Tiered pricing is EVERYWHERE now. In supermarkets, if you don’t have their app/loyalty card you have to pay higher prices. They frame it as a “discount” or “savings” for having the app, but clearly it’s just a punishment for not giving them your info and allowing them to track/advertise at you.
In restaurants/fast food places, you get “discounts” (i.e. regular prices) via the app/email list, and if you don’t have the app or give them your email address you don’t get the discount (read: you have to pay higher prices). And of course they can “tailor” personalised “deals” directly at you based on your past behaviour to optimise how much money they get out of you.
I just looked at a hotel and they’re advertising a “discount” if you give them your email address (read: a higher price if you don’t allow them to advertise at you).
I absolutely hate this behaviour. I know exactly why it’s there: some people are willing to pay more for convenience/no ads, and some are willing to go to more effort / put up with ads for a lower price. Either way they get more money out of you: the logical conclusion of capitalism and chasing higher profits.
It feels like this should be illegal. It feels like a cousin of price gouging, which is already illegal. Ofc it never will be outlawed in america - idk how much this happens across the pond though - but I hope one day this could be outlawed in europe.
Nah… just make privacy laws instead.
If it’s illegal to collect all of this data on people, there won’t be loyalty cards or anything like that anymore, since there’s no data they could sell. They won’t be jamming targeted ads into every goddamn thing either since there’s no way to target anyone. Of course the social media algorithms also would be able to make targeting recommendations, but I don’t think it would be a bad thing if we had the same shit recommended to us and we’d have to actually search for things or have things recommended by other people instead of algorithms.
And we wouldn’t have creepy marketing people crunching personal data to figure out how to manipulate people into buying shit they don’t need.
I’m currently in a non-Western country. Tiered pricing is the norm. They just aren’t interested in exploiting your data or tracking your behavior.
The obvious answer is a temporary email. So far, none of the services require access to it after registration. Worst case scenario is you make a new one when they force you to use it again.
I think there should be protected categories, for example, you can’t give a lower price in exchange for selling your usage data.
Some things should just be illegal, like requiring a customer/emploee to waive their rights to a trial.
agree. i make a point of saying that i hate it everytime they ask me for those details. its small but something i guess.
This is called price discrimination, and yes, it’s unlawful already.
Apparently if you put a computer between you and a crime it doesn’t count.
Strange loophole, sure, but my point still stands.
Well, then I think you missed the point.
I had to do it. You set yourself up for that one.
Not with weed, man. Love my top shelf but also need to budget sometimes.
Don’t worry capitalism will insure it sucks every last bit of enjoyment out for you
Well who shit in your cereal?
This thing skyrocketed in German Supermarkets the last couple of months. I ignore it, but its dafuq situation.
What’s even shittier about this is that one major supermarket chain (LIDL) was sued by our consumer protection agency (“Verbraucherzentrale”) but the case was dismissed by the courts.
They have at least allowed a revision, so this will go to a higher court now which has to decide about it. I really hope all of those app discounts will be stopped.
I mean honestly just give it to them at this point. If you don’t think your name email address and phone number are out there for everybody to use and everybody to see then you’re crazy. I mean hell they’re not going to be able to do much with it besides send you some advertisements. Most of which you’re probably going to want to have and use anyways because they’re usually coupons to things. But beyond that you can always opt out of any emails or anything like that. It’s a small price to pay to get a discount off of their stuff which means they are actually earning less money. And if you do it at a place like Kroger or something like that that you get loyalty points towards discounts on gasoline then you save even more. For example I was just down in California this weekend and because I use Kroger points no matter where I’m at I was able to get 30 cents off a gallon which meant that I paid just over $3 a gallon whereas most people were paying near four.
Are you in marketing?
Yes. It should all be cost accounted, not “feelings” of value or, “whatever the rube will pay”. I want to buy something for a dollar that costs a dollar. I don’t want to pay two dollars for a one dollar item and then have fake “points” thrown at me. Whenever things get too complicated you know people are scamming.
I have a burner email precisely for this crap. An obviously fake name, the only time I even log in to it is when one of these fucking things wants me to click the link they sent me. It’s so heavily bloated with spam in the year I’ve been using it that I’m about to need a new one.
