Silicon Valley is all about the hard sell these days
In March, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta also started advertising for teenage Instagram accounts. In one 30-second spot, a mother watches her son cross the street with text that reads: “You’ve always looked out for them. We’re here to do it with you.” From December 10th, Australia’s historic social media ban for teenagers will come into effect. Requires companies to disable accounts of children under 16. So far, Meta, Tik Tok, Snap and YouTube have agreed to comply with the new regulations.
Right now, the jury is still out on how this messaging works. Jonathan Flowers, assistant professor of philosophy at Blue Sky University in California, writes: “I hate these damn ChatGPT ads that show people helping people with things like planning a date that looks ‘cool’, or how to be a ‘morning person’, all things that should have been learned from a community, not a snappy autocorrect. Damn all the noise.”
“It’s interesting that the whole point of ChatGPT is to tell everyone they’re stupid idiots who can’t possibly do things alone that humans have done since the dawn of time,” added author Lincoln Michel at X.
Despite such sentiment, the public has never been more ready for the hard sell on technology than at this moment, says Brian Forer, senior vice president of product strategy at Nielsen. According to Nielsen analysis, more than 70 percent of TV viewing in the third quarter of 2025 was on ad-supported platforms, with streaming accounting for nearly half of all ad viewers. In the past week alone, I’ve come across TikTok and Instagram ads, and often similar ads on Peacock, Amazon, and Hulu.
“Advertising has effectively financed television content for decades,” says Forer. The difference now is the intensity with which Silicon Valley, in particular, seems to depend on marketing itself to consumers in a way that proves not only their value, but their sustainable profits.
This is a path that the tech elites are remarkably aware of as they convince people to buy whatever they want to build. In his telegenic interview with Fallon, Altman said, “Technology has a lot of downsides,” but noted that it’s an “equalizing force.” It was all part of the hard sell. Because even Silicon Valley can’t avoid the reality in front of them: if consumers don’t believe in your product, you can’t build a future.
