4 ms·

They're a nudge to move users to install the app. Using the app to redeem a deal gives them much more data on individual customers than using a coupon.

by smcin 2y ago

satvikpendem 2y ago
Yes however no one cares as long as they get a good deal.
- smcin 2y ago
  That's a whole other debate and it's your subjective opinion, others may disagree. Since you push the point: - like many other apps, it forces you to turn on location while the app is in use (and will remain on until you kill it). You could still refuse to use the app and order at the counter, but then you can't use digital offers and specials, or redeem rewards. - 9/2024: McDonald's (US) (app and website) changed their ToS to add binding arbitration with JAMS and dispute resolution, and waive class-actions https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/terms-and-conditions.html https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/terms-and-conditions.html - 10/2023 Parade.com: "People Are Deleting Their McDonald's App—Here's Why" https://parade.com/food/mcdonalds-app-terms-and-conditions https://parade.com/food/mcdonalds-app-terms-and-conditions - 11/2023 Daily Meal: "Your McDonald's App Knows Way More About You Than You Think" https://www.thedailymeal.com/1455292/mcdonalds-app-tracks-activity/ https://www.thedailymeal.com/1455292/mcdonalds-app-tracks-ac... > In addition to your finances, spending habits, visit patterns, data they gather may also inform things such as "preferences, characteristics, psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities, or aptitudes." The policy is also vague about whether they monetize this data via reselling and/or third-party advertising. - For anyone who wants to see how the US ToS differ from more privacy-conscious jurisdictions, compare to say https://www.mcdonalds.com/de/de-de/datenschutz.html https://www.mcdonalds.com/de/de-de/datenschutz.html , https://www.mcdonalds.com/de/de-de/impressum-und-nutzungsbedingungen.html https://www.mcdonalds.com/de/de-de/impressum-und-nutzungsbed...
  - satvikpendem 2y ago
    Again, the people who are regularly enough eating McDonald's are not the type of people to care about ToS or being tracked via apps. They are usually the lower class who cannot afford to care. That doesn't mean that McDonald's and other chains that offer apps do not offer good deals from them, which is what those who often enough eat there will and do use. It is the same sort of haranguing about "deleting Facebook" a decade ago, meanwhile Meta's stock continued to rise over that period. 99.99% of people who are not on HN literally do not care about any of these issues.
    - smcin 2y ago
      Ok but first you said "no one cares", I responded to that showing you that a medium-sized group of users or privacy-aware types care, now you change it to "most people who are not on HN do not care/cannot afford to care". Sure the latter is true but that wasn't what you first said. Also it's not true in the EU. And it's not "haranguing": the set of people who care about the implications of the intrusive ToS doesn't need to be the set of end-users, although yes it would impact McDonald's business practices more directly if those overlapped more. The general public (in the US) may eventually connect data breaches to the lack of meaningful privacy legislation to the heavy lobbying to the permissive attitude between tech, regulators, politicians, data brokers and the finance industry. If the Snowflake and Okta breaches plus the huge impact of the Crowdstrike-related outage aren't instrumental in forcing some minimal standard in vendor liability, then there will eventually be even bigger and worse outages until someday that happens. Yes it's weirdly depressing to watch Congress's hate sessions against TikTok contrast with the utter silence on IT vendors' nonstop breaches. But also the 2024 election, deepfakes and GenAI are going to be big in the next three months, and might be pivotal to the election outcome, and cause a backlash comparable to or bigger than 2016. The TikTok US divestment deadline is Jan 19, 2025, which means Congress put TikTok (but not its competitors) on probation until after the election. It also looks likely Twitter/X will be strongly involved in election-related persuasion campaigns. As to Meta, Apple has gone to war with Meta in making privacy a key selling point for iPhone. So some fraction of Meta's market valuation has been conceptually transferred to Apple's valuation. So yes your take on the average McDonald's app user is correct, but I think the wider 2024 outlook on digital privacy is changing; we can't know how much till after the election. Remember after the 2016 election, people didn't figure out how exactly tech had influenced the outcome until March 2017. And there's more at stake in 2024.

