Amazon's doing a 'just pick up and go' grocery thing.
Yeah, it looks convenient, but all I can think of is how much data they'll collect on the schmucks who patronize it - and how much psychological trickery this will enable to manipulate their customers.
I wouldn't trust it.
@munin Yep. It'll be like VIP cards on steroids. Like, what's next: Amazon tracking what time of the month I buy tampons so it can just go on and put sweat pants in my cart and cheesy movies on streaming?
@nsqe Or potentially worse - http://www.businessinsider.com/police-arrest-women-for-carrying-condoms-2013-3
Let's say that the city gov't buys purchase histories from Amazon and pursues those who purchase certain things.
@munin Sure. That was always the concern with grocery VIP cards — that they would sell your purchase history to, say, your health insurance company, which would then raise your premiums every time you bought Twinkies.
But with Amazon, the fact that your purchases are so broad over purpose and /time/...it isn't just Twinkies, it's Twinkies and bluetooth-enabled blood pressure monitors and books about managing blood pressure and compression socks and so on.
@munin Yep yep yep. Exactly.
@nsqe Indeed. And it's not at all localized to a region - it's potentially worldwide that the profiling could occur.
With great scaling comes great danger of metadata analysis.