Consumers are alarmed by opaque, automated dossiers that companies compile and share across silos, exposing every purchase, click, and even video clip without consent. DataLens gives users a single, real‑time view of every personal data profile held by brands, lets them audit cross‑company data flows, and provides one‑click controls to redact, opt‑out, or demand transparency.
At first I thought "building a 515-page dossier" was needlessly hyperbolic for what amounts to a printed PDF of typical CRM values from a database. It's not like a McDonald's detective meticulously crafted it.However, companies do have an absurd amount of data on us, and the fact that it's automatically collected makes it more troubling, not less. But it's normalized.
Some of the collection is creepy, and I’ve largely stopped using mobile apps and loyalty programs myself. However, some of the concern seems very misplaced.“Oh no McDonald’s runs a Customer Lifetime Value algorithm, a thing in use for decades and which has minimal privacy implications.”“GASP the Golden Arches knows I like Diet Coke and has applied a marketing segmentation to me!”Congrats, you’ve discovered they use concepts taught in Marketing 101?
The concern is when the data breaks out of the silos.It should not shock anyone that Amazon has an entire history of everything that you've ever bought. I would likely not surprise anyone here that they have a log of every item you've clicked on, or even moused over. The beauty of modern systems is that storing all of that data is very cheap.The dark side is if the fellow queried McDonalds and found not just his McDonalds trends, but his shopping habits from, say, Target. Where McDs and Target perhaps had a data sharing agreement to correlate customers.Or seeing a copy of his credit report in
>the fact that it's automatically collected makes it more troubling, not lessI don't think so. You can inflate raw data arbitrarily. They could have laid out on a page the decimal byte values of a one minute video clip of you waiting in line or something. Something redacted by a human would be much more dense in terms of relevant information, and much more digested. If it's just a data dump then at least it's information that not necessarily anyone knows, in the sense of residing in someone's brain.Information collection is also not necessarily malicious. You can never know what you might need
"I was concerned about being surveilled so I also uploaded all my data to an LLM company"
I've seen a lot of stories about how Target's loss prevention staff will track thefts over multiple visits and don't get the police involved until the loss passes some threshold.I've always wondered how they are able to get convictions from a theft months ago with no evidence that you actually possessed the item after you left the store? Is it really good enough to just have video that looks like you probably stole something and an inventory system that they claim shows lost inventory?
> Information collection is also not necessarily maliciousAnyone collecting information has an obligation to think about how it could be used in the future - whether by government or by corporation.McDonald's has also very visibly and successfully switched to gamifying their order selection with machines and dark patterns to drive people to higher priced items, so it's safe for anyone there to assume any data collected will be used to harm customers in such ways.
In general, I agree with you and I'm a privacy advocate. In this particular case, though, it seems like we're railing against the idea that a retailer with repeat customers keeps track of what those customers are buying most frequently and how much they spend. It would be very surprising if retailers didn't retain that info, since it's data owned by the company, generated by the core business itself, and useful for forecasting. I'm having trouble understanding the "invasive" part.I grew up in New York state, but my dad used to shop from a company called Cable Car Clothiers, based out of San Fr
> Don't underestimate the equally intense downward pressure on staffing that minimum-wage hikes have provided (for instance, in California).In-N-Out allows us to discard this notion. They've maintained full staffing while simultaneously paying staff above-market rates (even in California). They only charge 30 cents more for a basic cheeseburger, and the burger is much higher quality, so even that is hard to attribute to wages.
I’m not talking about a literal Marketing 101 course, but I’m also not entirely facetious about this all being taught in a first or second Marketing class (having attended those).I agree we should not expect everyone to have taken a marketing class - but I sure expect the author of the piece to have demonstrated some curiosity about some of the terms. And we know they did, because the author decoded them into plainer language in their table. So why present these elements as an abnormal thing for McDonald’s to compute about them, rather than something an undergrad might be expected to compute a
> The problem with data driven decision making is that data is numeric, and the act of counting is necessarily an act of approximation, by which we erase the difference between objects or events in order to bucket them into a category so that they can be counted.Yes, this is exactly right. To put it another way: When we quantify something, we abstract away everything about that thing that is not quantifiable. So our thinking is only about a tiny aspect of that thing's existence.
