Yes, their evil plot finally laid bare. Copy what Mastercard and Visa have been doing since the 80s.
So, advertising the things I have already bought? Not sure thats gonna be super successful...
Amazon has done that for the past 2 decades and it has somehow worked.
We noticed you bought a fridge yesterday. Are you interested in these fridges, too?
Gonna catch'em all!
pictures someone trying to catch fridges like in some kind of video game
Perhaps more like what fridge companies do via incessant water filter replacement reminders: Enjoying your Super Deluxe CoolPlus™ Fridge? Don't forget to check out the CoolPlus™ Fridge Magnetic Spice Rack and CoolPlus™ Fridge Juice Dispenser Add-on!
Also enjoy your device randomly breaking every few years.
At some point the bigwigs will realize that a working item is worth more in future potential ad dollars than a broken one with a limited 1 year warranty and start asking their engineers why quality is so bad.
/The screams of 1,000 poor souls per second for 50 years
They did that like 60 years ago. Then they stopped.
Has it worked? Its never led to a repeat purchase for me. :/
Maybe they won't suggest things you already bought, but will estimate what you're going to buy next, based on the statistical analysis of people who bought the same things.
Yeah it’s more like, hey you just bought stabilizing jacks and a water hose for a travel trailer. You must have just bought a new camper. Let’s bombard you with add for stick-up-hooks, rv-mattress sized sheets, cheap plastic dishes, etc.
If only it was smart enough. Make its like oh you bought a newtv, you would like this new surround system
That would be actually valuable for consumers and advertisers. Shame its impossible.
The "people usually both this with this product" suggestions can be pretty good to cover this.
with stuff like this, usually the objective is to advertise based on patterns across purchase histories
I'm sure thats the theory, and whats being sold to the ad buyers, but my money is on it ending up like the ads you get after buying something from amazon/ebay: same item you just bought.
you probably just notice that because it doesn't make sense from your perspective.
it's probably more cost efficient for advertisers to just throw relevant ads at potential groups. Determining whether an individual already has the item is a waste of resources, and you probably don't notice when the ads are things you don't own.
Last time I observed this I was getting the exact same item that I bought being advertised to me constantly, across multiple sites. No variation at all. It was a pair of hiking shoes. If it had then offered me hiking poles or rain coats or anything else that would have been useful, but instead it was the same pair of shoes I had already purchased.
If the ad network had actually suggested useful paired items that i dont already own, then those ads should actually stand out, as they are actually relevant to me.
If its not cost efficient to actually target to the individual (and I dont doubt that it isn't), im not sure what Paypal is bringing to the table here that Amazon etc can't already do.
More like using your past purchases to predict what you will most likely be prone to buy next
Oh, it definitely helps creating a good profile of you.
How is that GDPR compliant?
It'll probably launch in the US only to avoid GDPR concerns
They'll give you $2 or something like that if you give them consent. You would be surprised how well that works.
Still not possible under EU law (as meta for the no-ads paid subscription)
That's very different, they want you to either pay or not have access. This would be you still having access, but being paid for giving them data voluntarily.
That's perfectly legal and employed across many European business entities.
You can't tie selling user data to some user payment at that level
By showing you an annoying popup every time you use PayPal, and eventually you'll accidentally click OK and it will mysteriously remember this and never ask you again.
Let me guess: I'll buy a toaster because my old one died but then I'll get ads for new toasters constantly. You bought one, you must want another. And another. And another. Why aren't you buying more toasters. You bought one. Buy another! Buy twenty!! People who bought toasters also bought microwaves and kettles. Do you want a toaster? Does anyone want any toast?
"No, I don't want any toast. No toast. No buns, baps, baguettes or bagels. No crumpets. No croissants. No teacakes, no potato cakes, and no hot cross buns. And definitely no smegging flapjacks."
Yeah, that's the future with AI.
Ah! So you're a waffle man! Wanna buy a waffle iron?
Given that God is infinite, and that the universe is also infinite. Would you like a toasted teacake?
