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Picture this:
- You type on Google “laptop won’t turn on”
- Google now knows you have a broken laptop and can estimate how desperate you are to fix it.
- Because it knows how desperate you are, it can increase shop prices proportionally.
You are going to pay the maximum they get you to pay.
That’s algorithmic pricing.
The more companies know about you, the more they can predict and sell how desperate you are to other stores out there.
An internet-connected car knows much more about you than you realize. A smart TV also knows what you like. Your Alexa knows if there is a problem in the home.
Privacy is much more than just sensitive data.
It’s about not giving leverage away.
Because algorithms will use it against you.
Be safe out there.
In a past life I wrote the software that did this.
It’s not just about charging more when you’re desperate. It’s also things like charging you less to keep you addicted, or getting you hooked. Exploiting your emotions and behaviour to make it effective. A small loss on you now could be a long time gain for them.
Some more scenarios:
- you’ve decided to quit alcohol. Your social media accounts are used to identify you’re looking for advice. They advertise more, and send you heavy, heavy discounts a few days in to keep you on the wagon.
- Your cars insurance tracker has picked up your erratic driving. Your phone has tracked more forceful interactions, your works email provider has revealed you’ve been in a minimum of three meetings all day; You’re having a shit, stressful, day. They can’t give you discounts on your cigarettes but they do know they can get you to buy two packs instead of one by serving you ads that suggest stock levels are low. You buy two and chain smoke all day, your daily average goes from 0.5 to 0.7 packs a day.
- You go to a chain restaurant often. They know they can get you to buy more in the long run if they increase the volume you eat gradually. Every visit they goad you into buying more. Didn’t do it last time? Steeper discounts next time. Until one day you buy the extra side. That’s now your new baseline. A few weeks of that and back onto the stair climb. A little by little. You’re spending more and more.
- you’re on holiday. everyone knows you’re not coming back anytime soon so they charge full price. But move to a new city? Everyone has discounts for you to get you in the door.
The data available back then was pretty minimal, effectively only the data we generated. But it was still enough to prey on your lizard brain. With data brokerage I’ve got no idea what level of evils we could have done.
Thanks for ‘coming out’ about it. Without doxing yourself too heavily, would you mind to share more about the industry in particular or measurement of these practises? Dip you know if it was common (and when was this?)
I know for sure that we can’t trust companies to act in our best interests (if anything, its a hostile relationship), but I guess I’m curious about your inside perspective. Has that jaded you much at all?
Social/Mobile games. So an already predatory industry. Let’s get people addicted to a game, and then suck as much money from them as possible.
In the industry, we definitely weren’t the only ones doing it. And really we were only doing basic stuff (it was all in house developed middleware, so effort vs reward didn’t make much sense to go hard) I wouldn’t be surprised if others were going deep.
- the hardest part is getting someone to part with their money. But once they’ve done it once, even for the smallest amount, the second purchase will be easier.
- conversions that stopped playing got emails with discounts.
- whales got freebies when they lost to keep them happy.
- everything else was just finding the customers perfect price.
- ultimately we were selling noting. So any sale is better than no sale. You can’t make a loss on a number in a database.
Everything was broken down into campaigns (we’d have multiple running at any one time) targeting different segments. Then we’d track the conversion, sale, and retention numbers of those campaigns against each other. Sometimes one campaign might flop for one segment but not another, so we’d retarget with a new one.
I don’t think it’s used much in other markets. I know Twilio has Segment, that could be used to do segmented pricing but I’ve never really seen it done in other industries.
I wouldn’t say it’s jaded me. It has made me conscious of my data footprint. I don’t play mobile or f2p games. But I am weary. The COVID greed-flation showed the mindset of businesses. It might not be long until targeted pricing becomes worthwhile to make number go up (still), and hidden under the guise of “lowering prices”.
Protip: Before buying a laptop, google “homeless shelters in Detroit”.
Even better: get homeless; log in from shelter WiFi. Actually from experience, it doesn’t matter. You are a consumer. Being homeless doesn’t exclude you from the marketplace. I got a free “obamaphone” while in a shelter. That shit is infested with popups.
