of the population don't care about.
The article lumped product warnings in with national security warnings.
If we want to confine the discussion to how best to warn people about safely using products, I'm all for it because we are getting into specifics.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sometimes it's the citizens insisting government be more pro-active
I'll add that where I live is home to a number of organic foods, organic cosmetic companies, and organic farms. It's in their economic interests both to discourage GMOs which might pollinate with their crops and which might affect the image of the community as an organic leader. So not only are a number of local consumers interested in the issue, so are a number of local businesses.
Similarly, there is fracking going on in another part of the state next to organic farms. The farmers are concerned about pollution affecting their land.
So in some places it is a bigger issue than just a consumer issue.
What I have been hoping to point out is that within communities what constitutes a threat may differ from community to community. If you believe in citizen involvement, then you have to allow for small communities making their own rules, especially if there is consensus within the community.
Now, if the community wants to do something that would be considered a violation of human rights, then authorities outside the community will step in, but if it's a matter of rules that the community wants to enforce and everyone is on board, what is the issue with that?
The big national debate is about whether the interests of business can trump the interests of people, and if the people collectively decide what they want, even if businesses complain, what's wrong with that? If the businesses want to relocate, they can and probably will. But the community may decide it doesn't want those businesses anyway, especially if the businesses happen to be polluting the local area.
My primary concern these days (even more so than in the past) is the environment. Most in the scientific community who monitor these things tell us we will run into severe problems due to global warming. The philosophy espoused throughout Techdirt (i.e., get government out of the way and do whatever is best for the Internet) doesn't really address the issues I consider especially important. Rather than Internet and IP issues, I'm more focused on global economic issues which promote sustainability. I can see overlap between Internet freedom and sustainability, but only as a small part of a big picture. And I am concerned when Internet freedom seems to reinforce power/control in the hands of large tech corporations because I think concentrated power/control in general leads to some negative results.
The threats that worry many Techdirtians don't strike me as nearly as big a threat as other issues.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sometimes it's the citizens insisting government be more pro-active
Keep in mind that there's a difference between localization of government versus getting rid of government. Getting rid of government just isn't going to happen. That's not how people operate. They organize in some fashion.
However, advocating breaking down government into smaller, more manageable units is something where you might find agreement among a diverse group of people, including those on the far left and the far right.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Sometimes it's the citizens insisting government be more pro-active
Assuming the above is anywhere close, it means firstly that the labelling "law" in question is actually wanted or cared about by less than 1/3 of the affected people and for the rest it's just another thing to get in the way on a packet.
But that's how it works. If one group cares enough to push for legislation and others don't care enough to bother, the activists get their way.
It actually fits well with so much I see on Techdirt. Some of the issues concerning copyright and the Internet matter hugely here but I often point out that most voters are not going to make a decision about who they vote for based on those issues.
Where I live, it's a liberal, tech-savvy community. Our representative made lots of money as a tech entrepreneur and tends to support issues that matter to the tech community. However, the local voters tend to be even more passionate about environmental issues and social causes and would likely base their votes on those more than tech issues. A tech-supportive, but overall politically conservative candidate wouldn't get elected here.
This leads me to the second, related threshold problem - packaging. You can only make it so big. The more warnings you shove onto packaging, the harder it is to read any of them and that just adds to the "which one(s) do I care about?" problem.
I've already agreed to that, pointing out that we're talking about an info delivery system, which could be refined, which is a different issue than the more generic concept that "government issues too many warnings." That's been my point. "Government" and "warnings" are too broadly defined in the article to be much more preaching to the choir about the evils of government. And as I continue to point out, everyone has government. So it's a matter of what government. A culture of locally-run cooperatives involves government, hopefully one that reflects the wishes of each small group.
Re: Re: Sometimes it's the citizens insisting government be more pro-active
However that would seem to have little to do with labelling, which is a good political way of being seen to "do something about a problem" without having to know too much about it or piss off too many people who count (i.e. not the public).
