Glitches | Founders' Review Editorial

Glitches.

They are tiny little cases, when all go wrong. They are similar to cases when Jupiter, Saturn are in line. The impact is humongous.

Electric and computer engineers use the name glitches to cases, when the result of a new logic kicks in, but the previous logic has just turned off. Imagine them as a short period, when suddenly lights go off, or self-driving turns bad.

Marketing systems have changed due to computers in the last decades. Advertisement is not a full paged photo, or tiny little advertisements of selling a house at the end of the paper anymore. Videos, graphics are edited. Content is generated browsing through tens of thousands of ideas.

We attach emotions and brands to colors, letters, shapes, and locations as a result.

Targeting has also changed. Imagine machine learning as a huge brain, that knows how millions of people behaved after buying a laundry detergent. It can find one person in the United States, whose behavior was impacted to buy a new Tesla. You can just replay it, cash in, and make others buy one, too.

These kinds of patterns never had the chance to show up on the radar. Big data and analytics made this possible. They drive you from a neutral state to a decision within a few days. We call them stressors.

There are a few ways digital marketing and algorithmic marketing changed our lives. Some algorithms never sleep. They may stimulate you using noise and lights. They keep stressing you, or making you happy until you stop everything else but focus on the behavior it drives. We call these continuous stressors as iterations.

Stressors impact your emotions. They never had the power before to do much. Iterations make them persistent from a remote computer system. It becomes cyber-stalking or cyber-harassment.

You can recognize iterations by smiling, when you have seen the same ad or trick before. This is how your brain learns. It looks out of the box, adds a new neural connection to ignore the stressor. The stressor becomes benign.

Stressors and iterations may project false feedback. They can have glitches. It may prevent decisions that are actually right. We do not buy things, that we should. Any immediate feedback on a thought and decision creates groupthink. It turns off a part of a brain, that predicts the impact, and it relies on the entire system. They drive people just like they were computer systems. Such feedback systems are called trainers.

Iterations can have benign impact in the long run. People recognize and ignore them. Trainers can act in stealth for a long time. Glitches can be dangerous, when trainers change their patterns to test our reaction or change our behavior.

The last group of algorithms are the ones that suggest items. They are super knowledgeable databases. Still, they are a reflection of our society of suboptimal groups of societies. The same information is built into computers. The suggestion may ignore some vendors. It may promote some all the time. These patterns are created in the giant datacenters all around the world. They reflect the world, but they are not real and distorted. They need to be distorted to change all the time retraining on our behavior. We call them distortions.

Stressors, iterations, trainers, and distortions are the result of algorithms that arose with computers. They can make riches, but they can make you miserable. Luckily, The more we will create, the less impact they will have. Each of them gets lower and lower share of our attention. We simply learn how to live with them just like a pack of dogs in a neighborhood.

There are dangers with every invention at the beginning before we learn the mitigation factors.

Problem. A scheduler that schedules trains to lower layover time can be used to schedule people.

Solution. Indeed, the trains are scheduled to carry more people to fill another train at a certain time. More people together on the other hand can affect the basic reproduction number of a virus. Empirical evidence shows, when accurate, timely mass data was available first, we saw outbreaks of rare viruses.

Problem. New advancements do not have enough empirical evidence to support the theory.

Solution. This may have been the result of more advanced scheduling due to tracking cell phone signals in case of the SARS epidemic. This may have been the result of mass data based artificial intelligence in case of the COVID-19 pandemic. Mask mandates can mitigate the increased number by the use of scheduling artificial intelligence.

Problem. Sudoku raised together with artificial intelligence. Sudoku style information aggregation ignores monetary gains.

Solution. Indeed. Using a single currency allowed societies to measure the rates and the risks of decisions. Sudoku style information piling in the same dataset is dangerous. Decisions have multiple effects, if advertisements have different covert emotional impact on different customers. Society will scatter with sudoku style thinking with marketing or money. Such results increase risks and this hinders growth.

The dilemma of digital marketing decision makers

You face glitches, iterations, stressors, and trainers. What should you do when you design such systems? Should you be worried not implementing anything? Just stick to the decades old standards of spam email. Whenever you work and do actions based on a dataset ask one thing.

Does the action have an annoyance level of a spam email? Did the target person give permission, to use the data or to drive an action? Can they opt out of an action?

Never spoof. Spoofing is sending stressors on behalf of others without their knowledge. There are proper opt-in and opt-out rules in most jurisdictions that make spoofing illegal. Anti-spamming regulations require notifying the source and place an option to opt out.

If you take an action that may cause significant or irreparable damage or disturbance, you ask first. When you do not have permission to use the data, you ignore it, or seek for permission. The client knows whether the aggregate of systems may cause glitches or not.

In any other case it may be part of a pattern of stressors that are unwanted. It may be just an annoyance like a spam. Make sure that you provide and opt-out option.