Surely if you’re homeless and buying a laptop, then you’re DESPERATE for a laptop. Jerks can use that against you.
Google “I have way too many laptops and they all work great.”
Google aggressively reduces prices on laptops to tempt you to buy more of them anyway.
You buy 3 more to go with your ever increasing pile
Is that why I see all those “I have too many ThinkPads, I just bought three more.” Posts, or is that just what part of the Internet I’m hanging out in?
Who would potential reselling business idea
“I have a compulsion to buy laptops but only when they’re less than $100”
Stonks
I came here to get the fuck away from reddit yo…
I invest all my money into laptops. When China invades taiwan and TSMC factories self destructs, I will resell them for a modest profit in the demand-heavy market. Literally can’t go tits up.
I think one of the largest Intel fabs is in Israel for god’s sake. We really do excels as a species don’t we.
They also serve you the ads with the most JavaScript bs and crypto mining so you think your laptop is obsolete and you need a new one.
Without ublock Firefox makes my PC take off
This cat with the PC running around unfettered. Scaring all the cats and dogs.
Memes are supposed to make me laugh.
This just makes me sad, and existential.
Don’t be sad.
Just be happy, problems solved. No need to thank me.
If smart TVs knew what we liked, I don’t think 90% of what’s in the “most popular” sections of every streaming service in existence would be filled with random shit nobody has ever heard of. Unless they know what we like, and then just refuse to give us what we actually like… 🤔
You’re already paying for the streaming service. They don’t benefit off of giving you what you want in that scenario
They don’t need to recommend you the shows you already know about. They want to recommend you things you haven’t heard about in the hopes that you will find something new that you like so that show will keep you paying once the ones you already are watching are done.
This. This benefits them.
And if it fails, well again: you’re already paying them.
I can see how this would be a concern in theory but currently google can’t even find me the products I’m looking for even when I type in exact parameters so we’re a long way off from it predicting not only what you need but how desperate you are for it.
Worked with both marketing and tech dudes many years ago, and two things I learned were (1) marketing guys overestimate new/fad tools so badly and (2) they (in conjunction with management) can be mercylessly demanding over TI guys.
The economics term for this is price discrimination. Nothing to do with racial discrimination, it’s discriminating based on willingness to pay.
But usually it’s not done by raising the prices above normal it’s done by setting the regular prices higher and then offering a discount to people who aren’t willing to pay less. People tend not to get upset when it’s done that way. Student discount at the movie theater is a form of price discrimination. People accept it because they’re being nice to people that don’t have a lot of money. Seniors discount? Also being nice, I guess. But the reality is they know everyone else is willing to pay more so they charge more.
And this has already been happening online. About a decade ago I noticed what when I searched for flights from an airline then went to facebook, I’d get an ad from that airline offering a discount. Not as sophisticated as attempting to determining the exact price I was willing to pay, but it’s along the same lines.
But the problems with these schemes is that people quickly figure out the system. I just made it a habit to search for a flight, then go onto facebook to look for the discount even when I’d be willing to pay even if there was no discount. But why not trick the system into thinking I didn’t really care about booking the flight and get that discount?
people figure out the system
Only tech savvy people figure out how to go around this system. Roughly 80% ~ 90% of consumers will not realize what’s happening or won’t bother figuring out a solution.
Hell, even if only 10% of the consumers paid a slightly higher price the company still earns more by buying your data.
Statistics are on the side of the company. Buying consumer data is always the best strategy for them. The only thing that can limit abuse of privacy and consumer rights is government regulation.
then offering a discount to people who aren’t willing to pay less.
Do you mean “aren’t willing to pay the full price”?