That thought occurred to me, too. The people who feel like a product is dangerous would rather have it banned altogether. Putting a label on it is a half-measure.
But let's look at GMOs. The anti-folks GMO folks (and there are many in my community) want food products labelled if they are made with GMO products so they know what to avoid. They would prefer not to have them at all, but labeling is better than nothing.
Similarly, there are food ingredients that some people believe are unhealthy, but they are still on the market. So labeling at least allows people to make their own decisions.
Now we could argue that labeling and warning are not the same thing and if a product needs a warning to be safe, maybe it shouldn't be offered. Or perhaps people don't need to be warned about anything and it's buyer beware for everything.
I think the warnings are helpful, though, when, for example, your kid has just drunk some cleaning product he found under the sink. If there is a warning, you know you need to do something. If there is no warning, you probably assume there's no real harm to him.
Namely, that native advertising cannot be blocked from the end-user through traditional means.
It did occur to me. I use "ad blocking" and "do not track add-ons" and it's amazing what I don't see these days. It wasn't the ads that bothered me. It was the tracking.
So, yes, native advertising can get through to me in a way that traditional online ads cannot, which is good for advertisers, I suppose.
But I am trying to downsize my consumption to such an extent that trying to sell me anything is going to be hard. Advertising in any form isn't likely to sway me. If I want to buy something, I'll go searching for it. If I am interested in a particular advertiser's products, I'll sign up for that company's email list. (Of course, one can argue that I might not be aware of a particular company if I don't see an ad or a sponsorship on a website. I am very interested in the tiny house movement, for example. One way for me to know who's making houses and products for that community is to read the various tiny house blogs. On the other hand, does a company need to pay for native advertising? It could always just start its own blog to read the community.)
Do I appreciate native advertising as a way to keep content sites afloat? Yes and no. I value all the "free" content online, but I am skeptical that advertising is going to keep most content sites alive. So I'm always waiting for ad-funded sites to disappear.
The bottom line for most companies is sales. There are steps along the way, like reaching a certain audience, shaping an image, building a community, etc., but in the end companies usually want to see results from whatever marketing dollars they spend.
Whether native advertising is better than all of the other many marketing options out there really depends on the product/service, the potential audience for it, the ability of the advertiser to reach buyers on its own or whether it needs help from a content provider or community builder, and so on.
The ideal situation might be for advertisers to do it all themselves in that they maintain total control of the message, they receive all the metrics/contact info directly themselves, they can better run tests to see what content and approach works best, etc.
However, not all companies have in-house content/marketing/messaging experts so they might decide there's something to be said for attaching themselves to other websites.
I suppose if I were a content provider, I would try to make sure I can show advertisers that teaming up with me adds to their bottom line and that I offer something better than the other options they might use.
Of course, there are at least three stakeholders in all of this:
1. The reader. Is the native advertising valuable or clutter?
2. The advertiser. Is native advertising effective marketing?
3. The content provider. Does native advertising generate sufficient income without at the same time undercutting the content website?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Think in terms of info, then
To make your traffic example translate into the discussion better, would it be useful if your google goggles constantly displayed a warning whenever there were cars ahead of you saying "warning there are cars ahead, you could get in accident, cars kill millions every year, you might die."
That info is true, though. Being in a car increases your chances of dying in a car accident.
What I see as the bigger concern is conveying info to people in ways that actually work.
Climate change is a big issue now. Those who believe we're at a make-or-break point are looking for ways to alert the world of this situation. How does one do that? Is it constant reminders? Is it a catchy slogan? Is it scaring the shit out of people? Is it linking costs so that they immediately feel the effects financially?
My points have been that in this post "government" and "warnings" are rather vague. Government can be good or bad. Any group that develops rules to function is, in my mind, a form of government, so we'll always have governments.
Similarly, warnings can useful or not. What becomes overkill depends on lots of factors and may vary depending on the audience, the message, and so on.
