Picture this
Picture this
post text
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.
Here's the one that convinced my dad that connecting everything is bad:
Your smart fridge knows what's inside and knows you just added a 12 pack of soda and donuts to the shopping list. They sell that data to a bunch of companies, including your insurance company. They know you have diabetes.
Your insurance rates just went up for the fifth time this year because your insurance company knows what you're eating.
And it's a good thing you don't drink beer or your car insurance would have gone up 'due to increased risk factors.' too bad you wanted to buy a new car this year.
Not only can you not afford it now, the price went up because they know you want a car. I'm sure they would make a payment deal with you though.
And every company will know all about the deal, the beer, the donuts, and all it took was sending money to whatever company had the information, and they were more than happy to sell it.
The more we allow companies to freely operate like this without regulation and without proper punishment for breaking the rules, we will continue sliding toward the hellscape of Ferenginar. For the non trekkies, it's a hyper-capitalist species of profit-driven assholes.
The best thing is these companies will say it's not violation of your privacy because they sell the data without a direct link to your name or address. But guess what? They bundle it with all kinds of other identifiers like age, sex, weight, approximate location, whatever else you give them. The insurance company then takes that and modifies the category that is specifically this age bracket, approximate location, weight, age, beer and donuts in the fridge. And surprise! You fit all these "anonymous" identifiers.
But no harm done, your identity is safe 👍Well said and a core concept people need to understand to appreciate data privacy/sovereignty. Simply calling it data overlooks what it often is: your behavior over time. We don't call it PII but few things are more personally identifying.
when google gave away those google assistant spheres some years ago for free, i ordered one just to have one less of those fucking things out in the world. it went straight in the trash
It’s like Ron Swanson and the vegan bacon
I hope you also advised to only use cash. When you use a credit card, not only does Kroger or Walmart know your dietary habits, but many merchants share level 2 transaction data with your credit card company, so they know individual items in your receipt as well.
And if you enroll in those "apples/samsung/etc" pay services on your phone, those services also gain access to your purchase history, even if you never use the service.
I was surprised by a recent, popular comment here on lemmy where someone advised against using cash because of missing out on rewards. A majority of people don't appreciate the tradeoffs here. By default, banks and private companies have more info on us than we have on ourselves. To think that they're going to do anything that benefits us more than them is naive. While not everything is zero sum, we are talking about extractive, profit seeking industries.
Cash seems like the best defense on this front. I recent switched back to cash, and continue to track my own finances; Bank sees $500 withdrawal; I see $34.45 at grocery store, $19.20 at hardware store, etc.
Pro tip: try random but memorable phone numbers at checkout. Now you can enjoy the savings, and salt/contaminate the data extraction of others. The more randomness (where and when you shop, what you buy, which numbers you use) the better.
And the health apps know when you're sleeping, they know your heartrate throughout the day, your o2 sats. They can take all this mortality risk data to factor in things, advertise drugs to you, advertise foods they know you'll eat even though it's bad, manipulate how your insurance pays out for your next treatment because it would have been preventable if you hadn't eaten those donuts. The phone manufacturers know you run apps, how long, what you do (yes, even Apple, especially Apple, they hide behind "privacy" so you feel ok with what they do to you) what web pages you open, how long you view them.
They could biometrically paint a picture of your day, your movement, there's an entire profile of data available on many humans. I wouldn't be surprised if they aren't already tying heart rate data to viewership of media and advertising.
So, FUD, then?
This only sounds bad for people with a love of beer and donuts.
Admittedly, I am included within that group. But if I wasn't, I could see supporting such variable rates.
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.
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”.
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 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
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
Who would potential reselling business idea
"I have a compulsion to buy laptops but only when they're less than $100"
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?
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
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
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.
I'm going to engineer an llm which continuously complains on social media that I don't have enough money to buy a new laptop until it drops below x price
Pretty sure that's very illegal here on Europe.
We have the freedom to pay more!
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"?
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.
Because sad backwards is das
Und das nich gut
guess what insurance companies make money off of ?
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.
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.
This is only a problem if the service provider is a monopoly (or if every service provider illegally coordinates price fixing).
I might be willing to pay up to $800 to fix a $1000 computer (a more expensive repair might cause me to look to buy a replacement rather than repairing). But if it's a 1 hour job requiring $100 of parts, then all the computer repair shops would be competing with each other for my business, essentially setting their hourly rate for their labor. At that point it's like bidding at auction up to a certain point, but expecting to still pay the lowest available price.
So the problem isn't necessarily perfect pricing information from the other side, but lack of competition for pricing from the other side. We should be fighting to break up monopolies and punishing illegal price fixing.
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)
This framework you describe is still grounded in a large number of producers intentionally avoiding undercutting the competition in price.