Okay so fast-forward
tentwo more years beyond that (it doesn’t matter how much - all of this is already in the past anyway:-P): virtually everyone (from your area) has an internet presence. But for you, all “they” see is a tiny stream of encrypted traffic to servers outside of your home country. Or maybe a large stream, whatever - are you downloading child pornography perhaps? Or are you a terrorist, trying to evade detection by the “legitimate” establishment, who is simply trying to “help” you to set the price for fixing your laptop?Bam, they charge you the maximum amount for the repair anyway, then tack on a fee for the extra effort involved in having to investigate you further, making the final price double what it would have been. And this happens for every single item you buy, plus you cannot get a job b/c you don’t have a FacedInLinkThread account. The best sheeples get the best pricing structures…
This isn’t something that individuals can fight easily, without a rather extreme amount of effort involved. Hence we should fight it together.
Fast food joints already offer lower prices in their apps than at the drive through. You pay the difference through all the data they harvest.
Yes I have an order ready for a “None-ya”, is there a “None-ya” here? Is anyone here named “None-ya bidness”?
It’s a damnable choice, that’s for sure. Let them see literally everything that you do - in the sense of every single app that you have installed on that same machine - or else pay the extra price. Ngl, depending on how often I visit each place, I’ve gone both ways on this. Also, rather than recall a unique password for every site that is accessible from your mobile and potentially synched with a desktop, if you log in using a Play/Google or App/Apple account, then they have that link too - it’s just so convenient though!
It used to be email addresses. Now that still happens, but the ratchet has moved up to include phones. This is why I refuse to put banking apps onto any mobile devices - they are not “computers”, nor are they “yours”, most often even when rooted & with the OS replaced, b/c of the corruption that Google has introduced into the core Android OS.
But… what else can we do, other than choose which manner of payment we will offer the wolves? Even if that is only in terms of our efforts, time, and attention spans (and possibly the cost of a 2nd phone or at least SIM:-P) - they manage to define so many of our actions even if only in the negative sense of what we rail against. That part is inevitable, so the only question remaining is how much do we give in.
I’ve only ever seen higher prices in apps
Look at me moneybags over here, having so much money his algorithmic pricing goes up
I think something got lost in translation, this isn’t literally about google raising your prices but about dynamic pricing + corporations having all your data. Google is just for the example.
Also incorrect. Carry on.
Can you please explain what you read it as? Are you saying it was literal and that Dell/HP/Lenovo are raising their prices immediately from the data Google obtained by you searching for a computer repair? I was under the impression it was just an example of how info can be exploited like the person you replied to. It seems like it would lose more sales than gain if that were real, as all vendors and resellers would have to raise across the board. Like Amazon couldn’t all the sudden be cheaper than you, or they’d take your sale from the manufacturers website
Let me put on my MBA hat and propose to only show the user websites selling new notebooks and suppress repair shop or repair guide pages.
guess what insurance companies make money off of ?
Pretty sure that’s very illegal here on Europe.
We have the freedom to pay more!
this is why everyone should stop using google
This is a pretty great point. I never looked at privacy through this window.
Looks like I’m going to migrate in been considering proton for some time now anyway.
keep in mind nothing is immune to enshittification. assume that everything you do online, even with proton or other “privacy first” companies, exists online. forever. and even if a company stays true to their “privacy first” policy, inevitably, they’ll be breached, and it’ll all be out in the world anyway
Proton, at least, is now bound by law to act in the best interest of its customers, due to being a Swiss non-profit.
All the metadata perhaps (still very valuable), but client-side, zero-access encryption means it’s encrypted before it hits the servers. So while a data leak might, for example, show who, when, and how much you’re emailing, it wouldn’t show the content of the email as gmail would.
Moving in the direction of better and voting with your dollars is an important step away from already enshittified structures, which I’d argue, are inherent to certain models and not others. EG: a self hosted, open source software developed by a non-profit could sell and incorporate and enshittify, but the possibility of forking is an effective disincentive that could easily eat projected gains.
This definitely happens with ridesharing services. Whenever you look up a location it usually quotes you, but if you come back to the app like in 5 minutes, it raises the price in a funny way.
Funny, maybe its when I travel, but, I’ll look up a route on Uber an hour before I plan to leave, go do something else for a while and it’ll have gone down a buck or two.
