
Instacart shoppers besieged by bots that snatch lucrative orders - wallflower
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/instacart-shoppers-besieged-by-bots-that-snatch-lucrative-orders/
======
malwarebytess
When I was in college 10 years ago I did Amazon's Mechanical Turk to pay my
way through. One of the things I did to make my life less miserable was to
automate a lot of the searching, sifting, and grabbing of jobs (hits.) Bot
would only accept jobs that fit my specified time/money ratio, or known hits
that paid well and predictably.

Having the experience of using these "gig" side jobs I don't think there's
anything wrong with people automating them to make the work less miserable and
more lucrative. Frankly, anything but the best paying jobs cost more to do per
hour than a federal minimum wage job. Thanks to automation I made around
$16/hour (and I also had to pay taxes on that so it wasn't even that good!)

Don't hate the player, hate the game. And the game here is cutthroat and
designed to exploit 1099 workers for below market labor cost.

~~~
tesmar2
If there was an alternative, higher wage they would pick that. This is the
market labor cost.

~~~
MichaelGlass
"below market" because Instacart (and uber, etc) forgo normal labor law, have
by-default but not by-contract full-time workers without any full-time
benefits. Companies can achieve great benefit by externalizing cost on
society, but should they? (And should they be able to?)

e.g. [https://www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2019/12/16/is-uber-
cheat...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2019/12/16/is-uber-cheating-on-
social-securityfica-taxes/#5289694a3ce4)
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2014/04/15/report-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2014/04/15/report-
walmart-workers-cost-taxpayers-6-2-billion-in-public-assistance/#4e9896de720b)

~~~
godzillabrennus
Free market idealists think the market can determine the minimum wage without
government or organized labor enforcing higher wages.

~~~
brorfred
Free market idealists also tend to be very against the natural way for workers
to consolidate and leverage negotiation power: trade unions.

~~~
bluGill
Not exactly. We are against the way unions are implemented and make work not a
free market. I'm not against your union so longs as I can decide not to join
and still have equal work with you.

~~~
michael1999
What is a corporation but a union of capitalists? Why must only the owners be
allowed to unite for better outcomes?

~~~
bluGill
There is no difference. I shouldn't have to join either a union or a company.

------
JumpCrisscross
> _some shoppers are paying software developers who have created bots — in the
> form of third-party apps — that run alongside the legitimate Instacart app
> and claim the best orders for clients_

Instacart is a real-time market. In real-time markets reaction time is
paramount. "Cranking up pressure against app makers and banning violators when
they find them" is swimming up a waterfall.

The solution is in the market structure. Fundamentally, Instacart needs to
shift to batch processing.

This could take several forms. They could, on order submission, open a
60-second auction window. The best qualifying bid wins. Bids, mind you, could
come in dollars or time to delivery or something else. Alternatively, shoppers
could set orders parameters within which they guarantee acceptance. Orders
could then be randomly assigned to online shoppers, perhaps with a bias
towards ratings and other metrics.

Either way, a real-time market, where the first shopper to accept an order,
seems under-optimised.

> _cost of the third-party apps ranges from $250 to $600 in cryptocurrency or
> bank deposits_

Instagram should acquire the differentiated apps and integrate them into its
routing.

Showing every order to every shopper is inefficient. Some of these bots will
just click on every order every shopper would find attractive. Those are zero
sum. But some, I assume, help shoppers pick orders uniquely suited to them.
Those are positive sum, and worth integrating into Instacart _per se_.

Fascinating stuff, nevertheless.

~~~
angry_octet
What you're working up to is a reverse auction for delivery service. Who is
willing to do a batch of deliveries for the least price? Constrained time
TSP+Knapsack, a very challenging problem. (Because you can choose many
different subsets of delivery jobs, run TSP for each, and calculate a bid
price for each job that will win, or if you don't, minimises regret.)

The real problem with instacart is that some orders are better than others. If
the delivery fee reflected the real costs then this wouldn't be such a
problem.

