Modern life has a way of creating inconveniences out of the conveniences it promises. One manifestation is the proliferation of apps. From controlling air conditioners to making Faustian bargains, everything under the sun now seems to warrant a trip to the Play Store. But since businesses rarely operate with Solomon-like intentions, one wonders why perfectly serviceable websites suddenly began deflecting users towards QR codes and app downloads.
A good place to begin is with what apps claim to offer. They promise user-friendly interfaces — the probability of their actually providing one remains open to debate — and all the functions of a website arranged neatly across a few tabs. What they unquestionably do is occupy our phones’ memory. Within a few years, apps have also become a surprisingly accurate portrait of their owners. A glance at someone’s phone can reveal much about that person. More fascinatingly, the apps know a great deal about the user too. The evidence appears in hyper-personalised notifications that feel like personal attacks, feeds that are endless yet uncannily tailored, and advertisements so well targeted that some users suspect their phones of covertly listening to them.
Charles Hoy Fort, were he alive today, would probably fill his famous notebooks with observations and speculations about this apparent sorcery. For the non-Fortean, however, the explanation is less exotic. Apps collect information through device identifiers, permissions, embedded software trackers and the first-party data generated by every search, tap, backtrack and purchase abandoned in a cart. A popular and beloved confection — cookies — has come to symbolise this wider tracking machinery, though cookies themselves are more commonly associated with websites.
India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act envisages consent that is free, specific, informed and unambiguous, expressed through a clear affirmative action. Once its principal provisions become operational, companies will also have to limit data collection to the stated purpose and make consent easier to withdraw. Yet most consent is likely to be granted with approximately the attention devoted to the mutual-fund disclaimer at the end of an advertisement. Multiply that inattention by the number of apps on a phone and the advertisement for the precise watch discussed with a colleague over lunch begins to look less like magic.
Illusion of Free
This also helps explain why most apps are free and why companies will offer everything from 10% coupons to heavily discounted first orders to induce downloads. Swiggy’s in-house brand Noice, barely a year old, recently outperformed established FMCG brands in several categories in a blind taste test conducted by brokerage Bernstein. The brokerage observed that while Noice may not be enough to reverse Instamart’s uncertain fortunes, it could become “a small building block to retain quality-conscious customers in the long run”.
The brand deserves credit. But Swiggy also has access to the preferences and purchasing behaviour of 12.3 million monthly transacting users — an informational advantage that can help it identify gaps, test products and tailor offerings. This brings the central point into focus: an installed app gives a company a more continuous and intimate view of customer behaviour than an occasional website visit. The app is a fixed point in the digital void. Instead of sauntering in and out of the web like a virtual street cat, the user has been domesticated.
Domesticated Users
Should an app purge, then, be the logical next step? Possibly, but the withdrawal symptoms would be severe. Grocery runs would once again have to be undertaken in person. Food-delivery choices would shrink and might entail the dreaded telephone call to a restaurant, often without a discount. Bill payments would become cumbersome. In the case of UPI and some other services, giving up the app could mean giving up the convenience altogether.
What began as an alternative to the website has evolved into a system of hyper-personalised nudges, inducements and playful jabs from the Zomatos and Swiggys on our phones. Now even the RO app wants in, except that it has the humour of an uncle who has just discovered Gen Z slang. And, morbidly enough, most of us have no desire to check out of this iteration of Hotel California.