The author of the post lumped product labels in with national security warnings to make a point, but I think the argument as presented is very loose.
As the Cato Institute observes the probability of being killed by a police officer is about eight times the probability of being killed by a terrorist, but we will cede more and more power to the police (increasing the likelihood of dying in a misplaced no-knock raid) to "protect" us from terrorists.
But we could argue probability issues on all sorts of things and how people irrationally respond to real and perceived threats.
In each case, the overblown risk is invariably used as an excuse for the expansion of government (in the American context, most often Federal government) power.
One could also argue that the US operates that way throughout the world. The anti-military libertarians and the anti-military left probably could find a meeting of the minds on that issue.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Think in terms of info, then
The difference is that if in your vision of the future the "total information about a product" is available at the glance of an eye when you want to call it up then it falls into the useful and interesting category, because you have the choice to call it up and read it all or selected bits of it that you want to.
On the other hand, what happens in this utopian future if the government madates that all that information must appear in your glasses every time you look at something "for your own good". Suddenly your Google Glasses become useless because your vision is constantly obscured by a wall of text.
I was pointing out that "government" is vague because there is government at all levels and some of it is definitely citizen-run rather than mandated by politicians/bureaucrats/lawyers. If the citizens within a community want warnings, then they might pass laws mandating warnings. They might want it rather than view it as an imposition.
I was also pointing out that "warnings" is also vague. I read warnings all the time, in news articles, online, etc. I'm not sure the issue is too many warnings. It's more about access to info. If the info is inconvenient, then it could be a problem. But that could be considered a user-design issue. How do you develop a system that best gives people the right information at the right time?
We could be talking about info overload, which has been debated for generations and it might have nothing to do with government or laws.
It's a more nuanced issue than "government issues too many warnings."
Sometimes it's the citizens insisting government be more pro-active
I live in a very pro-environment community. If anything, the citizens are more environmentally concerned than the elected officials. The voters don't want GMOs on county open space, don't want fracking, don't want the city and county to spray herbicides and pesticides, etc.
So it isn't always government imposing its will on the community. Sometimes it's the community telling the politicians that if they don't support environmentally friendly policies, they will be voted out of office.
Sometimes the regulations the anti-government folks don't like are regulations that citizens insisted upon and value.
Imagine a system like Wikipedia where every item, person, place can be tagged with info and it can come from a variety of sources. So if I go to the grocery store, I can get product info from the manufacturer, but I can also see warnings from environmental groups. Because they can digitally add their own tags via AR, they don't have to depend on government authorization to get those warnings added. They can tag everything themselves and consumers can pull them up. Just as you can pull up reviews as you walk past a restaurant, you can pull up info and warnings as you go shopping.
Having a more informed public isn't a bad thing. And if the info and whatever warnings people want to add can be provided without putting stickers on things, why not?
How will technology take the stickers away? By making them digital?
Yes.
Look, I actually read the ingredients on labels. Having the info about what is in foods, beauty supplies, household cleaners, lawn care products, etc., is of interest to me and other label readers like me. I don't need the additional warnings because I am already suspicious of certain ingredients and won't buy products/food/cleaning products which have them.
Whether some people do need those warnings, or whether there are better ways to info people is what I would focus upon.
It sounds like the problem in California is in the implementation more than in the info itself. Having stickers on everything doesn't sound very effective. But allowing people to be more aware of everything around that isn't a bad thing.
I'm just trying to point out that "government is bad because it warns people with stickers" perhaps doesn't get at the right issues.
My scissors have the Prop 65 sticker on them. Guess I won't try to eat my fucking scissors. Everything has the fucking sticker, every box of pencils, every printer cartridge, everything. Starbucks has the sticker. If you're saying that every object in California had the sticker, that wouldn't be enough information for you?
What I am saying is that technology will eventually take the stickers away. And that pointing a finger at too much info might be "anti-Internet" in its way. People seem to want the info.