EDIT s/your/you're. I swear my phone's predictive text is getting
antagonistic.

~~~
londons_explore
> The real problem with instacart is that some orders are better than others.

You don't need to eliminate differences to fix the problem - simply minimize
them enough that it isn't worth building or buying a bot to give yourself an
edge.

A simple solution would be to look at how quickly each order is snatched up,
and reduce the price paid for orders that some AI decides will probably be
snatched up quickly. I bet some simple linear model consisting of total travel
distance, weight, number of unique items, and dollar value would suffice.

------
mkatx
Reminds me of working at amazon doing prime deliveries and using an Android
app where you can create flow charts to automate grabbing hours. The
difference is amazon at the time didn't care. We even reported what we were
doing as a bug, and recommended a queue system instead, yet we only got
automated responses not mentioning the issue at all.

This automation included an annoying screen refresh, where you hit back and
then reenter to see if the button is lit up to get hours. I remember feeling
terrible sitting in the warehouse waiting for an order and seeing others
clicking back and forth as fast as they can the entire time, all while my
phone was silently, with the screen disabled, 'scanning' for hours.

I think they consider the warehouse drivers like what I used to do temporary,
till they get their drone fleets up.

Regarding instacart, and these systems in general, a queue system is just the
most fair option. Your take home pay shouldn't be reduced to how well you can
click a touch screen or whether you happen to be aware of app automation. It
doesn't even seem to benefit the platform itself, just degrade the experience
of the driver's.

~~~
aphextron
>I think they consider the warehouse drivers like what I used to do temporary,
till they get their drone fleets up.

Why even bother with drones when you can pay a person $8/HR with zero benefits
thanks to collusion with lawmakers to bust unions and stall the minimum wage?

~~~
prepend
Drones likely will be cheaper than that because of improved quality- fewer
errors, faster, better tracking, less fuel, etc.

Same deal with fast food workers who make minimum wage. Automation will
improve quality even though people are so cheap. Being able to perfectly make
tacos or big macs or whatnot and remove scheduling challenges will be a plus.

------
ralmidani
I’m a software developer who has been enthusiastic about technology pretty
much my entire life, but lately I’ve started doubting that our current
technological advances are even a net positive for humanity. Reading about
things like this (and also about online ads, robocalls, tracking, spyware,
ransomware, extortionware, massive environment-ravaging crypto-mining ops,
state surveillance, “predictive policing”, fake news, state-coordinated FUD
campaigns, etc.) makes me want to give it all up and live out what remains of
my life in subsistence on a primitive farm.

~~~
1596603709
Then, you will learn about the plight of the farmers. Really, checkout "Super
Size Me 2". I don't think there is any industry where its all gravy. Each
industry has its own problems, you can only do your best to contribute in its
positive growth. Don't be too hard on yourself. Also, you aren't Ghandi (or
insert XYZ person here), don't put too much weight on your shoulders. FWIW
none of us really matter, this is a symptom of how North American companies
operate. Survival of the fittest. I went through deep depression for similar
reasons, so hoping some tough love helps you.

~~~
mikro2nd
I suspect you're conflating/confusing subsistence farming with industrial
"farming". As someone who has lived a "subsistence" lifestyle for a long time,
now (decades) one can live really quite well on a "sub-poverty-level income"
simply because you're quite decoupled from conventional-money economies. I've
heard it called "abundance poverty" (not "abundant poverty", to be sure! :) )

It's worth a disclaimer, though: I practise this subsistence (aka "self-
sufficiency") living outside the USA. USmmv.

------
function_seven
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that this is only possible on Android,
right? The video linked by ultimoo shows an Android, and my perception is that
iOS sandboxing is much tighter.

How can Instacart combat this? They can't require iOS among their shoppers. Is
it going to be an arms race of heuristics and anti-cheat code like it is for
games that want to prevent aim-bots?

Or they could start running their own algorithm on the back-end, release juicy
batches first to shoppers that haven't gotten a good one recently.

~~~
tptacek
Smaller teams than Instacart have put up effective fights against cheating.
It's an arms race, but so what? The goal is to make cheating uneconomical, not
impossible.

~~~
function_seven
There's always some cost to having to implement countermeasures.

In games, I've seen seen poorly-implemented anti-cheat software kick or ban
legitimate players from their games.

A sibling comment mentioned captchas. That would suck for legitimate Instacart
shoppers. Imagine frantically looking for each photo that has a stop sign in
it, knowing that the orders you're trying to claim could be snatched up by
someone who's a faster captcha solver.

Somehow there's always a cost when bots start to wage war against other bots.
Sure, they can figure out how to minimize it for the human, while making it
uneconomical for the bots to exist.

I guess I'm just curious how they're going to do that. Because I can already
see the blog post now: "Instacart Banned Me for No Reason"

------
whyhow
I think this could be fixed by making each job be posted for a fixed block of
time, say five minutes. Then it is randomly assigned to one of the shoppers
that selected that job. This would remove the incentive around reaction speed
and I don't think the customer would care about the slightly increased time
for an order.

