> The McDonald’s-backed company Plexure sells surveillance data on you to vendors, who use it to raise the price of items when they think you’ll pay more.
Finally I understand why when the McDonalds app was introduced it asked for permission to access my contacts. Of course I refused and deleted the app immediately. But to this day whenever I go to the McDonalds drive-thru the first question they ask is "Are you using the app today?"
McDonalds seems to care so much about their app that I wonder if selling personal information makes them more money than selling hamburgers.
```When Uber entered the taxi market without securing taxi licenses or extending the workforce protections required under law, it said the move didn’t count because it did it with an app.```
It's so weird to see the first half of this article written as an ode to the virtues of competition and then see the sharp pivot into defending taxi medallions. Say what you will about Uber, but no Uber driver has ever tried to lie and harass a passenger over whether or not the credit card machine is broken in an effort to cheat on their taxes. It's not even like the anti-consumer hostility of the taxi experience translated into better rights for workers, the high price of a medallion meant in practice your typical cab driver was in a situation damned close to indentured servitude to a medallion company.
And to top it all off, taxis demonstrate the fallacy of thinking that hundreds of market participants provides meaningful benefits from competition. In a market with a suitably large number of cab drivers and passengers, the odds of repeat business between any pair of driver and passenger is low enough that neither party is incentivized to treat each other well. It's not like anyone was pulling out a Yelp-like site or review book to pick the best-reviewed cab drivers, or like you went out of your way to stick with a cab driver you'd had a good experience with. Meaningful competition requires that people can make _informed_ choices, and without repeat business you don't get participants informed enough to make meaningful choices between market participants. It also requires leverage. It doesn't matter if you threaten to take your business elsewhere next time if you and they both know _you were going to anyway_.
I'm not saying that Uber is perfect, or even that Uber couldn't be productively regulated better by the government. I'm saying that taxis were a terrible experience, and I don't trust Doctorow to have a good lay of the land when he focuses more on his ideology than the evidence. If subscribing to Doctorow's beliefs requires services to look more like taxis than Ubers, you can count me out.
It's not new. McD acquired 'Dynamic Yield' back in 2019 and has long been using big data. There is an case study from 2020 about it called "McDonald's: Can A Behemoth Lead in the Era of Artificial Intelligence?" by Fabrizio DiMuro of the University of Winnipeg.
> Competition is an essential component of effective regulation, for two reasons: First, competition keeps the companies within a sector from all telling the same lie to its regulators.
I'm as pro-competition as anybody, but I don't actually buy this argument.
Firstly, regulating a thousand small players is much harder than regulating a few. Which is why there is a lot of evidence that regulation (even when good or needed) eliminates some amount of competition - crash and emission testing put an end to new car manufacturers for a long time.
Secondly, in industries with lots of competition and individual actors (real estate, healthcare, finance, etc) regulatory capture is actually far worse! Increasing the sheer number of special interests does not, in fact, improve regulation. And if anything, smearing it across as many voting districts as possible gives a level of political entrenchment that software companies could only dream of.
Let me flip the Airbnb argument on its head - why are hotels allowed to build dense dormitory-style housing in cities where it's otherwise illegal to do so? Because their regulatory capture is so entrenched that we don't even think about it.
> The death of competition spells doom for regulation. Competition is an essential component of effective regulation, for two reasons: First, competition keeps the companies within a sector from all telling the same lie to its regulators. Second, competition erodes companies’ profits and thus starves them of the capital they need to overpower or outmaneuver their regulators.
Yeah, maybe you can start with Rogers Wireless. Eh, Cory?
I would say that regulatory capture is merely a consequence of political capture. The politicians write the regulations, supervise the regulators, and in most cases, appoint the judges.
How did Microsoft avoid breakup in 2001? Simple: George W. Bush was elected President, and the Bush administration decided to settle the court case with a slap on the wrist. Don't blame the regulators but rather the politicians.
It's ironic that Doctorow uses the example of "whether you should heed your doctor’s advice to get vaccinated", because the regulators all support vaccination, but again as a result of a Presidential election, HHS has been politically captured by an anti-vaxxer who ignores expert advice.
Pretty nonsensical argument. Uber isn't an employer not because it's an app but because it's a service that connects you to someone. Your phone company isn't an employer just because you use them to hire a handyman.
So wordy only to use a nonsensical strawman. I get it: you're trying to create a new buzzword the way you did with "enshittification". So the usual suspects will be big fans. Good luck.
Doctorow should be tried in absentia by professors of English composition, on the charges of poisoning the discourse with his stupid word, and of making posters incorrectly believe they have scored a profound point by including it in their sentences.