I would count it as abusive practice, yes. And in case of big players as market distortion.
I hate it, too. It’s not a total solution, but I keep a separate email just for things like this. Send all their spammy nonsense to a dead end email. It doesn’t work for text messages though. I’m not going to pay for a separate line for that.
I only wish I’d started the separate email earlier. I’m still inundated with spam email on my main account.
I use Proton and their “email alias” feature which is sort of like Apple’s “hide my email” - generates you a receive only email address that you can hand out and turn off whenever you want.
Of course, the trade off here is that if I ever wanted to leave Proton (or Apple if I were using Hide My Email) migrating each of these addresses one by one would be a bitch and a half.
Get your own domain name. You can have Apple or Gmail or Proton host it, but if you ever decide to leave them all your emails still work.
You may be able to get a Google Voice number. Or if you have a friend that doesn’t mind giving their info to stores, with their permission use their number. That has the bonus of polluting the data a bit.
Last time I tried to get a Google voice number they said all the numbers were taken and none were available. I tried every area code possible.
I forgot about the Google voice thing. I’ve never used it, so I don’t know how it works. Will it accept texts? They often want to verify a phone number before giving you what you want, and if the text can’t go through, and you can’t get your verification number, then you’re screwed.
You can send and receive texts, yes
Okay, got to look into that.
Then I have to unsubscribe from a LOT of stuff, like political spam. I gave $10 to Bernie years ago, and I’ve regretted it ever since. Numerous political solicitation texts, every day.
I gave $10 to Bernie years ago, and I’ve regretted it ever since. Numerous political solicitation texts, every day.
Dude, same. Getting shit from republicans since I did it as well. Dont use your real number donating, you will regret it.
I just give them my old landline number that’s been disconnected for years since I just use my cell phone now
they are satisfied that you identify yourself consistently with the same number.
they don’t want to call you, what they want is to track you
They do want to call me. I had a significant decrease in spam calls after I started doing this instead of my actual number, including calls from companies I’ve definitely never given my number to, as well as straight up scammers.
However, you have a good point about tracking.
Every single time I’ve tried the local area code plus 876-5309 has worked… Been using it since the days you’d enter a phone number to print coupons from a kiosk (I didn’t have a phone at the time). Now I enter it as second nature anytime a pin pad prompts me for a number.
Then what do you do when the next step requires “verifying the number”?
I generate a new email address for each vendor that forces me to specify one, but there’s not much I can do about phone numbers. I suppose it’s good from a security perspective that they want an additional authentication factor even if it’s only SMS, and good from a usability perspective to verify a path to resetting a password, but I can’t generate a new 🆕 hone number for every vendor
dude just use the store card like the rest of the town. number’s 8675309
Jenny?
Wait a minute…
The local Kroger’s senior citizen card # is (area code) 6345-789
I… cant tell if this is real. I feel like someone probably made an account with that phone number though
100% real. When I worked at a store that had “loyalty accounts” and someone didn’t want to sign up, I’d (quietly) tell them to use (local area code) 687-5309 so they’d still get a discount. Every time I’ve tried it somewhere, an account already existed.
The lucky person who owns this account is swimming in gas rewards, I bet.
totally real. just use it. if it’s one of those stores with gas benefits i bet you could try there too, but i bet those get drained fast
Whelp, im going to quickly find out how many accounts i can cancel
None? It doesn’t work that way. if you call up and tell them you want to close the 867-5309 account they’ll laugh at you because they themselves use it
If i have an account at a store with a loyalty and theyre using my data, and i can now use the Tommy Tutone code to get same loyalty rewards, i can cancel my account and stop giving them my data.
oh i have the stupid. i have been dealing with wannabe edgy teenagers all day and “hehehe i’ll go cancel all the 8675309s” is just the kind of stupid they infected me with.
I keep saying it: just ban advertising.
They want to track what you buy to more efficiently manipulate you into buying what they want you to buy. The data would be almost useless if they couldn’t advertise to you, so they wouldn’t bother. Other places wouldn’t be able to monetize their spyware if advertisers weren’t buying. Political campaigns wouldn’t have even a use for millions in ‘donations’ if they weren’t blowing it all on advertising. It’s an entire multi-billion dollar industry built on lying to people for profit.
