Instacart shoppers besieged by bots that snatch lucrative orders
> <i>some shoppers are paying software developers who have created bots — in the form of third-party apps — that run alongside the legitimate Instacart app and claim the best orders for clients</i><p>Instacart is a real-time market. In real-time markets reaction time is paramount. "Cranking up pressure against app makers and banning violators when they find them" is swimming up a waterfall.<p>The solution is in the market structure. Fundamentally, Instacart needs to shift to batch processing.<p>This could take several forms. They could, on order submission, open a 60-second auction window. The best qualifying bid wins. Bids, mind you, could come in dollars or time to delivery or something else. Alternatively, shoppers could set orders parameters within which they guarantee acceptance. Orders could then be randomly assigned to online shoppers, perhaps with a bias towards ratings and other metrics.<p>Either way, a real-time market, where the first shopper to accept an order, seems under-optimised.<p>> <i>cost of the third-party apps ranges from $250 to $600 in cryptocurrency or bank deposits</i><p>Instagram should acquire the differentiated apps and integrate them into its routing.<p>Showing every order to every shopper is inefficient. Some of these bots will just click on every order every shopper would find attractive. Those are zero sum. But some, I assume, help shoppers pick orders uniquely suited to them. Those are positive sum, and worth integrating into Instacart <i>per se</i>.<p>Fascinating stuff, nevertheless.