Tommy Siegel | Bluesky
Transcript
Single panel comic
Illustration of a highway with 3 billboards for fast food chains. A bridge is visible in the background, as are power lines running along side of the service road.
Each billboard has a chain logo, with secondary text below.
Wendy’s
- Your fifth favorite burger is now an app
McDonald’s
- Will you give us your data for food?
Burger King
- Guess what: No app? No food
i have such a simmering nostalgia for the old days. on tuesdays there would be 39 cent hamburgers and on wed there’s be 49 cent cheeseburgers. this was at the local micky d’s. that’s what we called mcdonalds in those days. we were beyond a first name basis.
this was around the time i started my first job, which paid $7.50 an hour. and no, this wasn’t in 1970, it was 2001. i wasn’t in the middle of a space odyssey, but an odyssey of the everyman; it was days filled with the aroma and flavor of savory fast food and nights spent with fit y2k hotties in low-rise jeans sipping strawberry shakes. neither of these things cost much and that was a mutual expectation.
screw em all. they just want all your personal info to sell for increased profits
Fast food serves zero purpose now. It’s not cheap and it’s not good. So why on earth would I ever install an app for any of these ghoulish companies?
Because it’s fast?
It isn’t fast either.
It’s Louisiana fast … aka slow as paint peeling.
Run everything in a sandbox ftw. Nothing touches the host ever. No apps talk to one another and you have total control of data going in and out of each sandbox.
I went to Mc’dicks after seeing this. The fuck is wrong with me?
I doubt the person who drew this comic has had the misfortune of trying to order food in China. It’s basically a literal form of what the comic is poking fun of, and it’s ubiquitous.
In China, you can go up to the counter, but you cannot place an order. Sometimes, you cannot even read a physical menu. Not even so much as a menu on the screen. You have to scan the QR code using the Panopticon app (also known as WeChat) and then get bombarded with advertisements. Like us and get a free drink! Click here for a random coupon! Join our WeChat group! No, no, no, no. Then click through their garbage UI to find the one thing you actually want. Make sure you don’t accidentally replace your order with one of their “recommendations” that pop up! Then, try to check out. Do you want to join our WeChat group for exclusive deals? Do you want to create an account? Dismiss, dismiss, dismiss.
Click here to pay. Only WeChat Pay is accepted. No cash, you backwards peon. Enter your mobile number here. Required to order. Ha ha, nice try, 123456789 is not your mobile number. No worries, we got it from WeChat. You’ll get 3 order confirmation texts and 2 advertisements a week for the next six months.
Mfw the “communist” country that can do no wrong according to the tankie instances out-enshittifies the home country of enshittification and capitalism in general 🤦🏻😄
Meanwhile, the best baseball player in the world is Japanese, the number one ranked player in the NBA is Serbian, and they’ve even been overtaken as the most obese people by the citizenship-deprived residents of American Samoa!
If not for Handegg and money hoarding, the US would hardly be #1 at ANYTHING anymore!
Sir, this is a Wendy’s.
Now download our app.
If not for Handegg and money hoarding, the US would hardly be #1 at ANYTHING anymore!
The US has ended like 40 wars this year alone!
The US has ended just the Iran war 40 times already, without even counting the others.
Hey now, we’re still the #1 lapdog of the petrochemical industry!
they’re the current leaders at global terror
I thought that was Israel, US is being led, not leading
Israel and Russia keep their shit pretty localised (espionage notwithstanding). The US exports its shit globally.
I saw a post about this last night. Really scary stuff.
I’ve seen this in Abu Dhabi. A bit creepy but it came with inbuilt convenience like letting your party members each pay for their items or splitting into X portions (you can pay for n*X portions if you want). Sure it’s handy but just give me a paper menu for fucks sake, let me ask the staff for a recommendation
Removed by mod
Stop buying fast food. The companies are scum, its terrible for you and you will save a lot of money.
Fucking hell fast food costs as much as a sit down meal these days, of far better food.
I just haven’t done fast for for so long that I didn’t know the prices had skyrocketed.