Anyway let's dismantle these rickety arguments. 1) That RealPage says they can break the law because they are an app. This has no factual basis. You can read RealPage's argument[1] and draw your own conclusion. RealPage argues that they do not engage in price fixing, they distribute marketplace data which is protected by the First Amendment. No aspect of this argument has anything to do with means or venue. Indeed, the debate is exactly the opposite of what Doctorow suggests. RealPage's opponents are saying that RealPage must be regulated because they are a software platform, even though their activities would obviously be protected by the First Amendment in any other context. Doctorow fails to address the First Amendment implications.
2) That competitive markets have brought us things like antilock brakes. This lacks even the slightest resemblance to reality. The only reason we have widespread functioning ABS is because the whole industry is totally dominated by a few players, and always has been, even if the cartel membership has changed over the decades. The existence of the cartel and its co-evolution with automotive regulators is the enabling reason why the technology works. Doctorow throws out this example but does not grapple with the implications. He believes you won't think about it.
Fundamentally the issues precede the end states. Neither present-day software nor law-government are efficient enough to service the users to whom the possibilities (and deficiencies) are now apparent to the developers. Tech didn't create new formats it merely reformatted them into databases. Both are trapped in their inefficiencies which force the reduction of competition or their monopoly. The state is a myth we workaround by going global. Software operates arbitrary things and then automates them as expedient interfaces that disperse and charge access for what is ultimately specific (a good or service). Decent was a trial and error workaround that simply creates status.
Doctorow pretends these are the ultimate forms, which s how his answers are palliatives not solutions.
It's strange how bureaucratic Silicon Valley has become in relation to his bureaucratic prose, the tech industry once saw solutions beyond the available tech, now it's buried in consultancy rebuttal and Friedman myth ("competition is good").
We have behemoth Goliaths that are living dinosaurs that engage in hierarchical domination of what are really illusions: text, symbols, images. All we need now are the behemoths to mint their own $, copyright it and the circle is complete. Yet these are merely simulations in search of a reality that AI can't deliver, and so the behemoths are using all techniques to remain relevant. It's stillnly one step ahead of a magic act. Obviously they are finished, ready for obliteration by insightful, imaginative succession. Bureaucracies are all targets for replacement, especially Doctorow's type of prose.
Yes, they use apps to break the law.
But, still, regulation - when in doubt - should be avoided. Did you know that in Germany, you need to send your employees to a specialised training if they use a ladder in their day to day work? You don't need to regulate what's common sense.
> The McDonald’s-backed company Plexure sells surveillance data on you to vendors, who use it to raise the price of items when they think you’ll pay more.
Finally I understand why when the McDonalds app was introduced it asked for permission to access my contacts. Of course I refused and deleted the app immediately. But to this day whenever I go to the McDonalds drive-thru the first question they ask is "Are you using the app today?"
McDonalds seems to care so much about their app that I wonder if selling personal information makes them more money than selling hamburgers.
```When Uber entered the taxi market without securing taxi licenses or extending the workforce protections required under law, it said the move didn’t count because it did it with an app.```
It's so weird to see the first half of this article written as an ode to the virtues of competition and then see the sharp pivot into defending taxi medallions. Say what you will about Uber, but no Uber driver has ever tried to lie and harass a passenger over whether or not the credit card machine is broken in an effort to cheat on their taxes. It's not even like the anti-consumer hostility of the taxi experience translated into better rights for workers, the high price of a medallion meant in practice your typical cab driver was in a situation damned close to indentured servitude to a medallion company.
And to top it all off, taxis demonstrate the fallacy of thinking that hundreds of market participants provides meaningful benefits from competition. In a market with a suitably large number of cab drivers and passengers, the odds of repeat business between any pair of driver and passenger is low enough that neither party is incentivized to treat each other well. It's not like anyone was pulling out a Yelp-like site or review book to pick the best-reviewed cab drivers, or like you went out of your way to stick with a cab driver you'd had a good experience with. Meaningful competition requires that people can make _informed_ choices, and without repeat business you don't get participants informed enough to make meaningful choices between market participants. It also requires leverage. It doesn't matter if you threaten to take your business elsewhere next time if you and they both know _you were going to anyway_.
I'm not saying that Uber is perfect, or even that Uber couldn't be productively regulated better by the government. I'm saying that taxis were a terrible experience, and I don't trust Doctorow to have a good lay of the land when he focuses more on his ideology than the evidence. If subscribing to Doctorow's beliefs requires services to look more like taxis than Ubers, you can count me out.
It's not new. McD acquired 'Dynamic Yield' back in 2019 and has long been using big data. There is an case study from 2020 about it called "McDonald's: Can A Behemoth Lead in the Era of Artificial Intelligence?" by Fabrizio DiMuro of the University of Winnipeg.
> Competition is an essential component of effective regulation, for two reasons: First, competition keeps the companies within a sector from all telling the same lie to its regulators.
I'm as pro-competition as anybody, but I don't actually buy this argument.
