Comment by azeirah
3 days ago
> The McDonald's touch-screen self-order kiosk takes 27 clicks to get a meal. They try to up-sell you 3 times. Just let me pay for my fucking burger, Jesus Christ. The product manager, the programmer, the executives. None of these people care.
I was working in this space! And I got fired for refusing to work on more upsell features for clients like Coca Cola and such.
I don't want to work on adding fucking ADS into checkout. That is fucked up.
I have an interesting anecdote about that. I was consulting for a very large tech company on their advertising product. They essentially wanted an upsell product to sell to advertisers, like a premium offering to increase their reach. My first step is always to establish a baseline by backtesting their algorithm against simple zeroth and first-order estimators. Measuring this is a little bit complicated, but it seemed their targeting was worse than naive-bayes by a large factor, especially with respect to customer conversion. I was a pretty good data scientist, but this company paid their DS people an awful lot of money, so I couldn’t have been the first to actually discover this. The short story is that they didn’t want a better algorithm. They wanted an upsell feature. I started getting a lot of work in advertising, and it took me a number of clients to see a general trend that the advertising business is not interested in delivering ads to the people that want the product. Their real interest is in creating a stratification of product offerings that are all roughly as valuable to the advertiser as the price paid for them. They have to find ways to split up the tranches of conversion probability and sell them all separately, without revealing that this is only possible by selling ad placements that are intentionally not as good as they could be. Note that this is not insider knowledge of actual policy, just common observations from analyzing data at different places.
One thing you know about ad guys—they are really good at tricking people into spending money. I mean, it’s right there in their job description. For some reason their customers don’t seem think they’ll fall for it, I guess.
The average “smart person” thinks a trillion dollar industry can’t brainwash them.
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Effectively the advertisers could buy less ad space and get the same or better conversion? That is somewhat hilarious because that means that not only are the end-users "the product" the advertisers are as well. There's only cows for the milking, on either side... and shareholders.
Yes. It works really well. You can do a WHOLE LOTTA ARB(tm)(circle R), buying the crap placements at super low CPMs and selling the performance difference to clients. This is mitigated by those clients who ONLY WANT THE BEST (but of course, sir, right this way) - but there are ways around that, too - like the MFA (made for advertising) domains of all the big-name sites you can think of that solely exist for your RTB machine to pump ads stacked on top of each other, and only visible to bots and crawlers. It doesn't help that on one side, you have folks astute with math (Data Scientists et al.) and on the other, a metric shit ton of Media Planners/Buyers who are just handed a budget and are often pretty naive about the intricacies of how it all works. But it all sort of goes back to the original point - people put on blinders. They just wanna see the metric get hit, the numbers go up. Most of the time they don't care how any of that works as long as they look good to their boss, and the industry mostly obliges.
> They have to find ways to split up the tranches of conversion probability and sell them all separately, without revealing that this is only possible by selling ad placements that are intentionally not as good as they could be.
I worked in the adtech space for almost 10 years and can confirm this is where we landed, too.
>The short story is that they didn’t want a better algorithm. They wanted an upsell feature.
This is why I got out. No one cares about getting the right ad to the right person. There's layers upon layers of hand-waving, fraud, and grift. Adtech is a true embodiment of "The Emperor's New Clothes."
Is there a solution? Obviously those companies are not going to change, so what can everyone else do about it - besides already being very rich, starting a competing ad-tech without funding, managing to get market share, and managing to remain one of the good guys.
The only thing I can think of is to use things like influencer ads on places like Instagram or Youtube which ironically sound like much better value for money as you actually know what you're getting for the money.
This is a really interesting insight. Drop me a line if you want to talk further.
Lately, the number of times (across different businesses/industries) where I've found myself thinking "Will you please just fucking take my money and stop bothering me?" is too damn high.
Yup, it's not good enough that you're already a paying customer- they have to try their best to manipulate and coerce you into spending even more. It's insulting, abusive and honestly pathetic. These thirsty lamers have to try every trick in the book to eke a few more cents out of me? Embarrassing. Modern tech/business does not have a shred of pride or dignity, as per TFA.
Businesses aren't in business to prioritize the customer point of view [1].
They are not in business to prioritize the employees point of view.
They are in business to maximise revenue, and profit.
If you work for a business, your job is to work on their priorities. By all means object or quit if you don't agree with them. (And yes, assume you'll be fired for refusing to do their tasks.)
If you're a customer, and you font like their behavior stop being their customer. You have agency. Use it.
[1] good customer service, good customer experience, are all good for revenue. Happy customers are the ultimate success. But maximizing the revenue from those happy customers is very much the business goal.
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Hey now, you can pay extra for "McDonald's without ads" like you can with Netflix or Amazon Prime or Disney okay.
Actually, in a way this is already true. If you consent to installing their mobile app (which includes god knows what kind of analytics), you are rewarded with at least 20% off all McDonald’s food list prices.
So you can pay for “McDonald’s without analytics” by paying list prices in cash at the register.
Now, if there was an option when booking a flight to pick a fare class not subjected to the stupid branded credit card offer walk of shame prior to landing, I would sign up in a heartbeat.