~~~
jgalt212
I was here to say the same thing. But you don't even need to extend the time
frame to five minutes to defeat the bots. Lisa Marsh, in the article,
complained "no human can click that fast." I bet she only needs 10-15 seconds
to assess an order.

Not for nothing, this is the same mechanism by which the "unfair" advantages
of HFT practitioners can be defeated. Run mini-auctions every whole second and
randomly allocate fills if there are ties for best bid and/or best offer.

Of course, as long as the exchanges deeply care about vanity metrics such as
trading volume (trading volume !== liquidity) such measures will never be
broadly enacted.

------
meritt
No clue what Instacart shoppers do. What makes the orders lucrative/better? Is
it high dollar orders, or multiple orders at the same grocery store, or is the
tip pre-published, or what's the criteria when looking for orders to fulfill?

~~~
pishpash
Lucrative orders are mispriced orders, no ifs and buts. That's how efficient
markets work.

~~~
erik_seaberg
Instacart customers should be paying more for long trips and bulky items and
short deadlines. Clarke once observed that “In orbit, caviar is cheaper than
bread.”

Paying them more for _valuable_ items only makes sense if the service includes
preventing heists.

------
gruez
Is there a reason why instacart even allows you to pick orders? It seems like
this exploit can be stopped just by only letting shoppers look at the first
few items of the queue, and limiting the amount of skips.

~~~
mnm1
That could be construed as Instacart assigning orders to their shoppers which
would likely make them employees eligible for benefits, something they want to
avoid at all costs. This may already be the case in CA regardless of what they
do, but they definitely want to avoid paying any benefits for their workers in
any state where this is not yet currently the case.

~~~
chefandy
Definitely this. They don't care who gets the orders as long as they're
gotten, and assigning the work to people rather than letting people pick from
a pool makes them look more like an employer/dispatcher rather than a broker.

------
Johnny555
Maybe the best strategy is to tip low when placing the order, then increase
the tip after delivery to reward the guy who needed the money enough to take
your order with a low tip.

~~~
ALittleLight
Then you'd also incentivize workers to take orders with low tips and be
disappointed when they really get a low tip.

Seems more fair to me to require the company pay their employees a fair wage
and benefits rather than redefine those that work for them as contractors to
dodge those obligations.

~~~
oh_sigh
Most people who accept a low tip order would not be expecting to get any more
than what was there

------
sneak
The bots aren’t snatching the orders.

Other shoppers, competing for the same business, are using software programs
to compete more effectively and efficiently.

This is not an exploit. Access to deal flow is first-come, first-served.

------
troydavis
I was curious what these actually looked like in the wild and what Instacart
shoppers thought. Here's some shoppers discussing bots:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/InstacartShoppers/comments/gshom2/h...](https://www.reddit.com/r/InstacartShoppers/comments/gshom2/here_is_the_bot_saw_someone_say_they_bought_it_in/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/InstacartShoppers/comments/fagva2/d...](https://www.reddit.com/r/InstacartShoppers/comments/fagva2/does_anyone_use_an_auto_click_tool_of_some_kind/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/software/comments/7mfxmh/a_good_fre...](https://www.reddit.com/r/software/comments/7mfxmh/a_good_free_autoclicker_program/)

The most commonly-mentioned example is "MurGee Auto Clicker" (a simple form
clicker: [https://www.murgee.com/auto-
clicker/tutorial/](https://www.murgee.com/auto-clicker/tutorial/)) and
miscellaneous Android form clickers.

------
say_it_as_it_is
A company offering technological innovation to gain advantages in a market is
going to ban shoppers who use technological innovation to gain advantages in
their internal market?

There's obviously competition among shoppers. The argument presented in this
article is that those with technological advantages aren't acting fairly, but
considering the dynamics of the shoppers' market, I would argue that they are
not only acting fairly but are introducing what can be the next phase of
innovation for the entire business. Instacart may have explored instant match
in the past but found issues with it. Rather than drop it entirely, maybe they
ought to revive the idea but refine it in consideration of what sniping is
accomplishing.