Your sit down meals must be incredibly cheap. In this area, they’ve gone up, too. We usually don’t get out of a sit down meal for less than about $50 these days. And we’re not ordering extravagant meals or any alcohol. Fast food will be $20-$30 for the two of us.
Have started carrying out from local restaurants by calling ahead instead of any fast food for this reason.
I found I was spending near too or as much each time anyway I was going out and this way I help put money into the local family businesses instead of it going to CEO profits.
For a while, you could get fries or a McChicken for free or nearly do with the app. Like 5 years ago.
If you’re getting a deal, it’s fine? People pay iPhone prices for Google Pixel phones and don’t care that Google makes like $1700 a year off their data, and they defend this.
If you’re not getting a deal, don’t use the app. If you used it before but you don’t use it now, that data isn’t still helping them. It’s stale. Like a lot of their food. And that Pixel phone.
Yeah, they definetely kept the best deals for people that used the app as incentive to use the app. Now that focus has kind of shifted and the deals have been cut back to a minimum and its the same ones every time. The free fry is still cool and sadly the only way to get a 20 piece nugget for $5 bucks. Its nuts, but they want $5 for a 10 piece now which is nuts. If you cant get a deal dont go, but sometimes you can get everything for a decent price still and thats when I will sometimes go.
Tbh, Google Pixels have an unlocked bootloader, which is pretty rare nowadays, and nothing stops you from installing an OS without Google services. And I highly doubt they are able to extract any meaningful data when you are using such OS, even if there are hardware backdoors installed. It’s just extremely hard to do complicated* stuff, including data collection, while not being detected, and with just access to low level hardware; network packet analysis would give away any such attempts immediately. (*as in ‘more complicated than a few hundred assembly instructions’)
Modem firmware is a bit more than a few hundred assembly instructions. It’s mostly owned by Qualcomm, implementing trade secret designs made up by the boards of all sorts of corporations. Yes, even on the Samsung SoC design ordered by Google. That’s the price of phone calls.
Yeah, the mysterious Intel ME probably does similar things, but nonetheless these subsystems don’t have capabilities nearly as huge as the main OS, so they can’t store a lot of data, or do a lot of computation, or do stealth networking - (rant warning) such as embedding data in packets, that would require stealing the cryptographic keys from the main RAM, or even from other physical modules, basically so much convolution, that would be defeated by a simple update to the networking stack with changed offsets etc., I mean you would have to do crazy things to embed a universal rootkit you can never update yet is never detected doing shady stuff. This sounds more in the area of CIA capabilities, not really hardware manufacturers, but I really doubt they would risk revealing something so serious just to collect some meaningless data. TL;DR CIA backdoor probably exists, data collection backdoors are not feasible.
I’m never going to install an app for a fucking fast food restaurant lol
Just curious about the lemmy consensus, what is it about the app specifically that people find distasteful? Is it the concept of ordering through your phone instead of in person, the app making a profile of your ordering habits, or some nefarious third thing the companies do by getting an app on your phone to steal data?
I was broke and in college and the app deals were so incredibly cheap then. I used to exploit a burger king coupon that was a free kids meal with a $1 purchase. At the time you could get a 10 count nugget for $1. That kept me fed for sure
Fast forward to today, and now you have to have the app to get a still expensive meal. It’s a bit more expensive than full priced meals used to be. It’s not even worth it anymore
I’ve never seen a restaurant in the US or Europe that requires you to download an app to order. They bribe you with coupons and discounts to download the app, which is fair enough, I suppose, but you’re not obligated to. You can still walk up to the counter, tell your order to a human, and then pay with cash. No algorithm will ever know who you were or what you ordered.
They bribe you with coupons and discounts to download the app, which is fair enough, I suppose, but you’re not obligated to.
They jack up prices and then offer what their menu prices should be through the app. It isn’t a discount and this deceptive pricing practice is not fair enough.