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This feeling is a driver of theft at self service checkouts.
I recently went to a gas station where the pump worked right! No affinity cards. No car wash offer. No asking for a ZIP code, since I'd been there before. No screen with ads. Press card against RFID reader, select octane, pump gas.
I went inside and complemented the worker on their pumps being so easy to use. I go back there occasionally, even though the station with the ad screen is cheaper.
nah - gas pumps that ask for phone numbers for savings card id's are great opportunities to save cents at the pump. 555-555-5555 always works everywhere and half the time gets you savings.
Enough people use 867-5309 as their grocery loyalty card's phone number that it's often got savings available at the gas pump. Use the local area code. It works great for filling up rentals while traveling, too.
I go to a gas station that blares ads at an ear piercing volume. I now keep duct tape in my driver's side door.
I went inside and complemented the worker on their pumps being so easy to use, He. Did. Not. Care.
This seemed like a poor example for the author to choose, of "not caring." Annoying, sure. But these extra upsells originate from someone who definitely cares about increasing revenue and is aggressively exploring multiple avenues to achieve it.
Companies don’t care about you, they care about your wallet, extraction of money from. The most pleasant companies to deal with are the ones who have found a niche where customer satisfaction helps with the goal of wallet, extraction from. But at best it’s a means to an end, and McDonald’s is definitely not one of those companies.
The article was about not caring at all, as in total apathy. Not "we're going to work really hard to purposely create anti-patterns."
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My spouse bought us kindles recently, and it popped in my head today that at some point e-books are going to have ads interspersed…
I've found books that had ads inserted into them [1]. It seemed to be a thing from maybe the 1960/1970s. The ad page was a different type of paper, and no text from the book was on it (that is---the ad wasn't on one side and book text on the other).
[1] One example: https://boston.conman.org/2002/12/31.1
https://lithub.com/the-time-terry-pratchetts-german-publishe...
That was so unpopular that it died out.
Paper magazines still have "blow ins", though - advertising cards that are injected into the magazine with compressed air after printing. They're not bound in. They fall out.
There was a post, here, some time ago, about how many paperbacks had ads actually woven into the story. Apparently, it was quite common practice, at one time. Sort of an obnoxious “product placement” thing. I think the author had nothing to do with it.
My dad has some old sci-fi books with full color cigarette ads in the middle. Crazy!
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Kindles already can have ads on the sleep screen! Unless you paid for the ad free version.
i sent an email to have them removed. it was a thing some years ago at least (though I don't know if US-ians are allowed to do that or if it's just in the EU)
I actually recently purchased my first Kindle, as well as an gift upgrade for my partner. I researched and talked to a friend of mine who owns one.
At first I was determined I would purchase the ad-free version (I think the price difference was like ~20€), but after talking to my friend they kind of convinced me that the ad version is not so bad.
2 points on this: 1. The ad appears only on the lockscreen of the device, so you see it once and then never again until you reopen it. The ad is also only for a book in the Kindle store, never anything else (this might seem trivial, but I think one of the negative aspects of advertising is being blasted with stimuli about so many different things you don't care for)
2. The ads are personalized on books you bought and therefor a sort of recommendation engine. Both my friend and my partner told me they got some inspiration from those ads to find books they liked.
So all in all while I despise ads, I gave this one a try. Personally (and yeah, I know – subconciously) I have never looked at the lockscreen apart from the first time I launched it. It's a relatively non-intrusive ad about a book that I don't even need to engage with. And in case something relevant is on there, it leads to a good outcome for me.
This is advertising done well for me at least.
Oh my…I’ll have to ask, I bet they did. Unreal.
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There are kindle alternatives. Luckily the technology isn't that advanced and any/all of them pretty much MUST support a general PDF (or whatever other similar format). You might have to manage your own library a bit but that means you can just use these devices completely offline
I think e-readers are not that high on the list of technologies most at risk to be taken over by ads
My swedish books from the 1800s have ads inside.
At the dominant pharmacy/convenience store in my area (Shoppers Drug Mart), it can take up to 12 clicks to self-checkout, depending on what garbage they're upselling on the day. I counted them.
I refuse to use them, and (annoyingly, I know) let the cashier know why each time as they're checking me out. I feel bad for the poor cashier but unfortunately for them, they're my only interface to the company.
Just want to thank you for standing up for your values at your workplace. I wish more SWEs would have morals like this.
I feel like this reveals some sampling error in the OP rant. When you see something negative get made that makes you think "nobody cares", you're not seeing the people who did care and left.
Which relates to the linked incentives piece: when you create incentives, you think you're changing people's behaviour. Actually you're selecting for people who respond to the incentive.
> That is fucked up.
Yes. Our local IKEA recently started doing this. During self-checkout, you have to click through hot dog, ice cream, cinnamon buns and drink offers, and the inevitable offer to get an IKEA family card before you are actually able to pay for your furniture.
Seeing this after waiting in line for 10 minutes, navigating a sluggish, unresponsive touch screen terminal and unsuccessfully trying to scan slightly bend bar codes while 10 people are watching you doesn't exactly increase my desire to return to this store.