If a profit can be made selling burgers for $10, and literally every burger seller knows that I'm happy paying $15 for a burger, they still have to compete with each other to get my business. Am I going to choose the place that charges everyone $10, or the place that I know engages in opaque pricing and is offering me $15? The most sophisticated price discrimination algorithm in the world doesnt do any good if the other burger shops don't play along.
And this plays out every day in places like airports. Yes, I know I just need to eat before I jump on my connecting flight, and I'm not super price sensitive in that situation. But I won't go to the place that's far and away more expensive than another, or who I just recently read about on some travel blog as a price gouger.
And for a more concrete example of something that happens today, with services that are worth a completely different price than what it costs to provide it, and where everyone knows the buyer is valuing the service at that high value. Say I have an unfinished basement, and I want to hire a contractor to finish it with drywall, paint, flooring, HVAC, etc. It's obvious to everyone how much that project adds to the livable square footage, and plenty of public valuation models show exactly how much that job adds to the value of the home. And everyone knows I'm about to list the home afterward for sale. But if 10 contractors are competing for the job, they don't really care what value it provides to me if I choose not to hire them, so they're bidding prices that cover the level of profit they want to make on the job, while not ceding the price advantage to the competition. The presence of competition tempers the price gouging.
So I still think competition is the key policy to pursue. Competition solves the problem being described here, and any market with this kind of individualized price gouging is suffering from insufficient competition.
Meanwhile I just noticed that my mobile provider (Congstar Germany) will be completely phasing out their online customer center in favor of their app. They already removed functionality from the site, like seeing how much data you have used this month. Why? The answer is in their huge list of third-party cookies I assume.
I agree with the broad premise that your information has value, but I wouldn't worry about Google increasing prices just for you. Companies still control their own websites and they aren't going to allow another company to change what they change directly.
What Google sells is the ability for a company to get their website in front of your eyes. They sell the top spaces in your search results. A company who doesn't pay Google gets pushed to page two.vor three. Now in a sense that increases your prices because the cost of the companies increased ad budgets is passed on to you.
You don't think companies would opt into letting Google manage "dynamic pricing" for them on a per-user basis? Travel sites already offer this for airlines after you signal intent, such as a destination and date range... And sellers on Amazon already use tools like Sellery to algorithmically reprice items without human supervision. Some products change price hundreds of times per day as a result.
Big retailers like Walmart are trying to make "personalized pricing" work, which tries to anticipate price tolerance based on past shopping behavior on an individual basis.
So it's not a stretch at all IMO to imagine Google offering a "personalized pricing" service that you can install on any website, right under the script tag for Google Analytics. Or Amazon, or Walmart, or whoever-- They all have mountains of data on us.
You make a good point, but think of it this way. Someone Googles "tips on buying a new laptop". Companies enrolled with the Google program bump up their prices for that user. But what about websites not enrolled in the program? Their prices stay lower, so if the person buying the laptop ships around even a little bit, they will likely buy from one of the non-affiliated sites.
It only works if the whole marketplace is under the system. Amazon is a shopping experience tailored to keep people inside their system, so it works with them. You aren't going to take the time to price match across multiple websites for a pair of socks. I think it is a lot harder to manipulate prices with big-ticket items, where people will put in the effort to shop around.
I don't know how accurate this is. Every time i try googling this, i get multiple help forums (brand website, Microsoft help, reddit discussions) for how to troubleshoot, with no ads for new laptops. While i typically provide a more specific search (e.g. my laptop brand and model won't boot), i tried googling "my laptop won't turn on" and received similar, albeit less specific, suggestions.
I wonder if the original poster often searches for laptop prices to find deals and maybe it defaulted to that?
This post is posed as the next big step in internet pricing, not something necessarily happening today.
Today, it's not standard procedure outside of some specific segments (that I know of, maybe airfare? But the data fed in is more limited) but tapping into the vast amounts of data we leak through the services we use is far too big of a gold mine for companies to overlook researching and tapping into. There's a lot of things that need to happen (who supplies data? Google is the hypothetical here but what's their price? etc.) but it's absolutely feasible at scale.
It does happen today though. The price for things on Amazon is unique to you and constantly changes.
Good point, i totally misunderstood the "picture this" lead in. Yeah it's a completely feasible situation though it does seem extreme.
Hotel and air ticket booking are like this already
internet has ads?
OP is fearmongering. It's all good.
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.
How could this example be modified a bit?
Maybe they know you’re an executive assistant and you search “CEO’s laptop won’t turn on“.
(Every repair shop already has the opportunity to charge desperation pricing for non-bootable machines.)
Is there evidence previous search-based algorithmic pricing is being used?
If it exists, you wouldn't see it, because it would be proprietary. It probably does exist, but it's useless.
So how does this affect me when price comparison sites are a thing?
Your internet privacy affects a lot more than pricing. Someone can somehow find your information online, whether they buy it from an information broker or from some of the many giant hacks. Then they can use that information to track you down and hurt you. Also, most people aren't looking at price comparison sites.
