This reads like a Speaker for the Dead moment (from Ender’s Game): neither eulogy nor denunciation, but an honest accounting. Acknowledging the real impact without excusing the real harm.
1. Everyone's "algorithm" is different. Even if you could bake every possible filter into your eGrocery product, can you imagine the UX nightmare?
2. The "that I like the most" is a tough thing to quantify. Who is "I"? Me? My wife? My kids? My mom who's coming to visit this weekend? What do I like? Specific brands? Things I've bought before? From that store, or a different one? Things I might like because they share characteristics?
Even if quality is there, how ripe do you want? Are you going to use those avocados tonight, or later in the week? Do you like green bananas or ones that are turning brown?
Let alone the "what looks good today?" or "what's on sale today?" method of shopping!
Even packaged goods are tough. When I'm in a store, I know quickly which product I want. I may not remember the brand name, but I can scan the shelf and find it.
Online, I have to sort through a myriad of options, not to mention sizes and variants.
BBQ sauce, for instance, returns 58 results on Peapod. Sweet Baby Ray's, which I like, is 22 of those. There are 13 different variants (original, hickory & brown sugar, honey, buffalo sauce, sweet'n spicy, honey mustard, honey teriyaki, sweet teriyaki, sweet vidalia onion, maple, sweet chili glaze, honey chipotle, no sugar added) and 7 different sizes (14oz, 16oz, 18oz, 18.5oz, 28oz, 40oz, 80oz).
Holy crap!
I know what the label looks like, and I know the bottle is about yea-big. The images online are 200x200... I can barely SEE the label.
Then, what if what I want isn't in stock? Is it going to appear on the page? Am I just not going to get it? Would I get a substitute, as I might if I was in the store?
By the time I do that mental exercise for 50 items, I might as well drive to the store.
These are hard challenges.
One thing that might make a difference is integration with club cards. Giant knows what I buy down to frequency and UPC. Why haven't they done better integration to link my in-person buying with encouraging me to buy the same items online?
That's my point: of course they do (well, used to). A key demographic is 18–35. Ads portraying "happy, playful 20-something models" seems legit for that demographic, including using social media as a channel, where that demographic tends to be.
That young models, a sleek device, and social media is also attractive to the 13–17 demographic that Juul is being accused of illegally marketing to is impactful, but not damning in of itself.
So that goes back to my question: is there a way to market to 18–35 and actively not market to 13–18? Let's be clear: "teens" 18–19 and people in their early 20s are adults.
Otherwise, the proposed solution is not to market <35 at all... which seems to be exactly what Juul is doing.[1] So then the argument is that they used to, and that's good enough to cry foul.
All this comes back to "targeting". In my mind, it's very hard to draw a distinction between targeting 18–35 that happens to be attractive to 13–18 (because of course it does), and targeting 13–18. Then, you can argue whether incidental attraction is a "feature or a bug", and whether or not it was part of an insidious strategy all along.
[1] "[In 2018], Juul’s ads began to look more adult and conservative... with the slogan 'Make the switch,' the ads now feature testimonials from [people over 35]."
1. Targeting Kids. I don't see the targeting. Marketing a product as "cool"[1] is a valid tactic for the, say, 18–35 age demographic, too. Is there a way to market to 18-year-olds while actively dis-marketing to 17-year-olds? Serious question.
Anecdotally, the radio ads I hear for Juul are all testimonials from middle-aged smokers who switched. Which is not to say that they don't have other tactics, but this particular one can't be particularly attractive to teens.
2. Deceptive Marketing. Probably more legit, but not limited to tobacco. No marketing is going to tell you why not to use their product. Now, alcohol, nicotine, gambling, high fat/sugar foods, credit card debt, etc. should be held to a higher standard than, say, Forever 21.
[1] I.e., "social media posts glamorizing vaping", "flavors including mango, mint and creme brulee", "depicting the devices and those who use them as cool and sexy". Or from a sub-linked article, "mak[ing] it look cool and sleek".
Counter-anecdote: I interned (many years ago) at Altria / Phillip Morris and found everyone I worked with to be very aware and conscious of the impact of their products. There was always a sense of finding that line between creating a good product that people enjoyed, and actively creating transparency and support around the risks created by that product.
We're getting way off topic, but c'mon, 911s. There's a guy around here with a Vorsteiner VRT Porsche 911 Turbo S (in silver), that I definitely didn't notice until recently.
If you want attention, Porshe wouldn't be a go-to. You can spend $200k on a 911 Turbo S and no one will even notice you in traffic, particularly if you get it in black/white/silver.
Within bounds of statistical variance, this is an interesting idea. I'm thinking of small sample sizes and the negatives of publicly posting an algorithmicly-derived statement of, effectively, racism. And do we normalize against those factors being transparent to renters? (If I reject an applicant with no photo who happens to be black, does that "count"?)
But if you get it right, is there any legitimate explanation for why statistical differences would exist? Or do you baseline against the entire AirBNB population (which may be biased in of itself)?