this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2026
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Shareholders will expect their 185 million to turn into more. Someone will have to pay for this “more.” The business model will therefore boil down to either selling user data or companies paying to be given preferential treatment by the system. Probably both.
Furthermore, such services do not create any added value for the economy because, like advertising, they merely ensure that money is spent at B instead of at A. They are not productive and can be used much more efficiently by the bigger players.
We already know how things like that can be monetized - just look at the Honey scandal. You rip off both users and business customers... But this time with AI.
What a novel idea, Phoebe. Such Innovation, much wow!
Honey didn't just rip off business customers. It ripped off unrelated businesses too.
Guaranteed it’s going down the route of:
“Want your store at the top. We can make that happen” nudge, nudge
But it feels so damned blatant for the grift that it is. The “It’s not about my name” is very blinkered view to take.
That’s not right economically. If you were going to spend $200 at store B and now spend $150 at store A, that’s an efficiency of $50. You’re saying that looking for deals isn’t a market benefit, and it absolutely is. Now, their cut of it is of no benefit, and fuck AI. But the service is productive.
But then the seller is missing out on those $50, which they can't spend anywhere else. From an macroeconomic perspective, the effect is zero. Like advertising, it only serves to allocate resources, not to create value. What's more, it's mainly large companies that benefit from something like this. Firstly, because of scale effects, and secondly, because they can sustain price dumping for longer than smaller companies.
The same applies to deals. You only benefit from them because someone else is disadvantaged. Unless, of course, you assume that companies have something to give away out of kindness. And, of course, you yourself have been someone who has given someone else an advantage at your own disadvantage. You paid more so that someone else could pay less. The macroeconomic effect was zero because no value was created.
Oh, I 100% agree. I test installed the app, and it seems to be some of both (behavior tracking with a Safari extension, and store sponsorship).
That being said, I hate store monocultures even more, like how Amazon/Walmart can bully their suppliers through sheer critical mass and shoppers don’t even look anywhere else. That’s economic inefficiency. Price aggregators are a good thing.