I would never buy a laptop from Google anyway.
If you use the Internet, there's a very good chance they know just about everything anyway. They're insidious.
Google isn't necessarily the seller, but Best Buy, Staples, Amazon, Walmart and Target could hash out a deal with Google (or Bing, etc.) for "insights".
I don't believe they can ascertain how desperate you are to fix it.
"How to get an extension on phd thesis"
And it’s not just things you search on Google. Anything you type into any website that has an interest in your data or has a deal with a company that’s interested in your data. Anything you post publicly on the internet. Anything you say near any Google or Facebook software that is microphone enabled. Anything you type into messenging software run by those companies (especially if there’s no pretense of encryption, like Discord or Facebook Messenger).
And anything they collect from friends and family that might be related to you.
That’s not how selling ads works…
We're well past ads. There are articles that airlines will change prices on you based on your history. And unlike a laptop where you can go down to the store, you can pretty much only buy plane tickets online.
Was on some United flights recently with their new seatback media systems. The user experience is much better than Delta's, but also, they actively harvest your information at your seat to build a "profile" on you, they even ask you to choose the type of flight profile you want like "relax" or "fun" etc. and it modifies the content filters for you.
The kicker though, was on the last flight, when the lighting was just right that I noticed they have a pinhole camera installed on the lower left of the display, along with some IR blasters to power a proximity sensor around a software button.
Blasters likely produce enough light that the camera can see you even when the screen is off/cabin is dark. So they're likely building passenger profiles with visual data now as well, it'd be trivial to do facial recognition of "happy, sad, sleepy, etc" on top of capturing your movement in the seat. Did you just use your phone? Did you use the seatback screen? Are you reading a book? What food did you choose?
Where in the post did it say anything about ads?
That's BS. Assuming you haven't degoogled, try this:
Turn off your adblocker, then spend the day talking about how much you need something, like dog food, for example. Talk about relevant things, like how much you love your dog. Then go on a PC or phone that is logged into your Google account and visit some websites that use adsense ads. And prepare to be horrified.
Dude, I have a pi-hole, I block ads on every device in addition to the pi-hole. When I’m not at home I route by traffic through my home pi-hole. I know how ads work. I’ve even added ads to websites and used Google AdSense myself.
What they said in the OP is categorically false. Google does not control other companies shop prices. They simply sell a spot to companies to match a profile. They do not control pricing. They do not sell your data. They sell a spot that matches a companies targeting profile. If Google sold your data they would lose their biggest cash cow because other ad companies would buy it and decrease Google’s market share. What you are seeing is Google’s Adsense script running on people’s websites. Google controls that data, not the website.
This is the biggest tinfoil hat wearing bullshit conspiracy theory I've seen outside of a Trump press conference.
Airline companies and hotels have been doing this for years. They track the location, time of year, and how frequently you're looking to adjust their prices for you. You can sometimes get a different price for the exact same flight or hotel by using a private browser. You know those freezer doors with the display in them instead of a glass panel? Those have a camera in them as well to track which ads you spend the most time looking at so they can roll the most viewed ads more frequently. Some grocery stores are attempting to roll out digital pricing systems in their stores so that they can "dynamically change prices on items due to demand."
It's only a small step from using an algorithm to create a profile on you to serve ads tailored to things that you're interested in to companies using that same profile to "dynamically adjust prices due to demand."
A financial asset is a series of cashflows. Your existence is a series of cashflows. Therefore, you are a financial asset. Advertisers, marketers, influencers, social media companies, big data, ai etc. are all in the business of predicting and directing those cashflows. It's very simple, that's where the money is. The monetization of everythimg is not a conspiracy theory, it's how the economy works.
Maybe it is a conspiracy theory,buyt it does feel plausible and I think that merits some concern that it could head in this direction if we keep allowing companies to leech into our lives. We already have ridiculous situations like the Disney+ lawsuit thing. Who know what hasn't surfaced yet?
No it's fucking not plausible, there are alternative search engines, the moment google pulls this it gets to the mainstream media and people switch to Ecosia, DuckDuckGo, whatever,, then Google is hit with a massive fine from the EU
It feels plausible, and that's more important than facts. I want to be enraged about something, gosh darn it!
Mansplaining bargaining.
None of these words have anything to do with the post.
Right. It’s like talking to girls. Don’t look needy. The red pill wins again!
When you say red pill, do you mean this one?
The concept of red and blue pills has since been widely used as a political metaphor in the United States, especially among online hate culture, where "taking the red pill" or being "red-pilled" means becoming aware of purported political biases inherent in society ... The supposed truths revealed to those who refer to themselves as "red pilled" often include conspiracy theories, as well as antisemitic, white supremacist, and misogynistic beliefs.
Hey guys, found the incel!