It's amazing that these companies spend ultraquadrillions on advertisement platforms and algorithms and all they ever seem to do is just spam products at you that you have already purchased. Where is all this money going?
I'll be more concerned when Visa and Mastercard get wind of this idea.
Did you not know they're already selling your purchase data? All the card networks do it.
That's why you need to use cash to buy anything you don't want logged to create a data point about you to be sold
For items or just the shop? Because I write EPOS systems for a living, and as far as I can tell, we pass no item data to the credit card merchants.
The shop is obviously passed to them. So maybe don't buy from Dave's Enormous Dildo Emporium.
The card companies can get data from the Merchant Category Code to infer the nature of purchases, without specifics. The stores also have a record of what items you bought, which could also be sold unless you have a contract with the store that guarantees they won't sell your purchase history (at least in the countries without strong privacy laws)
That's per store though, presumably when they sign up with a payment provider (because there's a lot of rules about e.g. using credit cards to gamble with).
If I buy sex toys from Tesco, it's still showing up as "groceries". If I buy from a sex shop, it's going to be more clear cut.
I can see from my emails that PayPal send out itemised receipts on behalf of their customers, so they're definitely collecting more data than the big two.
If I buy from a sex shop, it’s going to be more clear cut.
Life pro tip: Open a sex shop that sells groceries, to devalue the data analysis ^^
Surprise! You've been acquired by Amazon!
You mean DEDE? I love that place.
If PayPal is doing it, so fucking will they too.
Up next: PayPal introducing new AI that purchases random shit for you.
So happy I deleted my account with them 5 years ago after going throught their laughably bad customer protection (the only reason I had them to begin with, I had figured it was a good idea to have a buffer between merchants and my CC)
In the end, it was perfect because, as they refused to help, I went straight to the credit card to reverse the fraudulent charge and closed all accounts with PayPal... Then I get a whiny email from them when the CC took the funds and left them holding the bag... Sweet minor victory
PayPal. All the authority of a bank. None of the responsibility.
I feel like this could be used to describe any tech company that "innovates" or "disrupts" an area.
Correct... In late stage capitalism "innovation" means breaking some laws (Air B&B, Uber), smoke and mirrors (AI) or outright scams (Theranos)
This is why all these new "innovations" need to flood the market as hard and fast as possible.... Before anyone notices what they really are
Throw enough investor money at lawyers and anything is legal for an amount of time.
"Oh, I'm sowwy, did we bweak the law? Well here's 5,000 boxes of paper that say we didn't, see you in 18 months."
Exactly right
The difference between selling your data and selling ads, is that only you can use your data. This is PayPal building a moat around its user private data so only they can use it.
Capitalism = legal entities that we don't need doing things that we don't want.
Well, this sucks. PayPal was great for only having your credit card information in one place - now it looks like I'll have to risk it with every website.
This has me seriously considering using a company like privacy.com to just create random CC numbers per sketchy website.
Revolut does that, but far cheaper.
I like the concept if disposable CC numbers, but looks like i need to link both to my bank account. Anything like this that can link to another credit card?
Cap One 360 checking - free, and offers single use cards. Think they regen on each usage,and can get the number etc easily in app.
Edit:missed “credit” card. Believe Cap One does same for their credit cards, not entirely sure tho. It’s becoming more common on credit, but def not “most” cards doing that yet
Good to know, I'll check them out as well! Thank you
Privacydotcom is free
Does revolut pay you to use it?
Thought they charged something to put $ on temp card, via EFT though I may well be wrong.
Don’t recall the org name I conflated w them anymore u fortunately.
And from where I sit, yeah they pay me to some degree - the acct costs me nothing, and it’s got a handful of the usual “edge case” insurance benefits and such most debit cards don’t.
Not real useful to me, admittedly, but I do receive something.
That, and they reliably post direct deposit exactly 48h early, plus or minus fifteen minutes. Ability to plan my life around when exactly my check will show up has value. Seems to be very much a “best effort” basis to post early w/ most banks.
