I have a personal experience where booking.com’s nudging caused me to reconsider my trip. I was trying to find something suitable to stay in Paris. Maybe it was the exaggeration of booking.com or maybe there was some truth, but at some point I shut down and made a 180 on my plans. I had realised that I don’t want to go somewhere where I have to compete against this avalanche of other visitors who were or were not snapping my accommodation options away. I am now visiting friends in another European city.
I had a similar reaction to Lyft’s “you have 2 minutes to accept this faster trip” prompt and emphasizing the faster, more expensive option first.
I saw that, balked a bit at the interaction and ended up taking a train instead. Not only was it $6.25 instead of $46 it got me there faster than Lyft’s fastest option. Including time walking to and from the station.
I wasn’t in a hurry but the in your face “look how much money people are willing to spend to save 5 min” helped me rethink my priorities.
Similarly (though also exhibiting teenage American language taking over the world symptoms) is Netflix's new (or new-ish, I just noticed it yesterday as a fairly frequent user) 'everone is watching' category. I have absolutely zero interest in that, it's literally repulsive, trivially incorrect, and just plain stupid even apart from the language - who cares what others have chosen to watch, how does it compare to what I've given thumbs up/down?
I join you in cringing at the word choice but I appreciate ways to find things that aren't similar to stuff I already like.
With a lot of recommendation systems, you watch and give the thumbs up to one piece of Danish art house cinema and forevermore that's all it will give you.
Plus it's more fun to watch something if there's a good chance you can find someone to talk about it.
Fair enough, but honestly in my experience Netflix is a long way off over-fitting to thumbs. I never watch cartoons or 'kids' category stuff, how hard can it be.
Looking at the Youtube frontpage while logged in stares deep into your soul
(+ Youtube tries desperately to occasionally get you to also watch some open mouthed shock faced idiot in a thumbnail with $$$$$$$$$$$ in the title brought to you by the prank content creator house of the day).
I don't have an account, looking at the YouTube frontpage (which is presumably designed to appeal to some notional average user) is a seriously depressing picture of people/society.
I actually just got a message from Lyft this week when I was leaving the airport. I opened the app, checked the prices ($38!!), and closed it to catch the train instead ($7).
I quickly received a push notification saying "Save 50 minutes by taking Lyft. If you take transit, you will arrive at 12:36am".
Well, it was already quite late and it would be nice to save 50 minutes. So I booked the Lyft, and proceeded to wait for 40 minutes as over a dozen drivers would be assigned to me, see where I wanted to go (6km away), and cancel my ride. I gave up and cancelled the Lyft and only barely made the last bus. Lyft made my life a whole lot more stressful for no reason.
I was amazed to learn that 218 million people arrived in France during 2019 (tourist numbers indicate 90 million - not sure how the two numbers correlate).
