Prey version 4.0: The growth of e-commerce has created a new breed of predators

The worst part was that afterwards I always looked at the people around me with an inquisitive look and had a strong feeling that they could not be trusted.

From the moment I left the airport, I was prey for taxi drivers. Or even every time I walked from my house to the supermarket, there was always a driver saying “Hello, hello!” shouted. towards me and then slowly follow me in an eerie manner. It felt like I was struggling through the desert while being chased by turkey vultures.

This happened to me many times. And the result was always the same; I tried to remember the taxi brand and set myself the trouble of never using it again, and absolutely never returning to places where I was ripped off.

The only consolation was that this situation brought with it a secret blessing that motivated me to study Vietnamese harder so that I could negotiate better and be less bullied.

Then came one of the biggest changes in human history: smartphones, which brought with them e-commerce. I was able to immediately order cleaning services, meals and transportation services at reliable prices.

The power was in our hands. We wrote reviews and awarded stars to each product to ensure no one would fall victim to the same product or service again. Suppliers would be forced to pay attention to every detail, otherwise their products would become obsolete and lead to bankruptcy.

I felt a sense of joy when I saw that many companies that had monopolies on products and services now had to compete with technological innovation.

I almost forgot the feeling of being cheated.

But the new social technology immediately revealed its dark side. To visualize it, I think of it in this aspect as a multi-legged leviathan, crawling up from many directions and reaching in with its tentacles to suck us dry in many ways.

Every morning I often go to a coffee shop near my house, armed with a pen and good notebooks that I ordered online, find a seat and struggle with the Vietnamese language to complete a science fiction novel.

Today, early in the morning, about a dozen customers sat stiff as tree trunks, barely moving, huddled in corners or places out of sight.

I approached the spot where three young people were sitting. A girl and two skinny guys sat next to each other, wearing headphones. Their fingers moved like spider legs crawling around the laptop keyboard and their smartphones. Every now and then they relaxed, flopped onto the soft velvet couch, laughed lightly, and chatted for a few sentences.

I see people like her a lot in coffee shops. They often play games, listen to music, shop on e-commerce sites or even order a cup of sweet milk tea in the store, in a highly selective process.

As I looked at the three young people, their bodies motionless as their hands held tightly onto the technological devices, I was momentarily hypnotized. They were surrounded by wires, connected to chargers and sockets. I saw the ultimate loneliness in the intricate connections between technology and people. And like them, I sometimes see myself turning into a technology zombie.

In some ways we are also trapped without knowing it. The drivers who say “hello, hello” to me are being replaced by algorithms and applications that use psychology to keep our eyes on the screen, numb our nerves and drain our willpower with prices and discounts. The vivid symbols of “Rewards – Discount” always try to block the user’s escape.

Young people use their laptops in a coffee shop in Hanoi, March 2024. Photo by Tung Dinh

I will tell you from my own experience that our willpower is not very strong, especially when pressured by the forces of high financial motivation.

Willpower is like a battery, which can be charged up to 100%. But when I saw a billboard with a delicious chocolate donut, the power went off a bit; On the second sighting of a donut the battery dropped a little further, and by the third time the chocolate donut was in my stomach. That’s the purpose of advertising, to lurk everywhere and drive customers to the end goal. Technological invitation tricks and stay with users every day, bringing them to the last click on the “Payment” button.

Although I often get annoyed when I’m bothered, I still accept all these aspects as an inevitable part of buying and selling goods. The development of e-commerce has brought many benefits to both manufacturers and consumers. Many trading platforms, especially reputable international and domestic platforms, are doing well in after-sales service and trying to ensure customers’ rights.

But there are things that upset me and remind me of the anger I felt when I encountered the taxi vultures. The first haunting feeling is that it seems like someone is watching or knows exactly what I do and what I need by illegally collecting and trading my personal data. What drives me most crazy are the manipulations that result from the information harvesting. A series of pop-up windows automatically jump out at me, interrupting my decisions and even interrupting my train of thought – one of the reasons I recently switched to writing by hand in notebooks. Pop-ups tickle my dark personality like a dog wanting to bark because it sees that an uninvited guest has appeared.

Secondly, almost every day I receive all kinds of news alerts about fraud, carried out by people with the support and help of technology. Shippers deceive hardworking women who buy online, a form of human traffickers deceive young men eager for easy jobs with high salaries, people with a little knowledge also deceive chickens into investing, deceive gullible people, greedy people… I’m still nervously waiting for my turn, because given the complexity of the net, it’s not that hard to imagine that on a bad day I could also fall into a trap.

The dark side of the technology age exists everywhere, not just in Vietnam. But it seems that Vietnam is weaker than some countries I have been to in terms of activities and measures to protect consumers.

Not only am I the only one who feels hurt when they are cheated, but many of my Vietnamese friends also share that they cannot rely much on consumer protection associations or customer complaint handling mechanisms. In my opinion, these are aspects that need to be improved to achieve benefits for all parties: service providers conduct business more fairly and guarantee customers’ rights.

As for me, just like in the past when I diligently studied Vietnamese to protect myself, this time I have to work hard to update the information and equip myself with technological knowledge so as not to become “Prey version 4.0”.

*Jesse Peterson is an English teacher and book author. The opinions expressed are his own.