All the places around me are installing ordering kiosks inside, which not only removes even more human interaction but also tracks data I’m sure because you have to use a card to pay. I hate it so much
Sadly, you get forced to a digital kiosk most places in my city if you walk up to the counter and expect to order there… but at least you still can avoid downloading the app. It’s actually been helpful for me as I eat less fast food now, lost some weight.
I think the vast majority of stores with the kiosk still have a cash option, but it takes forever to get an employee for the register
I’ve never seen a restaurant in the US or Europe that requires you to download an app to order.
Same. So far it’s only been the perks of some sort sell. But either way, it’s gonna be a hard no from me. I refuse to install apps from significantly more consequential businesses/organizations even; restaurants are just never going to make the list for me personally.
Dropping all that garbage food for high prices they are doing you a favor for your Health and pocketbook
Get ready for burger+ subscription.
First time I saw a restaurant with an app only menu (that obviously required your phone number too) I just froze in confusion, looked at the staff like they were stupid (they looked me the same) and left. It was in Tallinn, Estonia. Later when I checked the rewievs of the place, those implied that it was more of a money laundering place than an actual restaurant, but I won’t go further into that. Suspicious anyways. Found great food in the next door restaurant, they had a normal menu as did most other restaurants except some take-away pizzerias.
This is not generally common here in the US, but Indian restaurants now tend to have no menu, just a QR code that you scan and then you order from their website (no apps so far, or at least they’re not mandatory yet). I was a mobile app programmer until about five years ago and I had to ask these guys how to scan a QR code.
Tallin is a gorgeous place. Did you hit up Headless Chicken too?
Yes, it is! Gotta go again some year and will try to remember that place, looks good. The Vegan Restoran V was amazing!
Is it really apps that are getting out of control? I still get by just fine not using them.
Prices, on the other hand… I’ll just say sitting down at a proper restaurant is often a viable alternative.
I knew a place where, during the day, I could get all-you-can-eat Sushi for the same price as a McDonalds menu.
Absolute no-brainer.
Yeah I remember the moment when I realised I could buy 3 full sized avocado and cucumber California rolls, for the price of one Big Mac or Whopper. The math was easy.
Plus, there was this thing where if I showed up at 6am, they would sell me the sushi literally hot off the presses before they officially opened (if I paid cash). Warm rice, cool vegetables, and crispy nori; God I want sushi now.
I have fast food maybe once a year, closer to every 2 years. I don’t understand the appeal. Unless it’s Culver’s. Even then, rarely done.
Even the infamous McDonald’s French fry doesn’t taste like it’s worth the calories any more.
Asad’s Hot Chicken is damn good, but so far they’re only in the Philly/NYC greater area. I expect they’ll be spreading out a lot further soon … and then turning to shit like everything else does.
Culver’s still makes pretty good food though.
For now, at least.
After I got kids it all makes sense to me. I.fucking.love.McD.
A happy meal with nuggets, let them tire them selves out in the play area.
I can sit there drinking one black coffee. Tried a chicken wrap and my god it was awfull. Way to expensive (even for Norway). Hoped for some saldad, tomato and a little chicken. Nope. Some shredded green stuff with some chicken and the awefull cheese square that for some reason was stuck outside the wrap to the cardboard, the most high quality item in the meal tbh.
Freshly brewed drip coffee was nice.
Ok, that’s fair. McDonald’s coffee is readily available and much better than Starbucks plain coffee. Generally safer than gas station coffee.
Their coffee is so disgusting in the usa. They have nothing on Starbucks.
Starbucks usually tastes like someone scraped the char of a heavily used grill and used the particulates as coffee grounds.
Their coffee has to taste like that to cut through all the whipped cream, chocolate and caramel.
I’ve tried some. You could save up points, but redeeming points didn’t work properly. Then the points expire because they want to push you to go back. In the end its a big hassle and not worth the scraps you receive.
Yes. This was my experience. Too much hassle just to be upsold.
![but seriously this fast food situation is getting out of control [Tommy Siegel]](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/333c7b0d-a459-48ce-baf4-108ba3f5aa2d.png){kind=link}