Don't think in terms of "warnings." Think in terms of tags that you can see about everything. That's what AR promises to offer us. Everything will have tags. You can instantly get the back story about everything.
It may not come from "government" but the info will be available. Want to know the hazard of anything? Google glass can show you.
On the post: If Everything Is A Threat, Then Nothing Is
Re: Re: Re:
I don't get into the IP discussions. But when the conversation drifts into government or economic issues I comment.
On the post: If Everything Is A Threat, Then Nothing Is
Re: What if you put it to a vote?
California Proposition 65 (1986) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Proposition 65 (formally titled "The Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986") is a California law passed by direct voter initiative in 1986 by a 63%-37% margin.
On the post: If Everything Is A Threat, Then Nothing Is
What if you put it to a vote?
But what if you put to a vote whether or not to eliminate specific warnings? And what if voters wanted to keep them in?
Would you support them then?
On the post: If Everything Is A Threat, Then Nothing Is
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sometimes it's the citizens insisting government be more pro-active
Of course, conservatives have been doing the same thing. That's why I view with a lot of skepticism the commitment by most people and their elected officials to actually stop telling people want to do.
Yes, I know that true libertarians are much more inclined to eliminate laws that hope to control social behaviors than conservatives are, but true libertarians are still relatively small in number.
The alliance of libertarians and religious conservatives doesn't really work for me because they seem to represent vastly different philosophies about personal freedom.
On the post: If Everything Is A Threat, Then Nothing Is
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sometimes it's the citizens insisting government be more pro-active
The article lumped product warnings in with national security warnings.
If we want to confine the discussion to how best to warn people about safely using products, I'm all for it because we are getting into specifics.
On the post: If Everything Is A Threat, Then Nothing Is
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sometimes it's the citizens insisting government be more pro-active
Similarly, there is fracking going on in another part of the state next to organic farms. The farmers are concerned about pollution affecting their land.
So in some places it is a bigger issue than just a consumer issue.
What I have been hoping to point out is that within communities what constitutes a threat may differ from community to community. If you believe in citizen involvement, then you have to allow for small communities making their own rules, especially if there is consensus within the community.
Now, if the community wants to do something that would be considered a violation of human rights, then authorities outside the community will step in, but if it's a matter of rules that the community wants to enforce and everyone is on board, what is the issue with that?
The big national debate is about whether the interests of business can trump the interests of people, and if the people collectively decide what they want, even if businesses complain, what's wrong with that? If the businesses want to relocate, they can and probably will. But the community may decide it doesn't want those businesses anyway, especially if the businesses happen to be polluting the local area.
On the post: If Everything Is A Threat, Then Nothing Is
Re:
The threats that worry many Techdirtians don't strike me as nearly as big a threat as other issues.
Driving Is Deadlier Than Terrorism; Why Isn't It Scarier? - Blog
On the post: If Everything Is A Threat, Then Nothing Is
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sometimes it's the citizens insisting government be more pro-active
However, advocating breaking down government into smaller, more manageable units is something where you might find agreement among a diverse group of people, including those on the far left and the far right.
On the post: If Everything Is A Threat, Then Nothing Is
Re: Re: Re: Re: Sometimes it's the citizens insisting government be more pro-active
But that's how it works. If one group cares enough to push for legislation and others don't care enough to bother, the activists get their way.
It actually fits well with so much I see on Techdirt. Some of the issues concerning copyright and the Internet matter hugely here but I often point out that most voters are not going to make a decision about who they vote for based on those issues.
Where I live, it's a liberal, tech-savvy community. Our representative made lots of money as a tech entrepreneur and tends to support issues that matter to the tech community. However, the local voters tend to be even more passionate about environmental issues and social causes and would likely base their votes on those more than tech issues. A tech-supportive, but overall politically conservative candidate wouldn't get elected here.
