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Comment by throwthere | Hacker News Reader

I think the “insulted” part is too much. Yes, the consumers shopping on bookshop.org for a common book aren’t just trying to get books for the lowest price, but maybe 99% of online shoppers are. Maybe I should be insulted that the author thinks being identified as someone wanting the lowest price is insulting.

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I mean it is the perfect expression of what a lot of us hate about modern apps. The constant sucking up of all data for advertising.

Lets be honest to follow best practice on security/privacy is a constant schlep of tweaking options and compromising on functionality. Then to have a base tool just throw in your face that "We've added a feature and even though you've got 'send do not track' ticked this is not at all the same so we'll turn it on by default". Yeah I understand the need to vent especially if he chose IE as a minor way to get away from google tracking[1].

I mean, sure, we probably won't ever reach verification mountain dew, but that meme first came about in 2012 and not surprisingly we've slid closer and closer to that in the mean time. People have had years of getting sicker and sicker of the slow visible decline.

[1] After seeing the comments about who the author is it's more likely he defaults to Microsoft products.

As an old guy who yells at clouds, it's reassuring to see another old guy on here yelling at clouds.

Yelling at clouds, indeed. The "cloudification" of products is another thing that irritates me greatly these days.

There is no cloud, just someone else’s computer

Underrated comment.

This is a fine reason to yell at clouds because Edge seems to share your shopping lists with Microsoft. But that argument didn't ever stop the voucher crowd anyway.

Agreed. Most consumers are price sensitive and probably would find this helpful instead of insulting.

"Most" consumers want their browsing scanned so that they have Walmart ads pushed to them while book shopping? I disbelieve.

I think most consumers expect most things to be commercial experiences controlled by someone else.

Some like it; some don't; few believe they have a choice to be anything other than a consumer.

Your average person isn’t looking at this through that lens. Unless you’re doing a lot of work the amount of tracking you’re being subject to is astronomical and at least in this case there is a tangible benefit to them.

The discourse around privacy and tracking isn’t particularly relevant here and it certainly isn’t front of mind for your average person.

You do realize that this feature supersizes the impact of price dumping.

Pay 1 dollar less today. Pay 10 dollars more in the future on everything, the second the smaller local store goes out of business.

At this rate why even bother with the pretext or capitalism. As long as price dumping is tolerated those with the most wealth can buy a monopoly.

If you choose the largest and cheapest vendor for something you are failing yourself, your friends and family and your neighbours.

If you let Microsoft do this, you might as well get on your knees and kiss the feet of Jeff Bezos. One company should be enough for everyone.

And then we don't need this feature anymore either, because there will be no choice. We won't even need advertising anymore.

>Maybe I should be insulted that the author thinks being identified as someone wanting the lowest price is insulting. They give completely valid reasons and they're not necessarily angry specifically about a lower price being offered, but that Edge does not know which metrics by which they judge a store.

Ie Say I'm trying to buy specifically from an LGBT friendly site, oop but it's cheaper over at this other place that also sponsors several anti-LGBT politicos, so the suggestion is useless because price isn't everything, it just is most of the time.

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