I’m stuck in restaurant tech complaint Threads
…and I kind of love it.
The algorithms found me at work.
Last month, Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram at Meta, explained a new Threads update that changed the way the Instagram-adjacent, text-based social media service surfaces posts to its 500 million monthly active users. Meta tweaked its algorithm, Mosseri said, to give us more control over the topics in our feeds.
In a Threads post, Mosseri wrote:
“It surfaces the topics the system thinks you’re most interested in — you can see them, add ones you want more of, and remove ones you don’t. Your Algorithm is live across Reels, Explore, and as of this week, Feed. Topics are only the start; we’re actively working on supporting requests for people, different moods or vibes, content types, and more.”
In other words, help us help you.
I noticed a shift in my personal Threads feed around the same time. I’ve never talked directly to the feed, offered a “Dear algo…” when prompted, or adjusted topics I want to surface. Still, the algo found me, a longtime restaurant technology reporter, and for the first time served up a bunch of normal diners sharing disappointing tech-infused dining experiences.
Friends, I love it here.
To be clear: I appreciate seeing real-life evidence of restaurant technology shortcomings. I do not love that these people are having bad experiences at and adjacent to restaurants and I sincerely hope they were, and continue to be, rectified.
Still, it shows that, increasingly, diners can tell the difference between a restaurant’s misstep and a blunder by a tech company that supports a restaurant — maybe due to waning trust in tech companies overall.
New poll data from Gallup released earlier this month found that Americans’ confidence in the country’s big tech companies has dropped to a record low; just 20 percent say they trust tech a great deal. (41 percent admitted little to no confidence.) That’s a continued slide from roughly third of Americans that said they trusted big tech when Gallup started asking the question in 2020.
I’ve written before about restaurants and diners getting caught in the crosshairs as tech iterates and “innovates.” (For example: the chaotic case of the misreported brunch service thanks to Google’s AI.) Hopefully leaders of these companies are paying attention.
Anyway! Here’s a peek of some recent algorithmic gems from my personal Threads feed:
1. The voice AI misfire:
Judging only by the details in this thread, a small error — incorrect hours listed on a Yelp page — snowballed into a fully confident and believable voice AI agent misguiding a would-be diner and her family.
2. The diner-facing surcharge:
Payments app Sunday, which restaurants use to help diners split the bill and pay, charges restaurants to use its platform. But it also charges diners a small “platform fee” that some say is not properly disclosed. At least one proposed class action lawsuit agrees. (Anecdotally, an operator whose restaurant uses Sunday once told me that they refund this charge at the diner’s request.)
The tech company’s terms of service, updated earlier this year, say, “Merchant can decide whether to charge the Users for all or part of the Platform Fee. Merchant understands that it will be responsible for paying to Sunday any Platform Fee or any part of the Platform Fee not paid by the Users.”
Diners, understandably, really don’t like extra fees. I don’t think restaurants do either; remember when point of sale system Toast proposed a diner-facing charge and its restaurant customers revolted? The company quickly walked back its plans to charge diners and acknowledged the mistake.
3. The survey hound:
I don’t like these surveys either, but whatever third-party service this restaurant used (I have no idea which one it is) should probably chill out on the comms. Bullying a diner into sharing a review can’t possibly net high-quality feedback.
