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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Honestly, maybe I know more about how this stuff is used than you.

Hot tip: don't install company specific apps.

I'm not sure the dozens upon dozens of small businesses I've seen with QR linked menus are doing more than barely passing a PDF (the one they use to print their menus) or functional page that often isn't even designed for mobile are doing the vast majority of this sort of stuff. They're almost assuredly not doing any real sort of tracking, highly dynamic situational pricing, or forcing tip values.

While it's certainly possible, I find it highly unlikely. Larger chains certainly could pull it off and likely do (e.g. the McDonalds of the world), but I also don't tend to eat at those places. Places I dine could not justify creating an app for their business. Maybe people's dining choices effect these perception a bit?

Also I've yet to be anywhere that forces a tip without explicit clear gratuity information on the menus, usually related to party size. Tip culture is a whole other growing issue in that places have started introducing mandatory recovery fees and service fees instead of integrating costs into their menu prices (where they should be).

This is my reasoning. I’ve never seen anything more advanced than a link to a pdf. Yes it’s possible to do some basic tracking or even serve a different pdf depending on the os. No, I don’t believe restaurants would care enough to do that. Also I’m not sure of the legal implications if it could be proven they actually do that, but at the very least their reputation would plummet, and this is the last thing a restaurant want.

I see a bunch of restaurants using flowcode, which has built-in user tracking. Not sure how many of them use the tracking features, but given that it comes free with the product I’d bet it’s a lot.

A web page doesn’t stop a restaurant from giving you a different menu. Printers exist, after all.

I would not expect custom menus to be printed on the fly based on the restaurant's camera customer face recognition. QR codes makes this kind of targetting practical enough to be routine.

Server: this guy looks rich, let me give them 'the rich prick' version of the menu.

I'm 99% sure this is possible without any technology, actually.

Right, but i think the scenario being imagined is more like some valley startup tried to capitalize on the tracking that already exists, and through the insane amount of investment money can profit share with restaurants that use their technology. It'll start about "selection satisfaction" and be used to create a profile to present the dishes you're most likely to enjoy based on your previous data. This will help people. Then it'll creep and creep and creep. After a certain time, the company pays restaurants to remove paper menus. And then everything goes to shit. Sure, certain restaurants will capitalize on the disdain by having paper menus and raising prices to match their novelness. But the general everyday experience of the average person will be worse, with more tracking, and less money.

Go ahead and say tinfoil hat, if i told you about the current state of streaming services or social media back in the early days of those existing we'd all say the same thing. The only barrier to entry to making the world worse is money. Every app i love, every service i use, my experience with the general internet, it's all gotten worse. And it's always in service of tracking and/or profit. So it's not hard to imagine a scenario where this is possible.

It's extremely difficult to not be cynical about the world. I really mean it when i say the social apps i have to use to keep up with friends have only gotten worse. There hasn't been a single improvement in over 5 years. Every update is more ads, more tracking, less human.

This comment got a little off track but my main point is that restaurants will adopt it when it becomes "free money", which a sufficiently capitalized start up will be able to do for a period of time. They'll handle everything for you, and it will start helpful. But as investment money dries they'll implement more and more shady practices to make up that difference.

You're spot on though. This is exactly how it goes. I've seen many, many examples of this up close and as soon as a restaurant wants you to download 'their App' to view the menu you just heard the first click of the ratchet.

What strikes me as interesting about this whole discussion is that the tech world should be a lot more knowledgeable about these patterns and far less naive about the typical tech cycle. In a nutshell you can condense it to disrupt, gain marketshare, squeeze the lemon.

Whether it's Uber, AirBNB, Food delivery, Social media, Gaming or restaurants doesn't really matter. What I've seen - under NDA - would make your skin crawl and that's just the very limited sample of all companies out there, and it's mostly just Europe. But over the course of 200+ such in depth looks at how the tech world works it is very clear to me that the new middle-men are at least as bad as the old ones were.

I’ve seen about the same, except from the US side (even from companies that market themselves as “privacy friendly”).

I was just pointing out that this dystopia already can exist without tech. Tech makes it easier and takes power away from the little-guy (the server ‘doesn’t have to’ give the rich prick his expensive menu) but software doesn’t care about impressions.

Indeed, tech is a massive accelerator in this and leads to transnational entities becoming the dominant player (not always, but very often anyway).

Funny that it actually happens in a lot of locations with tourists. Also Chinese restaurants in the US often have a “real Chinese” menu and a regular menu in English.

But what you’re arguing doesn’t make sense. As a restaurant owner, I can change online menu prices on the fly. 4th of July? Don’t mind me if I +20% that bad boy.

That just isn’t possible with paper.

I regularly compare ordering from business-specific apps vs. Uber Eats. I can save up to 25% on some orders with the business-specific apps. Why do you think they're a bad deal?

Because you will be paying in some other way, for instance because your data is sold out the backdoor. Ryan J Shaw always orders from these two addresses, that means he's probably living there, he orders a lot of fancy food so we can enrich his profile and sell it to the highest bidder. Any app that you install should be reviewed as to what permissions it requires and you should be very careful with anything that wants to have your location, especially if it is on a regular basis. And location is something that can be inferred from many things, that QR code that you just scanned doesn't look like it is location data but it may have location attached to it which gets recovered when you scan it. So completely invisible to you you just allowed your lat/long pair+timestamp to be sent to a bunch of servers outside of your control, and with a bit of luck with your device ID or other identifying info added to it. As well as which cell phone provider you are using, what make and model phone you've got etc.

But all that information goes to the large platform vendors (eg DoorDash, Uber Eats) if you use their app instead. What makes the business-specific app worse in this regard? At least with the business-specific app, there's one less middle man involved.

Maybe. Or maybe they just see that as their additional source of revenue. For instance there are third party libraries that you get paid to include in your app which leak all kinds of data about you. Easy money for the app vendor.

Again, I would assume that UberEats and DoorDash have been paid to install all of those third party libraries, so it still feels like a lateral move to install my local pizza app instead. The only argument I see at the moment against the belief that the major apps have installed these trackers is that they feel they can negotiate for more money when they sell my personal information, but I don't see a scenario where I'm ordering on a phone and my personal information isn't being tracked and sold.

The people who frequent HN are fairly well-informed about how the sausage is made.

Including the person you're responding to, who is telling the person above them that they are ignorant as to how the sausage is made (and I agree).

And arrogant too!

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