Comment by structural
15 days ago
Imagine you walk up to a shelf and all the prices reconfigure based on a model of the most you would be willing to spend for each item, including putting fake "normal" prices so that the "sale" price you are shown is whatever percentage markdown makes you likely enough to buy.
There's no advertising here, there's just aggressively trying to drain each person's wallet as much as possible and seeing how far you can get before they change behaviour.
One example: my friend and I both requested rides using the same app, standing next to each other to the same street in the same neighborhood 3-4 miles away. He owns a car and rarely uses car services, I do not and it's my primary transportation. The quoted cost of his ride was half mine. It was shocking.
That's pretty unrealistic, but I'd visit occasionally just to browse and not buy anything, making the algorithm lower the prices for me. Could build an app where people could register their prices for stuff so everyone could see what the price floor is for a given product. Good luck making a system people won't abuse the shit out of.
And I'm sure there would be competitors simply not doing this where I could shop instead.
If Uber does this and you don't like it then don't use Uber. Regular taxis still exist and I'm sure they'd love to have your business back. Or you could get a car, low-end used EVs are quite affordable and fuel is almost literally free. They seem to hold good resale value too.