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

The worst part was that afterward I always looked at the people around me with a scrutinizing gaze and strongly felt that they were not to be trusted.

I was a prey for taxi drivers from the moment I left the airport. Or, even every time I walked from my house to the supermarket there would always be a driver who would shout "Hello, hello!" at me and then slowly follow me in a creepy way. It felt like I was struggling through the desert 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 troubled myself to never use it again, and absolutely never return to places where I was ripped off.

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

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

The power was in our hands. We wrote reviews, assigning stars to each product in an effort to make sure no one would be a victim of the same product or service again. Suppliers would be forced to pay attention to every detail or their products would go stale leading to bankruptcy.

I felt a sense of joy when I saw many businesses that had monopolies on products and services now having 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, in this aspect, I see it as a multi-legged leviathan, crawling up from many directions, sticking its tentacles in to suck us dry in many ways.

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

Today, early in the morning, there were about a dozen customers sitting stiffly like logs, barely moving, huddled in corners or places out of sight.

I approached the place where three young people were sitting. A girl and two skinny boys sat next to each other, wearing headphones. Their fingers moved like spider legs crawling around the laptop keyboard and their smartphones. Occasionally, they relaxed, fell into the soft velvet sofa, laughed lightly, and talked to each other for a few sentences.

I see people like them a lot in coffee shops. They are often playing games, listening to music, shopping on e-commerce sites, or even ordering a cup of sugary milk tea right in the shop in a very selective process.

Looking at the three young people, their bodies motionless while their hands tightly grip technology devices, I was momentarily hypnotized. They were surrounded by wires, connected to chargers and power outlets. I saw the ultimate loneliness in the intricate connections between technology and humans. And like them, I sometimes see myself turning into a technology zombie.

In some ways, we are also being trapped without knowing it. Replacing the drivers who say "hello, hello" to me are algorithms and applications that use psychology to keep our eyes glued to the screen, numbing our nerves and draining our willpower with prizes and discounts. The vivid symbols of "Rewards - Discount" always try to block the user's escape.

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

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

Willpower is like a battery, which can be charged to 100%. But when I saw a billboard of a delicious chocolate donut, the power dropped a little; the second sighting of a donut, the battery dropped a little more, and by the third time, the chocolate donut was in my stomach. That is the goal of advertising, lurking everywhere, chasing customers to the end goal. Technological invitation tricks and stick with users every day, leading them to the final click on the "Payment" button.

Although I often feel annoyed by being bothered I still accept all these aspects as an inevitable part of the buying and selling of 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 the rights of customers.

But there are things that make me upset, reminding me of the anger I felt when encountering the taxi vultures. The first haunting feeling is that there seems to be someone watching or knowing exactly what I am doing and what I need by illegally collecting and trading my personal information. Then, what drives me crazy the most is the resulting manipulations from the information harvest. A series of pop-up windows automatically jump out at me, interrupting my decisions, even cutting off my train of thought - one of the reasons why I recently switched to writing by hand in notebooks. Pop-ups incite my dark nature like a dog that wants to bark because it sees an uninvited guest has appeared.

Secondly, almost every day, I receive all kinds of news warnings about fraud, carried out by humans with the support and assistance of technology. Shippers cheat hard-working women who buy online, a form of human traffickers cheat young men who are eager for easy jobs with high salaries, people with a little knowledge also trick chickens into investing, cheat gullible people, greedy people... I am still nervous waiting for my turn because due to the complexity of the net it is not too difficult to understand that I could also fall into the trap one bad day.

The dark side of the technology age happens 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 being 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 bring benefits to all parties: service providers do business more honestly, and guarantee customers' rights.

As for me, like in the past when I diligently studied Vietnamese to protect myself, this time, I have to work hard to update 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.