Lots of that stuff is useful because of my individual habits and patterns of spending I’m sure, might well not be for you.
Will check out privacy, now I’m kind of curious if there is something even more friction free for my scenario.
It's basically a credit card through an online bank that draws from a debit account.
For me, as a later of protection, I made a free capital one account (any will do, cap one was mostly random and i don't particularly endorse or hate them) and then the pdotcom "credit" draws from that. Their early implementation was using a prepaid debit card but they switched to credit like 2 years back and it's been good ever since. Even with other solutions I can't recommend enough taking a look.
FWIW, I've used privacy.com a few times. Works pretty well.
I completely forgot about that site. Thanks for reminding me.
I would've loved to have a paypal alternative if so many damn services would adopt them.
And no I'm not talking Google Pay or Apple Pay. They're just as bad.
How is Apple Pay just as bad? I haven’t heard anything that they do like this. There is no advertising in the Apple ecosystem. In fact, several places (like Walmart) don’t want to adopt the tap to pay because for some cards, it blocks tracking from them by using a pseudo randomized credit card number every time. It makes using the rewards for places a pain, but it works at maintaining harder tracking for whoever you’re paying.
There really isn't going to be, besides giving them your card directly (or paying crypto🤢). PayPal is less about the software and more about the service, which isn't something FOSS can really replace. An alternative would have to have a company behind it that works with major financial institutes and whatnot.
I hope they enjoy analzying my once-a-month subscription to FFXIV and nothing else.
Prepare to get inundated with ads for anime girls and other weeb shit.
EDIT: To clarify, I mean "weeb" as a term of endearment rather than the pejorative.
I first thought this was a bad idea by Paypal but you opened my eyes
I'm more surprised they hadn't yet, to be honest.
Over here regular banks have been doing that for years 😥
thsnks I'm out
This is the best summary I could come up with:
PayPal will use data from billions of customer transactions to supercharge its nascent ad business.
The new PayPal Ads group is headed by recent hire Mark Grether, a senior vice president and GM at PayPal, who says the budding advertising operation will "help make merchants smarter to sell more products and services effectively, as well as enable consumers to discover more of what they love."
But, his reported statement doesn't really dwell on the fact that it will be using customer data, including purchase history, to pull this off.
In addition to the main PayPal platform, it also operates cash transfer app Venmo and Honey, a browser extension designed to find deals online.
The report also mentions that Venmo will see fewer ads served in order to not drive off its younger users.
PayPal's data on users' purchases and other transactions, combined with AI, might prove to be great at advertising, though probably to the consternation and frustration of recipients.
The original article contains 366 words, the summary contains 160 words. Saved 56%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Well… looks like I’m going to have to find a new payment platform to use.
This would be? Most stores I know of either want your credit card information directly, or paypal
Never really saw a international big player like this.. Here in Switzerland we have twint as alternative, but it is only available on most swiss stores.
Well, stripe is relatively often available as well..
What I wanted to tell is, paypal does not need to be the best payment service for end user, it needs to be the cheapest and easiest service to implement in your store. The store does not care about your data going to paypal, the store only sees the cut they have to gove the payment services.
Privacydotcom
Just the tip you say?
How about no way!
I'm surprised that they haven't been doing this from the start tbh. Obviously they've been selling your data to whoever, which is really the same I guess.
Going to terminate account now. Good luck with that shit Paypal
Of course it is.
What a surprise.
Funny. I don't have a creditcard and I don't want one. That is the only reason I sometimes, maybe once or twice a year I use PayPal.
I wish them good luck building a profile on 2 purchases. Also, I'm in the EU and I suspect this will not be legal here.
I also cannot believe somebody thought it would be a great idea to introduce even more tracking and ads. Don't they understand they are driving away customers?
Every time I try to buy with PayPal I have to use a new account cause they ban me (VPN, simple login, VoIP phone, etc will all do it).
There is it. The main reason why Honey exists.
Yes, their evil plot finally laid bare. Copy what Mastercard and Visa have been doing since the 80s.