> While the sheer amount of data McDonald’s stored over the years caught me off guard at first, the way it was used by the company’s predictive algorithms was what I found most concerning. The company predicted how often I would visit in the next six weeks (2.16 times), what I would spend on average ($13.49), and what I would spend in total ($29.15).I always feel a bit disconnected from what other people feel when I read things like this.Personally, this kind of data doesn’t bother me at all, and is the type of data I don’t mind them having at all, and is the type of analysis I expect them to
> I've always wondered how they are able to get convictions from a theft months ago with no evidence that you actually possessed the item after you left the store?If you steal a car and dump it in the sea, but there's camera footage of you stealing the car, is the camera footage not enough evidence even if they don't find the car?
What level of detail is invasive here though? How often and which items a customer has ordered and their predictions on future customer behaviour based on that data?I understand privacy concerns in many cases, especially when it comes to big tech and online privacy, or credit card companies, but this to me looks like a complete nothingburger.
> What is the actual concern with McDonalds having this data about you? That they will charge you more if they know you will come back anyway?While McDonalds is somewhat benign, most people simply don't understand that this data can be (technically at least, legally is a different question) permanently stored. See the surprise in the article that it is now easy to store every app open. Almost certainly with associated location data. So McDonalds selling/sharing that is a concern, particularly with the extraordinarily lax US approach to data privacy. Data like that cleanly bound to true ide
It's not the entire purpose of the loyalty program. The other reason (possibly the bigger reason) is simple price discrimination. McDonald's found that there are two distinct groups of customers: habitual fast food eaters, who go to their restaurants on a very regular basis, and opportunistic fast food eaters, who grab some fast food once in a blue moon because they want something fast.They found, perhaps counterintuitively, that the opportunistic customers are vastly less price sensitive than the habitual customers. The solution was a somewhat involved loyalty program, which is deliberately e
Personally, I find it creepy as hell. I don't want McDonald's to know if I've ever eaten at McDonald's. Call me crazy, but I don't want every person with a profit motive in the world assembling a dossier on me that it uses and sells.That being said, that's what they signed up for. What did they expect?I think that getting discounts through loyalty programs should be illegal, because people aren't qualified to evaluate the value of the information that they're selling. If you want to do this, become a private club and simply don't sell at all to people who don't want to be tracked. Instead, it
> I felt much more embarrassed and worried about the workers who saw me there all the time than the app knowing i was there all the time.When McDonald's was running their $1.49 fry and drink deal the last 2 years I was there every day. Every. Day. Workers don't care, you can start a rapport with them if you want, they're usually cool.
I suspect there is actually three groups, because the app also has a sort of coupon-ing in it. The lowest price requires you to search the app to find a "deal" that is currently available, rather than just use your loyalty points to get a discount.One of the ideas of classic coupons was to offer a lower price to the most price sensitive customers. The people willing to deal with the fuss of finding and cutting out the coupons.
I have no special insider knowledge here, but I'm reasonably sure McDonald's relative drop in the hierarchy of global made-to-order food providers is a combination of increased competition, more health conscious and eco conscious customers, and younger generations choosing to spend higher amounts on sit-down experiences when bothering to eat out. They're largely franchisees who make the staffing decisions anyway. McDonald's corporate ensures portion sizes, ingredients, and preparation are the same everywhere, but I don't think they're dictating to franchise owners how many staff members they n
I'll list some possible concerns. But first, can we agree that Mickey D's is probably not going to be a lot better at keeping this data secure than, say, my bank or government or insurance company? All of which have been hacked, repeatedly? Given that, the concerns don't need to be restricted to what McDonald's might do with that data, but what anyone might do.1. By combining and correlating this data, a stalker doesn't even need to leave his chair to have a very good idea of where you will be. "AI, when is the best time and place in the next week to find my ex alone?"2. Startup idea! A dating
At the McD's nearest me, they will start when I'm at the nearest stop light; if I get stuck on a long red, timing is pretty good. At other locations, starting in the parking lot is still a little faster than if I had ordered in the store; drive through may be faster from the parking lot, but if the queue is full to the order point, if I order at the regular point, my order is usually ready by the time the orders in front have been taken care of; the order point is usually placed so the pipeline works smoothly at peak volume.
Maybe we should start to question how good idea this whole thing of other companies operating under brands of others really is for all of us. Franchises might make money. Or they won't... It is still pretty large rentier cut... Still nothing compared to things like taxis of Uber or Lyft or food delivery... And then the whole Amazon package delivery...So many parties either directly exploiting others or being able to do it by taking significant cuts of revenue for questionable value...
