There are three things. Papa Johns also hates to see well compensated employees. They've been successfully sued several times for wage theft, they were forced to stop their “no-poach” policies which prevented franchise owners from hiring workers at other Papa Johns restaurants in an effort to keep wages down, and they insisted that if they had to provide health insurance to their workers they'd pass that cost onto consumers rather than spend a penny of the $87 million in gross profit they were making.

What she means is that they want to do it subtly enough so people aren't creeped out, because when it's put like that it really is creepy.

Anyways, I wonder if instacart can predict political affiliation. I bet their data scientists have at least tried.

[1] https://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

He mentions that that they have a model that can predict both guest numbers and revenue:

“We have forecasting models based on historical data—the trend of the past six weeks and also the trend of the previous year,” Gordon told me. “The predictability of the business has become astounding.” The company has even learned how to make adjustments for the weather or for scheduled events like playoff games that keep people at home."

And this was in 2012!

I highly recommend both the book and the article as both talk, in detail, about how to build systems even in very dynamic environments.

I can only imagine how accurate the models have gotten now.

0 - https://amzn.to/4y4Riot

1 - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/08/13/big-med

They have data for a full month. They know if it worked or not. They decided to make a positive press release despite it failing to increase sales.

So OK maybe some corp can reprogram you to not restock on food. CONVINCE ME THAT'S GOOD. Is it not just an attempt to make people worse? Less self-sufficient? More miserable?

Instacart sells data to Papa Johns for better pizza ad timing.

Papa Johns isn’t somehow able to predict this based on their own data (which is the impression I initially got from the headline), they are buying it from Instacart.

Name and shame.

It seems like the only way to avoid it is to only shop in person and to stick to mom and pop stores that can’t afford to do all these shenanigans, while also avoiding ads like the plague.