It only works until Mickey Mouse shows up on your Tiktok feed lynching an African American and doing a sieg heil salute. Are you sure Disney wants that or would not care about that??
There are clearly plenty of people who feel the same way as you, and for those people what I’m about to ask might have such an obvious answer that it could feel like I’m being rhetorical or feigning ignorance to provoke an emotional response, but it’s truly honest:
Why should Disney care?
To which you might say “because people care”, so:
Why should people care?
Back when I was a spud I used futuristic text-to-speech synthesis to make my computer say “Eye am Bill Gaytes my farts go FERT FERT FERT” - Should Bill Gates be offended? What about the people who like him? What about the Intel processor I used to create it? Or the company behind the TTS software? Would anyone think they’re involved and endorsed it? I guess the real question is: are we catering the world to people who can’t make that distinction?
People care because it's entirely unconscious. Even if you choose not to care, you can't, because you've already seen it.
The way advertisement works is that it's brain hacking - it's just associations. Over time your brain associates a brand with a product or products, and then simply by having this association in your brain you're more likely to buy the product.
This also works for negative advertisement.
Think about it. Suppose you did see mickey mouse saluting Hitler, or maybe you saw mickey mouse stick a jar up his little rat ass.
When you see mickey mouse, undoubtedly, even if just for a second, your mind will think about what you saw before. You might discount it immediately, but the damage is done. You still feel that emotion, even if only for a split second, and you have been influenced by it.
Appropriate example, more than some may realize. Walt Disney and Adolf Hitler were good friends. Walt would send him a real of cartoons every month. Adolf and his senior leaders would watch it at the resort in the Alps. One may still be able to find the silent films that one of his mistresses filmed showing them watching cartoons on the projector with his senior leaders. Adolf was big into art and appreciated the work Disney created. There was a project about 15 or so years ago to use computing power to figure out what Adolf was saying based on his muscle movements since she was filming from behind him at an angle. I can't remember what the project was called. I saw it on a TV program.
The advertising mechanism you outlined proves too much. Every parody, every satirical cartoon, every unflattering depiction creates profit risking associations? The idea that negative association might originate from AI generated Mickey doing something vile does not seem categorically distinct from the hand drawn rule 34 that has existed for decades, or from South Park episodes, or from bathroom stall drawings. Memories, sure, but I’m not sure the details of the studies support the idea that seeing childish or satirical works that are obviously not created or supported by the IP holder will have that kind of negative cognitive association. Actual acts done by the company, or willing associations with unsavory acts - absolutely. But there’s a wide distinction between taking a cartoon episode out of syndication because Epstein was a guest character voice, and fretting over a 3rd grader typing “Daffy but with boobs and stuff” into photoshop-o-matic.com. The question is whether fleeting cognitive residue constitutes actionable damage or simply the background noise of living among other minds who create things.
Kids making their computers say profane things about famous people or even making crude jokes at the expense of the disabled themselves created “negative associations” with the technology, and potentially with the companies producing it (if the effect is somehow unaffected by context), but the developers did not restrict access and blind people gained a tool that fundamentally altered their ability to navigate the world.
Now? Parents of a terminally ill child who cannot afford a trip could place their daughter in a photo with Elsa. Therapists working with autistic children who connect only with specific Disney characters could generate personalized social stories and visual supports. Teachers in underfunded schools could create engaging materials without licensing fees. Placing a real person alongside Mickey Mouse, or just making a Disney character give a thumbs up and “Happy Birthday, Billy”, required Disney's permission, professional artistic skill, and significant money. That gatekeeping is dissolving and I can’t imagine the positive impact it could have in people’s lives…apparently assuming Billy doesn’t get access to the prompt input first and ruin it for everyone.
This used to be a "zing", but don't think it is anymore. Try to make a new profile somewhere and select a few topics of interest. You will get suggested the most engaging "relevant" content. For me, I made a cycling Instagram and my feed instantly got filled with girls showing of cleavage in lycra with cycling hashtags.
...have you ever thought about the way you're using the app, then? Because I, personally, get nothing else other than dumb memes and posts from people I follow.
Look, I've gotten cartel beheadings and beatings on a YouTube search query for Jack Russell terriers.
Don't throw shade. If you haven't gotten "How the fuck did that get there?", consider yourself lucky I guess. Best I can figure, terriers have some unintentional shared vector space with much more unpleasant content.