This leads me to the second, related threshold problem - packaging. You can only make it so big. The more warnings you shove onto packaging, the harder it is to read any of them and that just adds to the "which one(s) do I care about?" problem.
I've already agreed to that, pointing out that we're talking about an info delivery system, which could be refined, which is a different issue than the more generic concept that "government issues too many warnings." That's been my point. "Government" and "warnings" are too broadly defined in the article to be much more preaching to the choir about the evils of government. And as I continue to point out, everyone has government. So it's a matter of what government. A culture of locally-run cooperatives involves government, hopefully one that reflects the wishes of each small group.
On the post: If Everything Is A Threat, Then Nothing Is
Re: Re: Sometimes it's the citizens insisting government be more pro-active
That thought occurred to me, too. The people who feel like a product is dangerous would rather have it banned altogether. Putting a label on it is a half-measure.
But let's look at GMOs. The anti-folks GMO folks (and there are many in my community) want food products labelled if they are made with GMO products so they know what to avoid. They would prefer not to have them at all, but labeling is better than nothing.
Similarly, there are food ingredients that some people believe are unhealthy, but they are still on the market. So labeling at least allows people to make their own decisions.
Now we could argue that labeling and warning are not the same thing and if a product needs a warning to be safe, maybe it shouldn't be offered. Or perhaps people don't need to be warned about anything and it's buyer beware for everything.
I think the warnings are helpful, though, when, for example, your kid has just drunk some cleaning product he found under the sink. If there is a warning, you know you need to do something. If there is no warning, you probably assume there's no real harm to him.
On the post: Native Advertising Is Advertising People Want
Re: Re: Sales
It did occur to me. I use "ad blocking" and "do not track add-ons" and it's amazing what I don't see these days. It wasn't the ads that bothered me. It was the tracking.
So, yes, native advertising can get through to me in a way that traditional online ads cannot, which is good for advertisers, I suppose.
But I am trying to downsize my consumption to such an extent that trying to sell me anything is going to be hard. Advertising in any form isn't likely to sway me. If I want to buy something, I'll go searching for it. If I am interested in a particular advertiser's products, I'll sign up for that company's email list. (Of course, one can argue that I might not be aware of a particular company if I don't see an ad or a sponsorship on a website. I am very interested in the tiny house movement, for example. One way for me to know who's making houses and products for that community is to read the various tiny house blogs. On the other hand, does a company need to pay for native advertising? It could always just start its own blog to read the community.)
Do I appreciate native advertising as a way to keep content sites afloat? Yes and no. I value all the "free" content online, but I am skeptical that advertising is going to keep most content sites alive. So I'm always waiting for ad-funded sites to disappear.
On the post: Native Advertising Is Advertising People Want
Sales
Whether native advertising is better than all of the other many marketing options out there really depends on the product/service, the potential audience for it, the ability of the advertiser to reach buyers on its own or whether it needs help from a content provider or community builder, and so on.
The ideal situation might be for advertisers to do it all themselves in that they maintain total control of the message, they receive all the metrics/contact info directly themselves, they can better run tests to see what content and approach works best, etc.
However, not all companies have in-house content/marketing/messaging experts so they might decide there's something to be said for attaching themselves to other websites.
I suppose if I were a content provider, I would try to make sure I can show advertisers that teaming up with me adds to their bottom line and that I offer something better than the other options they might use.
Of course, there are at least three stakeholders in all of this:
1. The reader. Is the native advertising valuable or clutter?
2. The advertiser. Is native advertising effective marketing?
3. The content provider. Does native advertising generate sufficient income without at the same time undercutting the content website?
On the post: If Everything Is A Threat, Then Nothing Is
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Think in terms of info, then
That info is true, though. Being in a car increases your chances of dying in a car accident.
What I see as the bigger concern is conveying info to people in ways that actually work.
Climate change is a big issue now. Those who believe we're at a make-or-break point are looking for ways to alert the world of this situation. How does one do that? Is it constant reminders? Is it a catchy slogan? Is it scaring the shit out of people? Is it linking costs so that they immediately feel the effects financially?