Firstly, regulating a thousand small players is much harder than regulating a few. Which is why there is a lot of evidence that regulation (even when good or needed) eliminates some amount of competition - crash and emission testing put an end to new car manufacturers for a long time.
Secondly, in industries with lots of competition and individual actors (real estate, healthcare, finance, etc) regulatory capture is actually far worse! Increasing the sheer number of special interests does not, in fact, improve regulation. And if anything, smearing it across as many voting districts as possible gives a level of political entrenchment that software companies could only dream of.
Let me flip the Airbnb argument on its head - why are hotels allowed to build dense dormitory-style housing in cities where it's otherwise illegal to do so? Because their regulatory capture is so entrenched that we don't even think about it.
> The death of competition spells doom for regulation. Competition is an essential component of effective regulation, for two reasons: First, competition keeps the companies within a sector from all telling the same lie to its regulators. Second, competition erodes companies’ profits and thus starves them of the capital they need to overpower or outmaneuver their regulators.
Yeah, maybe you can start with Rogers Wireless. Eh, Cory?
I would say that regulatory capture is merely a consequence of political capture. The politicians write the regulations, supervise the regulators, and in most cases, appoint the judges.
How did Microsoft avoid breakup in 2001? Simple: George W. Bush was elected President, and the Bush administration decided to settle the court case with a slap on the wrist. Don't blame the regulators but rather the politicians.
It's ironic that Doctorow uses the example of "whether you should heed your doctor’s advice to get vaccinated", because the regulators all support vaccination, but again as a result of a Presidential election, HHS has been politically captured by an anti-vaxxer who ignores expert advice.
> In its promotional materials, Plexure uses the example of charging extra for your breakfast sandwich on payday.
You would hope this would be awful PR for them and anyone using their services. What disgusting corporate sociopathy.
Pretty nonsensical argument. Uber isn't an employer not because it's an app but because it's a service that connects you to someone. Your phone company isn't an employer just because you use them to hire a handyman.
So wordy only to use a nonsensical strawman. I get it: you're trying to create a new buzzword the way you did with "enshittification". So the usual suspects will be big fans. Good luck.
Doctorow should be tried in absentia by professors of English composition, on the charges of poisoning the discourse with his stupid word, and of making posters incorrectly believe they have scored a profound point by including it in their sentences.
Anyway let's dismantle these rickety arguments. 1) That RealPage says they can break the law because they are an app. This has no factual basis. You can read RealPage's argument[1] and draw your own conclusion. RealPage argues that they do not engage in price fixing, they distribute marketplace data which is protected by the First Amendment. No aspect of this argument has anything to do with means or venue. Indeed, the debate is exactly the opposite of what Doctorow suggests. RealPage's opponents are saying that RealPage must be regulated because they are a software platform, even though their activities would obviously be protected by the First Amendment in any other context. Doctorow fails to address the First Amendment implications.
2) That competitive markets have brought us things like antilock brakes. This lacks even the slightest resemblance to reality. The only reason we have widespread functioning ABS is because the whole industry is totally dominated by a few players, and always has been, even if the cartel membership has changed over the decades. The existence of the cartel and its co-evolution with automotive regulators is the enabling reason why the technology works. Doctorow throws out this example but does not grapple with the implications. He believes you won't think about it.
1: https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/re...
Fundamentally the issues precede the end states. Neither present-day software nor law-government are efficient enough to service the users to whom the possibilities (and deficiencies) are now apparent to the developers. Tech didn't create new formats it merely reformatted them into databases. Both are trapped in their inefficiencies which force the reduction of competition or their monopoly. The state is a myth we workaround by going global. Software operates arbitrary things and then automates them as expedient interfaces that disperse and charge access for what is ultimately specific (a good or service). Decent was a trial and error workaround that simply creates status.
Doctorow pretends these are the ultimate forms, which s how his answers are palliatives not solutions.
It's strange how bureaucratic Silicon Valley has become in relation to his bureaucratic prose, the tech industry once saw solutions beyond the available tech, now it's buried in consultancy rebuttal and Friedman myth ("competition is good").
We have behemoth Goliaths that are living dinosaurs that engage in hierarchical domination of what are really illusions: text, symbols, images. All we need now are the behemoths to mint their own $, copyright it and the circle is complete. Yet these are merely simulations in search of a reality that AI can't deliver, and so the behemoths are using all techniques to remain relevant. It's stillnly one step ahead of a magic act. Obviously they are finished, ready for obliteration by insightful, imaginative succession. Bureaucracies are all targets for replacement, especially Doctorow's type of prose.
Writing/Reading exercise: Consider this article from the perspective of someone who is pro-ICEBlock-being-removed-from-the-Apple-App-Store.
Yes, they use apps to break the law. But, still, regulation - when in doubt - should be avoided. Did you know that in Germany, you need to send your employees to a specialised training if they use a ladder in their day to day work? You don't need to regulate what's common sense.