------
ultimoo
I had come across a video couple of months ago showing this in action. Captcha
was mentioned a few times on the thread.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwCh4rtAOWc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwCh4rtAOWc)

~~~
gruez
I love how the kneejerk reaction to any bot problem is "captchas". I'm not
sure how that would even help. If there are 20 jobs available, and 3 of them
are high paying, having a bot sort through the list for you still gives you an
advantage. Sure, it's better than having someone claim all 3 of them at the
same time, but you can achive the same effect by having a cooldown of 5
seconds (enforced server side). Also, with a cooldown, you can't get an
advantage (eg. entering a captcha faster with keyboard)

------
balozi
Instacart could wipe away this feature in one afternoon if they wanted.

------
Razengan
Seems like a solution for eliminating automation could be to make such
services only accessible through an [iOS] app, perhaps by requiring Face ID
verification on accepting an order.

------
galkk
> When Marsh opens her Instacart shopping app, she sees promising orders
> disappear before she can act. “No human can click that fast,” she said.
> “Instacart needs to fix this. These bots are literally taking the food off
> my kids’ table.”

While I understand the wish to get the best/any batch, this is significant
exaggeration. If your kids food depends on getting the batches from the
website, then you have much larger problem than bots.

~~~
WJW
In related news, lions have sued that the invention of spears by early tribes
makes it significantly more difficult to hunt humans and it's taking food off
their cubs' table.

This sounds very much like ordinary competition that any self-employed person
would have to deal with. If I insist on using assembler to make websites for
clients while my competitors use Rails, it's not a secret who is going to do
better in the long run.

------
BMSmnqXAE4yfe1
Uber handles this by not letting drivers know the destination before they
arrive for pickup. Can't instacart offer the same functionality? Like you see
the order, shop location, but do not see the amount and other "lucrativity"
info. And there is a penalty for cancelling after you accepted.

------
catsarebetter
This has been happening for some time now, unfortunately, IC doesn't give af
b/c the orders are still fulfilled. In the 4 sided marketplace they balance,
usually the shopper experience ranks last in priorities, like in all gig
economy apps

------
WWLink
This strikes me as unethical.

~~~
missedthecue
What is unethical to you? Is it the competition that is bad or is using
technology to compete the bad thing?

------
fosk
Any system - or market - sophisticated enough will see the emergence of bots
as the ultimate decision makers/arbitration players. It’s quite fascinating.

~~~
082349872349872
My groceries are delivered by employees (either of the chain or of the postal
service, and on rare occasions, of DPD). No need to hate the player when one
simply avoids the precariat game.

------
rayhendricks
Wow saw that video, maybe someone got into their API?

What if someone from a non-USA location started selling access to the best
batches in prime USA locations e.g. SF/LA/SEA/NYC/DC then we could start
trading and packaging up those batches and trading on them in crypto
exchanges, maybe even make a new coin?

Also having someone put in a SSN is not any kind of verification if you’re
trying to subcontract out to people not in the country legally/documented. The
ssn algorithm is known and it is easy to generate, it just don’t get fixed
because politics.

Maybe we have finally found a decent use for eth?

~~~
gruez
>e.g. SF/LA/SEA/NYC/DC then we could start trading and packaging up those
batches and trading on them in crypto exchanges, maybe even make a new coin?

In that case you might as well make claiming orders be based on a dutch
auction system.

~~~
arcticbull
And without ETH. Just with, you know, a server. With a dutch auction.

------
29athrowaway
I stopped using Instacart years ago. My reasons were:

1) Shoppers would ring your phone for less than a second, ghost you and then
show up with random replacements you never approved.

2) They would fail to deliver on time, then unilaterally reschedule a delivery
for another time when I was not even going to be home.

3) Amazon Fresh and Prime Now are far superior services. Amazon Fresh has
gotten slightly worse in the last couple of years, but it is still far better
than Instacart.

Has the service improved lately? Should I use Instacart in 2020?

------
MarkMarine
The last paragraph of this is heartbreaking.

------
neonate
[https://archive.is/2TgtR](https://archive.is/2TgtR)

------
Gravityloss
One solution is to make the contracts more even? Or allow some automated
auctioning process.

------
benatkin
.app is great for giving official-sounding domain names to scammers. Way to
go, Google.

Eventually more .app domains will be squatted, the price will go up, and
companies will buy domains proactively (like instashopper.app - instashopper
is obvious shorthand for Instacart Shopper, the official term) but not before
a lot of unethical enterprises take advantage of it.

------
habosa
lf these shoppers are really just "independent contractors" participating in
Instacart's open market then Instacart is completely failing as a market
maker.

------
forgotmyp77
i couldn't view this site, anyone have a mirror link?

------
mitchbob
Article also at [https://www.seattletimes.com/business/instacart-shoppers-
bes...](https://www.seattletimes.com/business/instacart-shoppers-besieged-by-
bots-that-snatch-lucrative-orders/)

~~~
dang
Ok, we'll change to that from
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-31/instacart...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-31/instacart-
shoppers-besieged-by-bots-that-snatch-lucrative-orders) on the assumption that
more people can read it. Thanks!

