3 ms·
I nearly clicked away because the authors sheer paranoia made me lose faith in their point, so I'll paste the punchline here: "But why not do the math for me?
by unimpressive 8y ago
I nearly clicked away because the authors sheer paranoia made me lose faith in their point, so I'll paste the punchline here:
"But why not do the math for me? A quick calculation shows that the top bottle comes out to about 30 cents an ounce – two cents less than the bottom bottle. Why not show that fact?
This, folks, this is algorithmic merchandising at its finest.
Amazon knows exactly how many clicks it’s going to take for me to reach shopping fatigue. Not “on average for all shoppers,” or even “on average for each shopper who’s ever considered a bottle of hydrogen peroxide.” Amazon knows all of that, of course, but it also knows exactly how long it takes ME to get fatigued, to enter what I like to call “fuck it” mode. As in, “fuck it, I’m tired of this bullshit, I want to get back to the rest of my life. I’m going to buy one of these bottles.”
And because there’s no per-ounce breakdown of the 32-ounce bottle, and because that makes me suspicious of it, and because hell, who ever needs 32 ounces of hydrogen peroxide anyway, well, I’m just going to buy the $5 one.
Ca-ching! Amazon just made a nearly seven percent markup on my purchase. It took five clicks, 15 seconds, and a vast architecture of data and algorithmic mastery to make that profit."
- MaxBarraclough 8y agoCould there be a market for Amazon search engines that work for the buyer, rather than for Amazon?
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y agoDefinitely, I'd gladly use one.
- maxxxxx 8y agoGoogle product search could be that but I see a lot of weird behavior there too.
- grigjd3 8y agoI didn't find anything the author wrote about to be all that scary or bothersome. First, I think the author is a bit overly paranoid as to what ML actually is accomplishing here, but second, all stores play games with product placement and how they show prices. My local grocery store carries two brands of milk, one costing between $3.70 and $4.50 per gallon (depending on the day) always placed at eye level and the other costing a max of $2.15 always placed on the bottom shelf. Both are regular whole milk, the lower priced one often with the better sellby date. But they put the more expensive one that will go bad faster at eye level. The thing is, this is done by all stores on all products. Amazon is no different.
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y agoThat's why in the EU we have the Price indication directive [0]. Someone got fed up and entered the "fuck it mode", as in "fuck it, they should all be required ny law to disclose the per-unit price." [0] https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/consumers/consumer-contracts-law/price-indication-directive_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/consumers/consumer-c...