How Uber, FB, Airbnb can influence user decisions on where to click, spend

Uber’s business model is incredibly simple: It’s a platform that facilitates exchanges between people. And Uber’s been incredibly successful at it, almost eliminating the transaction costs of doing business in everything from shuttling people around town to delivering food.

This is one of the reasons Uber is now among the most valuable companies in the world after its shares began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on May 10.

Yet its US$82.4 billion market capitalization may pale in comparison to the wealth of user data it’s accumulating. If you use Uber – or perhaps even if you don’t – it knows a treasure trove of data about you, including your location, gender, spending history, contacts, phone battery level and even whether you’re on the way home from a one-night stand. It may soon know whether you’re drunk or not.

While that’s scary enough, combine all that data with Uber’s expertise at analyzing it through the lens of behavioral science and you have a dangerous potential to exploit users for profit.

Uber’s hardly alone. Our research shows the biggest digital platforms – Airbnb, Facebook, eBay and others – are collecting so much data on how we live, that they already have the capability to manipulate their users on a grand scale. They can predict behavior and influence our decisions on where to click, share and spend.

While most platforms aren’t using all these capabilities yet, manipulation through behavioral psychology techniques can occur quietly and leave little trace. If we don’t establish rules of the road now, it’ll be much harder to detect and stop later.

TO READ THE FULL STORY, SUBSCRIBE NOW NOW AT JUST RS 149 A MONTH