This is a good point. Instead of policing what trolls will use it for, the same AI should be able to detect racist content and prevent it from spreading
Let’s force ASML to open up its manufacturing line and cancel their patents for squandering innovation, but wait they’re an incredible company that dominated the field with their hard work and diligence, so it’s not fair for them.
Similarly, the open markets should apply to everyone, not just dominant American firms.
Though, I’m not saying they’re innocent and I think they have to be even broken up due to their monopolistic behaviors.
> Who’s stopping anyone from competing with Apple?
Apple's dominant market position and abuse of network effects via their proprietary standards, like the one we're talking about from this article.
> Let’s force ASML to open up its manufacturing line and cancel their patents for squandering innovation
No-one's arguing for any equivalent of that to happen to Apple. Just that when there's an open standard for inter-device communication, they should follow that. Imagine if ASML-manufactured processors wouldn't work with standard DDR5, only with some special memory chips that only ASML could manufacture, that would be the equivalent to what Apple is doing.
Apple should enjoy the profits from when they make better products that win on their merits. But they should have to compete fairly.
Since people are getting very fixated on Apple's success and how they dominated all the previous European phone manufacturers, let me state it clearly, they're a monopoly and must be regulated, but you regulate a market by setting up market rules, not by chasing individual companies.
European regulators are playing favoritism for themselves, not dismantling monopolies for the sake of consumers. There are a lot of companies from Spotify to ASML who are enjoying monopolistic powers in their own market, squandering innovation by not letting their competitors use their platform or implement standards created by other foreign companies. Apple being a bigger monopoly doesn't make others a saint, it's just that those monopolies suit the regulators while Apple doesn't, and that's the original point I made with the ASML example, they're being a hypocrite about it.
> you regulate a market by setting up market rules, not by chasing individual companies
Which is exactly what Europe is doing. They have interoperability rules and they're applying them consistently. Nothing here is targeting Apple specifically, they're getting hit by the rules because they're a big monopoly abuser.
> There are a lot of companies from Spotify to ASML who are enjoying monopolistic powers in their own market, squandering innovation by not letting their competitors use their platform or implement standards created by other foreign companies.
What standards would those be, concretely? Have any of them bothered to pursue the EU standard designation process?
I think it is wrong to force Apple to support various "open standards". Other device manufacturers should make better devices and have people switch naturally to them because they are better.
Like Google cried to every possible regulator that Apple is the big bad wolf that doesn't want to support RCE. Why? If it was that good, more people would use Androids for that.
The problem, as I see it, is that everyone else besides Apple spends very little on physical devices build quality and software polishing, and you end up with crap devices that are slow, with weird interfaces and so on.
> Other device manufacturers should make better devices and have people switch naturally to them because they are better.
That doesn't work when they're a monopoly. Did the whole robber baron era just not happen in your world?
I'd flip it around: Apple should make better devices so that they can retain customers on their merits, rather than because their friends' phones are going to "accidentally" lose their text messages if they dare try a non-Apple phone.
I compare iPhones with Samsung flagships such as the S line.
Tge iPhones are simply better made: they don’t feel light or plasticky, the UI on Android is way worse compared to iOS and so on.
And the whole SMS thing is just ridiculous: iMessage and SMS are two differrent things, hence they are highlighted with different colors so you know you can’t send pictures via SMS and most likely you have to switch to other apps such as Whatsapp, FB Messenger, Telegram and others. It does not mean you have to buy an iPhone to talk to your friends that prefer Apple products.
Cabled offered far less content, with far less convenience, with far more ad breaks, for far more money.
The current situation is far preferable to being restricted to a specific screen in your home, controlled by a specific box, usable only with long term contracts, where you had to wait on hold on the phone and be home during 4 hour windows for a technician just to get something installed or canceled.
More ad time. Higher monthly prices. More fracturing of content requiring more subscriptions.
One of the pros these days is that it’s all on demand. Back in the day you had to make time to watch a show on a certain time unless you were affluent enough to own a DVR.
Writing is on the wall. Streaming services will become (already is IMO) just like the old cable industry.
"Cut the cord and stop paying $80/mo" Funny how that was just representative of the money left on the table that was to be snatched up anyhow before long.
Bur daddy Trump didn’t campaign on spending more money. Just results. Im so tired of disingenuous campaign “promises” leading to electing officials who don’t have a clue. And this isn’t about left and right, it’s about politics becoming a PR charade and society refuses to hold those elected really accountable for their campaign declarations.
Are you proposing everyone make the optimal decision in advance, when outcomes are all speculative, and just be sure to get it right so there’s no need to learn and adapt to circumstances?
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