RecallMadness

You appear to have eaten an Onion OP.

The Civilian is a satire site.

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”.

You don’t need a monopoly for this to be a problem.

Databrokers can offer data sets of “customer price elasticity”. Tables of “how much we think X would spend on these generic item categories”. Eg “booly would pay $15 for a burger, vs $10 average”

Point of Sale systems could start offering integrations to these data sets.

All shops have to do now is set a list price, a minimum price, a category, and leave it up to the PoS to (not) give discounts.

You want a burger, you’re fed a single-use short lived discount “$5 off a $20 burger. Today only” While someone else gets “buy one get one free”.

It’s then a ‘fair’ market. Shops have and ‘compete’ with their (high) list prices, data brokers compete with “excess profit” statistics (ie, how much more money above the minimum price they made). Nobody is colluding, they’re just basing discounts off external arbitrary signals.

It slowly becomes the norm to get just-in-time discounts, and the consumer gets shafted. If you’re not in the system, you’re paying more than everyone else.

(And all of this has been happening in some markets for over a decade)

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.

Imo, the term “buy” for all goods should pass some sort of litmus test. Eg:

does the product being sold have the same properties as a brick?

• can the product be resold privately?
• can the product be lent to another user temporarily?
• would the product still perform its function when the manufacturer stops supporting it?
• would the product still perform its function if the manufacturer ceased to exist.

if the product does not pass all these tests, the customer is not buying. Consider using terms such as ‘rent’ or ‘lease’ or ‘subscription’

Explain what you want. It’s that easy.

I did many years of “I want something simple that I can maintain easily, and will still look ok when I drag my ass out of bed at 10am, an hour late for work. Anything but a buzz cut”

Eventually I found something that I can touch up at home myself, and can explain to even the shittiest of barbers.

It’s hair. Nobody really gives a shit. You’ll get some shit ones, some good ones, a buzz cut you explicitly didn’t want. Nobody got hurt, and it grows back.

If 2000 out of 5,000,000,000 images can be found, why couldn’t they be found before the dataset was published.

Doesn’t stop them opening up as “Hungry Janet” or something.

Burger King opened as Hungry Jacks in (Queensland?) Australia as “Burger King” already existed. But is also now trading under the “Burger King” brand in some places.

It’s America, so the answer is probably “No”.

Do you not have consumer protection laws?

We’ve had digital price tags for decades. But you couldn’t do this in NZ. Stores are obligated to sell you a product at the price they advertise it for AND have a reasonable quantity of units at that price… you couldn’t sell 1 TV for $1.

So these systems would need to track what price you saw it at.

(Caveat: Our stores are still cunts and have been found to overcharge people)

They are also IR controlled. A lot of them have a little window on the front of the unit, and an array of transmitters in the ceiling.

Same volume, just increased length but reduced girth.