So, advertising the things I have already bought? Not sure thats gonna be super successful...
Amazon has done that for the past 2 decades and it has somehow worked.
We noticed you bought a fridge yesterday. Are you interested in these fridges, too?
Gonna catch'em all!
pictures someone trying to catch fridges like in some kind of video game
Perhaps more like what fridge companies do via incessant water filter replacement reminders: Enjoying your Super Deluxe CoolPlus™ Fridge? Don't forget to check out the CoolPlus™ Fridge Magnetic Spice Rack and CoolPlus™ Fridge Juice Dispenser Add-on!
Also enjoy your device randomly breaking every few years.
At some point the bigwigs will realize that a working item is worth more in future potential ad dollars than a broken one with a limited 1 year warranty and start asking their engineers why quality is so bad.
/The screams of 1,000 poor souls per second for 50 years
They did that like 60 years ago. Then they stopped.
Has it worked? Its never led to a repeat purchase for me. :/
Maybe they won't suggest things you already bought, but will estimate what you're going to buy next, based on the statistical analysis of people who bought the same things.
Yeah it’s more like, hey you just bought stabilizing jacks and a water hose for a travel trailer. You must have just bought a new camper. Let’s bombard you with add for stick-up-hooks, rv-mattress sized sheets, cheap plastic dishes, etc.
If only it was smart enough. Make its like oh you bought a newtv, you would like this new surround system
That would be actually valuable for consumers and advertisers. Shame its impossible.
The "people usually both this with this product" suggestions can be pretty good to cover this.
with stuff like this, usually the objective is to advertise based on patterns across purchase histories
I'm sure thats the theory, and whats being sold to the ad buyers, but my money is on it ending up like the ads you get after buying something from amazon/ebay: same item you just bought.
you probably just notice that because it doesn't make sense from your perspective.
it's probably more cost efficient for advertisers to just throw relevant ads at potential groups. Determining whether an individual already has the item is a waste of resources, and you probably don't notice when the ads are things you don't own.
Last time I observed this I was getting the exact same item that I bought being advertised to me constantly, across multiple sites. No variation at all. It was a pair of hiking shoes. If it had then offered me hiking poles or rain coats or anything else that would have been useful, but instead it was the same pair of shoes I had already purchased.
If the ad network had actually suggested useful paired items that i dont already own, then those ads should actually stand out, as they are actually relevant to me.
If its not cost efficient to actually target to the individual (and I dont doubt that it isn't), im not sure what Paypal is bringing to the table here that Amazon etc can't already do.
More like using your past purchases to predict what you will most likely be prone to buy next
Oh, it definitely helps creating a good profile of you.
How is that GDPR compliant?
It'll probably launch in the US only to avoid GDPR concerns
They'll give you $2 or something like that if you give them consent. You would be surprised how well that works.
Still not possible under EU law (as meta for the no-ads paid subscription)
That's very different, they want you to either pay or not have access. This would be you still having access, but being paid for giving them data voluntarily.
That's perfectly legal and employed across many European business entities.
You can't tie selling user data to some user payment at that level
By showing you an annoying popup every time you use PayPal, and eventually you'll accidentally click OK and it will mysteriously remember this and never ask you again.
Let me guess: I'll buy a toaster because my old one died but then I'll get ads for new toasters constantly. You bought one, you must want another. And another. And another. Why aren't you buying more toasters. You bought one. Buy another! Buy twenty!! People who bought toasters also bought microwaves and kettles. Do you want a toaster?
Does anyone want any toast?"No, I don't want any toast. No toast. No buns, baps, baguettes or bagels. No crumpets. No croissants. No teacakes, no potato cakes, and no hot cross buns. And definitely no smegging flapjacks."
Yeah, that's the future with AI.
Ah! So you're a waffle man! Wanna buy a waffle iron?
Given that God is infinite, and that the universe is also infinite. Would you like a toasted teacake?
It's amazing that these companies spend ultraquadrillions on advertisement platforms and algorithms and all they ever seem to do is just spam products at you that you have already purchased. Where is all this money going?