Stop Ive already came and can only get so erect.
Then you’re not trying hard enough.
What is advertising then? When a company explains the benefit of its own product? A link to a particular product or service? Would word of mouth among consumers be a form of advertising? If not, then why not companies showing a word of mouth for other (affiliated) companies? What is the distinction between a company and the owner in the case of a sole proprietorship?
My point is, if this wasn’t obvious enough, there are so many obvious problems and loop holes with this approach, you should give it a think for 20 minutes and then start saying something else.
The best working definition I have come up with is banning ‘one party giving payment, in the form of money, goods, and/or services, to a second party in exchange for the display of media to a third party, in specific or in general, who did not explicitly request to be shown that media.’ This would cover the vast majority of problematic advertising. And it’s absurd to pretend it has to be ‘done in one.’ If more laws need to be made to counter loopholes because the sociopaths in the marketing department refuse to get real jobs, more laws can be made until companies’ decision-makers realise how much the marketing department is costing them in fees and implementation relative to the imperceptible benefit of having them.
Companies can still use their own spaces to display relevant product information. (i.e. factual, specific information on products that are present and being offered at the location of the informational media)
Word of mouth, if not caused by coercion or compensation, is not disingenuous, so not a problem. If you really love Brand X so much that you want to let everyone know about it when you talk to them, great. That means it’s such a genuinely good product that you feel love for it. That’d essentially be the goal. If they have to pay you to praise it, it’s not a good product.
Corporate personhood also needs to go, so no difference should be recognized between what a company does and what its proprietor does. The owner should not ask/allow their representatives to do things in their name for which they do not wish to be held responsible.
As for ‘…companies showing a word of mouth…’ That’s going to need rephrasing.
Trust me. I haven’t been just spouting off about how harmful advertising is without thinking about it. I already know it will make starting new small businesses harder, and I have considered loosening the rule to only apply to businesses with positive cashflow AND/OR with revenues over <some number, maybe 10>x the median wage. That would allow small business owners to have some leeway during their early days and scale with inflation/economic changes.
Other than that, I’ve never heard any remotely sensible arguments against it. Advertising is like nuclear weapons. It pollutes the (information) environment around it and distorts people’s behaviour in all sorts of ways, and companies only need to have it because other companies have it. As seen with american tobacco companies when their ads were banned, it lowers expenses and people who want the product still buy the product. It’s a net benefit for everyone except for marketing firms, but so what? We didn’t keep putting lead in the gasoline just to keep the jobs in the lead mining industry.
Require consent for advertising.
If I seek out information on your product or service then give it to me, sure. Otherwise fuck off forever out of my life, my internet, my art, my public spaces, my media, and everything else that you’ve ruined.
Now that that’s banned there’s much less reason for disgusting shit. My friend had a baby recently and the daycares consent demands the right to share data collected for marketing and market research purposes. This cannot be opted out of and is required to enroll, and there’s also this really gross thing where they do a separate photo consent form that implies that photos won’t be shared but when you read all the consents more thoroughly (there are several) you find that they retain all data including photos in perpetuity and it falls under the category that allows marketing and market research usage if they so choose. For children that are not even 1 year old!
This is a bigger issue on private equity owning care facilities (a whole other thing) but the fact of the matter is that advertisers have 0 ethics and will do whatever they want to whoever they want. They don’t care about consent because it’s an industry run by sociopaths with the mindset of rapists. They will destroy your product or service if you let them in and take their blood money. Once they’re in they will demand more and more until your product is shaped around advertising, either display or data collection to improve targeting for ad spend efficacy. They don’t care if it’s children, if it’s the elderly, the disabled, the extremely poor, etc. anyone can be sold to and anything can be sold. Let’s make some money. Fuck them, ban their industry, burn it down. If you work in advertising you are a piece of shit and the world is worse because you exist. You made bad choices and everyone is disappointed in you. Destroy the industry from within if you can, change careers, or die a piece of shit scumbag
How did you find out about the day care? Again, you “idea” is only quarter-baked at best. Your plan is to have me sign a consent form every time I enter a store with custom labels on the objects?