And talking about that would make people concerned.But instead the article lifts that McD knows your favorite drink is a large diet coke and you probably spend $25 there at your next visit because .. well you usually do. If that's what you bring up then no, nobody is going to be concerned.One could almost think McD has sponsored that "investigative" piece to calm people down. As in: if that's the strongest criticism you can find, well, then it'll all not so bad after all.
Observing my local McDonalds, and comparing to my childhood experiences; now McDonalds is doing a lot more volume. The drive-through line goes faster and is longer, and there are pickup orders. So in total, they are making more money than ever.My memory is that McD drive through was worse before, and less people used it. Go to a Burger King drive-through if you wanna go back in time.Inside, similar number of customers, and inexplicably fewer employees serving them. I blame the management decisions more than the data it's based on. Probably the numbers are telling them to punish the indoor
The impulse is to out the bad system, not the poor souls stuck in it. Thus the ultimate decision to say nothing, as there is no way to affect one and not the other.
I feel like I could think of a way to word a letter that pointed out the problem without pointing out specific locations or people.I can’t imagine that kind of race to the bottom is too fun for the low level employers laboring under it. It sounds like gaming the system involves a lot of operational stress. And a manager who’s willing to cheat to screw the people above or beside them tends to be willing to screw the people beneath them too—whether the manager got that way on their own or whether the system forced them into it.I could especially see it working to the low-level employees’ disadva
People rightly complain about the prices when it comes to chains like McDonald’s. They built their brand on fast, cheap food. But right now, the average cost of a Big Mac in the US $5.79, which is quite high given the raw ingredient cost of the sandwich components, around a 107% markup [1]. And that’s for a burger reconstituted from freeze-dried ingredients shipped in cardboard boxes. And the dining room experience is truly atrocious. It just doesn’t add up.A burger made of fresh, never frozen ingredients from In N Out or Five Guys only carries a 50-80% markup [1], and those stores are properl
Not exactly news, unless this is aimed at naïve teenagers who don't know any better.Personally I stopped eating at McDonald's 21 years ago and it's the easiest thing in the world to quit (although I don't live in the USA, may not be a perfectly fair comparison).Tangentially, here in the UK many supermarkets have upped the ante for people who don't want loyalty cards by introducing differential pricing: non members can easily pay an extra 10% on each shop. So far I've managed to sign up with fake details and save the barcode to Google Wallet, but it's all rather dystopian.
Burger King has a promotion going where if they screw up your Whopper, you get an extra one for free.My wife laughs at me because every time I see that commercial, I point out that if our local BK (now out of business! surprise!) had to do that, they'd have been out of business even faster. Every single time I went there, they screwed up at least one thing. I just finally stopped going.
Recommended execution roadmap for "DataLens: Cross‑Brand Dossier Dashboard"
Examine the 30 harvested raw posts to map specific feature complaints, workflow workarounds, and user friction points.
Build a minimalist solution focused exclusively on solving "Consumers are alarmed by opaque, automated dossiers that companies compile and share across silos, exposing ev..." without feature bloat.
Directly engage users in subreddits and developer forums who expressed frustration to offer early access beta invites.
Introduce structured subscription pricing matching market urgency score (75%).
Employees often feel alienated from the dev team, asking 'What do they even do?' while executives make costly layoffs behind closed doors. CodeClarity gives non‑technical stakeholders instant, digestible insights into ongoing software work and decision impact, aligning expectations and fostering a collaborative culture.
Cloud users often face sudden, unannounced price hikes and automated payments that inflate their bills—leading to budget surprises and manual disputes. PriceBeacon automatically tracks provider pricing changes, sends instant alerts, and offers a proactive cancellation tool so you never pay more than expected.
Consumers are increasingly frustrated by opaque sign‑ups and hard‑to‑cancel recurring services, leading to costly fines for companies that mislead or lock users in. CancelFlow offers a unified dashboard that audits pricing, simplifies the cancellation process, and alerts providers to compliance risks—making subscription management transparent and frictionless for both users and businesses.
Developers building event‑driven, serverless stacks are frustrated by webhook‑only integrations that force them to maintain extra infrastructure. EventSync converts those webhooks into a simple, pull‑based /events endpoint, letting teams retrieve change events on demand with minimal setup and zero webhook maintenance.