Comment by techcode | Hacker News Reader

Comment by techcode | Hacker News Reader

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Not sure what illegal consumer practice are you talking about.

Reading through the points from the page you posted - I think internally only actions related to that were basically to add more info (e.g. popup/hover or just "on our site") to clarify to people that same as every other marketplace on the Internet ... coughAmazoncough ...

Things we show are just things we know about and have in our "inventory".

And actually after some of those changes - I believe some customers started to complain that reminding them how "X other people are looking at {name of hotel} for your dates" felt much creepier than "X other people are looking at {name of hotel}" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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PS. Only reason I wrote a quoted "inventory" is that unlike physical goods with real stock. When you're renting accommodation - on top of physical rooms, there's extra dimensions due to different dates, meals (because in many hotels restaurant can't support everyone having breakfast, half/full board/meals) ...etc.

> Not sure what illegal consumer practice are you talking about.

> I was part of "Consumer Psychology Team" at Booking.com for years. That team was/is one way or another involved in pretty much every functionality you mentioned

You were part of a team that cooked up new ways to harm consumers.

Playing the same word games here too is a bit tasteless. When your company is forced to "align practices presenting offers and prices with EU law following EU action", that means you've done something illegal, and you were caught. Nothing else matters.

I hope you realize that picking out only bits and pieces that fit your predetermined view is basically just reinforcing your personal biases, and not bringing you to see the bigger picture.

Though as long as someone doing that is impacting only that person - I don't mind.

However, I would appreciate if you didn't follow taking those bits and pieces you've selected. And then taking them out of context that I've said/wrote them in - re-combining them in ways that would bias others reading just your "curated" version.

Some of your work was unethical and harmful, work that was later on found to be illegal in the European Union. All of this is part of the public record.

It's never too late to reflect on that, and work on making things better at your company, instead of acting surprised that something illegal was called illegal on HN.

AFAIK none of my own work, nor work of the people I was team lead off was unethical, harmful or illegal. Neither in EU or elsewhere.

Before jumping to further conclusions - I would encourage you to look at actual differences in website before and post that announcement you're referring to. Wayback archive should work - though some of this stuff might have not be shown, or shown differently to bots; otherwise over years there have been a bunch of articles covering persuasive techniques with examples/screenshots of Booking.com.

And then perhaps even ask specific questions based on those observations - and maybe, just maybe someone can answer them without actually breaking the law.

Though since it would be against the law for me to give too many technical and business details (employment contract, regulations related to publicly traded companies ...etc). Only way I can think off for you to get a peak into implementation - would be to become a colleague.

And finally - I will agree with you on that last sentence. It's never too late to reflect on things. That includes not acting surprised (or in denial) to hear that some "big company" you thought is doing bad things - is not.

Oh and definitely keep up with the good fight. Based on news with actual specific details of lawsuits and outcomes (some of which I initially only found about when they were used as examples in internal ethics workshops & trainings). There's a lot of companies out there that should be getting more scrutiny both internally and externally.

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