I'll be more concerned when Visa and Mastercard get wind of this idea.
Did you not know they're already selling your purchase data? All the card networks do it.
That's why you need to use cash to buy anything you don't want logged to create a data point about you to be sold
For items or just the shop? Because I write EPOS systems for a living, and as far as I can tell, we pass no item data to the credit card merchants.
The shop is obviously passed to them. So maybe don't buy from Dave's Enormous Dildo Emporium.
The card companies can get data from the Merchant Category Code to infer the nature of purchases, without specifics. The stores also have a record of what items you bought, which could also be sold unless you have a contract with the store that guarantees they won't sell your purchase history (at least in the countries without strong privacy laws)
That's per store though, presumably when they sign up with a payment provider (because there's a lot of rules about e.g. using credit cards to gamble with).
If I buy sex toys from Tesco, it's still showing up as "groceries". If I buy from a sex shop, it's going to be more clear cut.
I can see from my emails that PayPal send out itemised receipts on behalf of their customers, so they're definitely collecting more data than the big two.
Life pro tip: Open a sex shop that sells groceries, to devalue the data analysis ^^
Surprise! You've been acquired by Amazon!
You mean DEDE? I love that place.
If PayPal is doing it, so fucking will they too.
Up next: PayPal introducing new AI that purchases random shit for you.
So... like Amazon Yesterday Shipping?
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Amazon Yesterday Shipping
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Relevant xkcd?
So happy I deleted my account with them 5 years ago after going throught their laughably bad customer protection (the only reason I had them to begin with, I had figured it was a good idea to have a buffer between merchants and my CC)
In the end, it was perfect because, as they refused to help, I went straight to the credit card to reverse the fraudulent charge and closed all accounts with PayPal... Then I get a whiny email from them when the CC took the funds and left them holding the bag... Sweet minor victory
PayPal. All the authority of a bank. None of the responsibility.
I feel like this could be used to describe any tech company that "innovates" or "disrupts" an area.
Correct... In late stage capitalism "innovation" means breaking some laws (Air B&B, Uber), smoke and mirrors (AI) or outright scams (Theranos)
This is why all these new "innovations" need to flood the market as hard and fast as possible.... Before anyone notices what they really are
Throw enough investor money at lawyers and anything is legal for an amount of time.
"Oh, I'm sowwy, did we bweak the law? Well here's 5,000 boxes of paper that say we didn't, see you in 18 months."
Exactly right
The difference between selling your data and selling ads, is that only you can use your data. This is PayPal building a moat around its user private data so only they can use it.
Capitalism = legal entities that we don't need doing things that we don't want.
Well, this sucks. PayPal was great for only having your credit card information in one place - now it looks like I'll have to risk it with every website.
This has me seriously considering using a company like privacy.com to just create random CC numbers per sketchy website.
Revolut does that, but far cheaper.
I like the concept if disposable CC numbers, but looks like i need to link both to my bank account. Anything like this that can link to another credit card?
Cap One 360 checking - free, and offers single use cards. Think they regen on each usage,and can get the number etc easily in app.
Edit:missed “credit” card. Believe Cap One does same for their credit cards, not entirely sure tho. It’s becoming more common on credit, but def not “most” cards doing that yet
Good to know, I'll check them out as well! Thank you
Privacydotcom is free Does revolut pay you to use it?
Thought they charged something to put $ on temp card, via EFT though I may well be wrong.
Don’t recall the org name I conflated w them anymore u fortunately.
And from where I sit, yeah they pay me to some degree - the acct costs me nothing, and it’s got a handful of the usual “edge case” insurance benefits and such most debit cards don’t.
Not real useful to me, admittedly, but I do receive something.
That, and they reliably post direct deposit exactly 48h early, plus or minus fifteen minutes. Ability to plan my life around when exactly my check will show up has value. Seems to be very much a “best effort” basis to post early w/ most banks.
Lots of that stuff is useful because of my individual habits and patterns of spending I’m sure, might well not be for you.