Seriously, fuck off with this nonsensical shit so the rest of us can focus on actual solutions. Because right now, all you are doing is wasting the bandwidth of your ISP, and everyone who has to mentally filter out your comment.
They asked me to look over the policy with them, which I did.
When you enter a store you are tacitly consenting to see products, obviously. What purpose does a store hold otherwise? But the walls don’t need to be plastered with advertisements for you to figure out that cereal is available to purchase.
Similarly in the point of a service like the daycare: if I look this up I am consenting. A service having a webpage isn’t an inherent problem. But when they can encroach on other actions that is breaching consent. When they can appear in unrelated web searches, in related websearches but priority ranking that’s not necessarily warranted, on unrelated or tangentially related websites, on walls in unrelated or tangentially related stores, as videos before unrelated or tangentially videos, etc. now they are the digital equivalent of litter. When they are in a newspaper, the unsolicited junk mail that keeps usps alive, etc they’re actual litter.
A directory is not the same as advertisement. It’s utilitarian and does not destroy everything it touches. But your shitty ad brain can’t conceptualize how this could ever work. You probably work for some company that does advertising bullshit and need to justify keeping some form of modern the unethical modern advertising machine around
Not ad brain, just a brain.
Notice all the little “Well, obviously not those ads” and implied consent scattered throughout your explanation? Did you even consider how much that would entrench current businesses if smaller companies couldn’t advertise? Or how that would proliferate enshittifying conglomerates that can package their products under a blanket consent form, locking out advertisements from competitors? How would this work for traditional advertisements like flyers, radio broadcasts, and billboards? If you banned those outright, all that remains is online advertisements, and if you think big tech has an entrenchment advantage now? Just wait until media platforms and ISPs are the gatekeepers of the most effective means of reaching customers and growing their business.
Lastly, do you have any conception of how much advertising subsidizes modern society? Think of everything from little leagues (which use corporate sponsors to pay for equipment and referees) to social media including lemmy! Every instance I know of includes an advertisement somewhere asking for donations to either support lemmy developers, or cover server cost. You could make them all paid services, but now you’ve locked out poor people from participating. Organizations could hide all functionality behind a consent form to show advertisements to subsidize cost, but then there is just a formality checkbox you must click before using any free online web service - solving exactly none of the actual issues around malware delivery, intrusive data collection, poor resource management, or even the most basic problem of advertisements being annoying.
I’m done here. Start thinking, and until then, stop wasting bytes and oxygen.
The data would be almost useless if they couldn’t advertise to you, so they wouldn’t bother.
I dunno.
I think they would still collect and use the data to track our political leanings and whether we’re considering becoming a journalist that threatens their empire.
Intelligence agencies will always try to gather more info, but they also love having private corporations do the legwork to get the data they can then just steal. Reducing private data collection would reduce government surveillance as well, or at least make the governments do it themselves which would make it subject to certain laws that are circumvented by having private entities do it.
Would banning advertising also include what packaging looks like on store shelves? Becsuse if not, I can see shit getting way worse with how shit is laid out or boxed if they were banned from advertising elsewhere. The product would be advertising itself even louder.
Products already aim to have attention-grabbing / attractive packaging. So I don’t think that is going to get any worse if general advertising is banned.
I’ve also been saying for years that unsolicited advertising is wasteful and harmful and unnecessary - and should be banned. (Well, it’s ‘necessary’ from an individual point of view, because you need it to be viable vs other products. But that would not be the case if it was banned. The massive work and resources spend on advertising are only necessary because of advertising. Killing it would free up those resources for something actually productive.)
There are obviously a lot of tricky issues and edge cases that would need to be ironed out for an advertising ban; but that doesn’t make it impossible. It doesn’t have to be perfect to be an improvement, and it’s not hard to imagine some basic guidelines that would work reasonably well. … That said, it’s complete fantasy that this would happen, because there is too much money tied up in it. The only realistic way forward would be a very slow gradual increase in weak rules about what kinds of advertising can be used.