They're a nudge to move users to install the app. Using the app to redeem a deal gives them much more data on individual customers than using a coupon.

by smcin 2y ago

They're a nudge to move users to install the app. Using the app to redeem a deal gives them much more data on individual customers than using a coupon.

satvikpendem 2y ago

Yes however no one cares as long as they get a good deal.

smcin 2y ago
That's a whole other debate and it's your subjective opinion, others may disagree. Since you push the point: - like many other apps, it forces you to turn on location while the app is in use (and will remain on until you kill it). You could still refuse to use the app and order at the counter, but then you can't use digital offers and specials, or redeem rewards. - 9/2024: McDonald's (US) (app and website) changed their ToS to add binding arbitration with JAMS and dispute resolution, and waive class-actions https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/terms-and-conditions.html https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/terms-and-conditions.html - 10/2023 Parade.com: "People Are Deleting Their McDonald's App—Here's Why" https://parade.com/food/mcdonalds-app-terms-and-conditions https://parade.com/food/mcdonalds-app-terms-and-conditions - 11/2023 Daily Meal: "Your McDonald's App Knows Way More About You Than You Think" https://www.thedailymeal.com/1455292/mcdonalds-app-tracks-activity/ https://www.thedailymeal.com/1455292/mcdonalds-app-tracks-ac... > In addition to your finances, spending habits, visit patterns, data they gather may also inform things such as "preferences, characteristics, psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities, or aptitudes." The policy is also vague about whether they monetize this data via reselling and/or third-party advertising. - For anyone who wants to see how the US ToS differ from more privacy-conscious jurisdictions, compare to say https://www.mcdonalds.com/de/de-de/datenschutz.html https://www.mcdonalds.com/de/de-de/datenschutz.html , https://www.mcdonalds.com/de/de-de/impressum-und-nutzungsbedingungen.html https://www.mcdonalds.com/de/de-de/impressum-und-nutzungsbed...
- satvikpendem 2y ago
  Again, the people who are regularly enough eating McDonald's are not the type of people to care about ToS or being tracked via apps. They are usually the lower class who cannot afford to care. That doesn't mean that McDonald's and other chains that offer apps do not offer good deals from them, which is what those who often enough eat there will and do use. It is the same sort of haranguing about "deleting Facebook" a decade ago, meanwhile Meta's stock continued to rise over that period. 99.99% of people who are not on HN literally do not care about any of these issues.
  - smcin 2y ago
    Ok but first you said "no one cares", I responded to that showing you that a medium-sized group of users or privacy-aware types care, now you change it to "most people who are not on HN do not care/cannot afford to care". Sure the latter is true but that wasn't what you first said. Also it's not true in the EU. And it's not "haranguing": the set of people who care about the implications of the intrusive ToS doesn't need to be the set of end-users, although yes it would impact McDonald's business practices more directly if those overlapped more. The general public (in the US) may eventually connect data breaches to the lack of meaningful privacy legislation to the heavy lobbying to the permissive attitude between tech, regulators, politicians, data brokers and the finance industry. If the Snowflake and Okta breaches plus the huge impact of the Crowdstrike-related outage aren't instrumental in forcing some minimal standard in vendor liability, then there will eventually be even bigger and worse outages until someday that happens. Yes it's weirdly depressing to watch Congress's hate sessions against TikTok contrast with the utter silence on IT vendors' nonstop breaches. But also the 2024 election, deepfakes and GenAI are going to be big in the next three months, and might be pivotal to the election outcome, and cause a backlash comparable to or bigger than 2016. The TikTok US divestment deadline is Jan 19, 2025, which means Congress put TikTok (but not its competitors) on probation until after the election. It also looks likely Twitter/X will be strongly involved in election-related persuasion campaigns. As to Meta, Apple has gone to war with Meta in making privacy a key selling point for iPhone. So some fraction of Meta's market valuation has been conceptually transferred to Apple's valuation. So yes your take on the average McDonald's app user is correct, but I think the wider 2024 outlook on digital privacy is changing; we can't know how much till after the election. Remember after the 2016 election, people didn't figure out how exactly tech had influenced the outcome until March 2017. And there's more at stake in 2024.