Will check out privacy, now I’m kind of curious if there is something even more friction free for my scenario.
It's basically a credit card through an online bank that draws from a debit account.
For me, as a later of protection, I made a free capital one account (any will do, cap one was mostly random and i don't particularly endorse or hate them) and then the pdotcom "credit" draws from that. Their early implementation was using a prepaid debit card but they switched to credit like 2 years back and it's been good ever since. Even with other solutions I can't recommend enough taking a look.
FWIW, I've used privacy.com a few times. Works pretty well.
I completely forgot about that site. Thanks for reminding me.
Get a credit card that allows you to generate a temp number.
Privacydotcom is amazing
I would've loved to have a paypal alternative if so many damn services would adopt them.
And no I'm not talking Google Pay or Apple Pay. They're just as bad.
How is Apple Pay just as bad? I haven’t heard anything that they do like this. There is no advertising in the Apple ecosystem. In fact, several places (like Walmart) don’t want to adopt the tap to pay because for some cards, it blocks tracking from them by using a pseudo randomized credit card number every time. It makes using the rewards for places a pain, but it works at maintaining harder tracking for whoever you’re paying.
There really isn't going to be, besides giving them your card directly (or paying crypto🤢). PayPal is less about the software and more about the service, which isn't something FOSS can really replace. An alternative would have to have a company behind it that works with major financial institutes and whatnot.
I hope they enjoy analzying my once-a-month subscription to FFXIV and nothing else.
Prepare to get inundated with ads for anime girls and other weeb shit.
EDIT: To clarify, I mean "weeb" as a term of endearment rather than the pejorative.
I first thought this was a bad idea by Paypal but you opened my eyes
I'm more surprised they hadn't yet, to be honest.
Over here regular banks have been doing that for years 😥
thsnks I'm out
This is the best summary I could come up with:
PayPal will use data from billions of customer transactions to supercharge its nascent ad business.
The new PayPal Ads group is headed by recent hire Mark Grether, a senior vice president and GM at PayPal, who says the budding advertising operation will "help make merchants smarter to sell more products and services effectively, as well as enable consumers to discover more of what they love."
But, his reported statement doesn't really dwell on the fact that it will be using customer data, including purchase history, to pull this off.
In addition to the main PayPal platform, it also operates cash transfer app Venmo and Honey, a browser extension designed to find deals online.
The report also mentions that Venmo will see fewer ads served in order to not drive off its younger users.
PayPal's data on users' purchases and other transactions, combined with AI, might prove to be great at advertising, though probably to the consternation and frustration of recipients.
The original article contains 366 words, the summary contains 160 words. Saved 56%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Is there an alternative to paypal?
Depends on what feature you use.
https://alternativeto.net/software/paypal/
For my use case Revolut mostly replaced it.
Well… looks like I’m going to have to find a new payment platform to use.
This would be? Most stores I know of either want your credit card information directly, or paypal Never really saw a international big player like this.. Here in Switzerland we have twint as alternative, but it is only available on most swiss stores.
Well, stripe is relatively often available as well..
What I wanted to tell is, paypal does not need to be the best payment service for end user, it needs to be the cheapest and easiest service to implement in your store. The store does not care about your data going to paypal, the store only sees the cut they have to gove the payment services.
Privacydotcom
Just the tip you say?
How about no way!
I'm surprised that they haven't been doing this from the start tbh. Obviously they've been selling your data to whoever, which is really the same I guess.
Going to terminate account now. Good luck with that shit Paypal
Of course it is.
What a surprise.
Funny. I don't have a creditcard and I don't want one. That is the only reason I sometimes, maybe once or twice a year I use PayPal.
I wish them good luck building a profile on 2 purchases. Also, I'm in the EU and I suspect this will not be legal here.
I also cannot believe somebody thought it would be a great idea to introduce even more tracking and ads. Don't they understand they are driving away customers?
Every time I try to buy with PayPal I have to use a new account cause they ban me (VPN, simple login, VoIP phone, etc will all do it).