I really think a huge part of the problem is that there isn't a direct interaction with a human anymore. If IKEA would ask their cashiers to advertise all this crap to customers before accepting their money, they would revert this after a single day because many customers would very, very strongly complain, and the cashiers would care and threaten to quit.
But you cannot complain to a self-checkout-terminal, which makes this even more frustrating. As another comment has pointed out, there is just a "No thanks" button. I want a "I am seriously offended that you try to milk me like a brainless cash-cow, you should be ashamed to even advertise this to me after I bought a couch for 1,400 EUR, and I will not return anytime soon" button.
Last time I went it was only one food upsell. But it is still really annoying. Before this they had basically a perfect self-checkout, fast and easy to use. But now it is adding crap and I fear that I'm going to have to stop shopping there like many of the other self-checkouts around me.
Next time go to the cashier instead, and complain to them about the self-checkout terminal ??
Yeah, there's always the "No thanks" button but not the "No, fuck you" button.
Or in online spaces, the ever more common “maybe later.” No means no, maybe go jump in a lake of fire.
The iOS app “Calendars” recently starting showing a modal on launch trying to up-sell something - I don’t give a shit what it was - the “no” option was labeled “Thank you”. I had to click “Thank you” to dismiss it so that I could use the fucking app I pay a yearly subscription for. Or in this case: paid. The cheek of these people.
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Silicon Valley is like a creepy and terrible suitor, never knowing what "no" means or letting its counterparty express "no". It's always "ask me later".
I hate that the options when faced with a location permissions request is "block" or "allow". why isnt ignore an option?? Block adds the site to a discrete local list which i dont need recorded on my computer...
Because if you don't remember the block, it'll probably ask again on the next page load.
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Qutebrowser offers that.
because that 2nd one requires a "No, fuck YOU!" button and so on ad infinitum.
if you don't, someone else will. Maybe you could've introduced a "bug" that makes it so it usually doesn't work except when a member of the QA team is looking at it :P
Well.. I did implement most of the framework. The good thing is that I'm waaaayyyyy detail oriented, and I made an extremely sophisticated system for it.
Maybe a little bit TOO sophisticated
Not my proudest _engineering_ achievement, but as an R&D project? I consider it a success.
Ethical outcome? Success.
Good on you for sticking to your guns. I hope karma rewards it somehow.
Volkswagen already had this idea...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal
you can't say "they don't care" though, the folks making these screens are obviously pretty motivated to keep squeezing out more profits and care a lot about that. if they "didn't care" they'd have told you "ok fine, im going for break"
and decoupling order taking with service makes for "funny" times. since mcdonalds installed the tablets i regularly wait 10 minutes while looking at confused / avoidant employees not knowing what to do, even if there's nobody else waiting.
i can almost feel the meeting where someone managed to sell this idea to shareholders... "decouple everything, more efficient !"
That seems more indicative of just bad management. It’s been over a decade since I’ve been in (specially) a McDonalds, but I used to frequent them easier in my life. The ones I went to were well run and efficient. But still as seemed as decoupled as kiosk ordering. The cashier would take the order and put it into the computer. The food preparers would prepare the food and put it on the trays where the packagers would subsequently take it and put it on your tray or in your bag. There was 0 communication between the three groups in 99% of the cases. Often I would make small talk with the cashiers or packagers if there was nobody behind me.
I don’t see how kiosk/tablet ordering would change that significantly.
it's pretty obvious, there's no more tension in the job, the cooks still have a list of things to do, but people serving customers have no idea who ordered what beside a number. they have no real relationship with any of us waiting and quite often I see them roaming around aimlessly, not sure if I've been called or not
This is a result of Taylorist management brain rot drive to reduce drive thru wait time metrics at the expense of anybody not in the drive through. Watch the shot clock near the drive through window (they're highly visible at Taco Bell) and observe that drive thru customers almost never wait more than 60-80 seconds.
Respect for standing up for what you believe in
Even Costco gives you a pop up trying to upsell you on a cookie.
McDonald's touch-screen were only profitable because users ordered more. Possibly Covid and processes to get costs down have changed this, but not to begin.
I feel like your comment falls under "Nobody cares"
I love the touch screens and having the time to order what I want. I used to rush my order at the checkout and never got exactly what I wanted.
If you did a start-up 'ethical ordering' you'd care, made money, and probably forced McDonalds to change it's touch screens. In South Korea it asks the user are you sure, here's the extra kJ, when it does an upsell.
I was working so hard to change the internal culture for this.
I did not succeed.
It's ran by business people who want to make money. Not by philosophers.
Same here.
Also, TFA sounds like something I could've written.
Anyway, besides other anecdata, I don't have anything to add.
But I wanted to thank you, azeirah, that at least you tried
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> In South Korea it asks the user are you sure, here's the extra kJ, when it does an upsell.
Really? I guess I've just never taken up such an upsell, but I'll try to remember it next time I go just to see the UI. Barely ever go there now that ironically Lotteria has more veggie burger options here (1) than McDonalds (0), and their chicken burgers are imo worse than KFC's.