My points have been that in this post "government" and "warnings" are rather vague. Government can be good or bad. Any group that develops rules to function is, in my mind, a form of government, so we'll always have governments.
Similarly, warnings can useful or not. What becomes overkill depends on lots of factors and may vary depending on the audience, the message, and so on.
The author of the post lumped product labels in with national security warnings to make a point, but I think the argument as presented is very loose.
On the post: If Everything Is A Threat, Then Nothing Is
Re: (Ir)rational risk analysis
But we could argue probability issues on all sorts of things and how people irrationally respond to real and perceived threats.
In each case, the overblown risk is invariably used as an excuse for the expansion of government (in the American context, most often Federal government) power.
One could also argue that the US operates that way throughout the world. The anti-military libertarians and the anti-military left probably could find a meeting of the minds on that issue.
On the post: If Everything Is A Threat, Then Nothing Is
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Think in terms of info, then
On the other hand, what happens in this utopian future if the government madates that all that information must appear in your glasses every time you look at something "for your own good". Suddenly your Google Glasses become useless because your vision is constantly obscured by a wall of text.
I was pointing out that "government" is vague because there is government at all levels and some of it is definitely citizen-run rather than mandated by politicians/bureaucrats/lawyers. If the citizens within a community want warnings, then they might pass laws mandating warnings. They might want it rather than view it as an imposition.
I was also pointing out that "warnings" is also vague. I read warnings all the time, in news articles, online, etc. I'm not sure the issue is too many warnings. It's more about access to info. If the info is inconvenient, then it could be a problem. But that could be considered a user-design issue. How do you develop a system that best gives people the right information at the right time?
We could be talking about info overload, which has been debated for generations and it might have nothing to do with government or laws.
It's a more nuanced issue than "government issues too many warnings."
On the post: If Everything Is A Threat, Then Nothing Is
Sometimes it's the citizens insisting government be more pro-active
So it isn't always government imposing its will on the community. Sometimes it's the community telling the politicians that if they don't support environmentally friendly policies, they will be voted out of office.
Sometimes the regulations the anti-government folks don't like are regulations that citizens insisted upon and value.
On the post: If Everything Is A Threat, Then Nothing Is
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Think in terms of info, then
Having a more informed public isn't a bad thing. And if the info and whatever warnings people want to add can be provided without putting stickers on things, why not?
On the post: If Everything Is A Threat, Then Nothing Is
Re: Re: Think in terms of info, then
And that's a business problem rather than a government problem. If your company has provided adequate warning, maybe you'll be less likely to be sued.
On the post: If Everything Is A Threat, Then Nothing Is
Re: Re: Re: Re: Think in terms of info, then
Yes.
Look, I actually read the ingredients on labels. Having the info about what is in foods, beauty supplies, household cleaners, lawn care products, etc., is of interest to me and other label readers like me. I don't need the additional warnings because I am already suspicious of certain ingredients and won't buy products/food/cleaning products which have them.
Whether some people do need those warnings, or whether there are better ways to info people is what I would focus upon.
It sounds like the problem in California is in the implementation more than in the info itself. Having stickers on everything doesn't sound very effective. But allowing people to be more aware of everything around that isn't a bad thing.
I'm just trying to point out that "government is bad because it warns people with stickers" perhaps doesn't get at the right issues.
On the post: If Everything Is A Threat, Then Nothing Is
Re: Re: Think in terms of info, then
What I am saying is that technology will eventually take the stickers away. And that pointing a finger at too much info might be "anti-Internet" in its way. People seem to want the info.
Don't think in terms of "warnings." Think in terms of tags that you can see about everything. That's what AR promises to offer us. Everything will have tags. You can instantly get the back story about everything.
It may not come from "government" but the info will be available. Want to know the hazard of anything? Google glass can show you.
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