Vinted

1. The organization

Vinted

2. The AI technologies Employed

Vinted uses several algorithms to keep their user engaged. Their recommendation algorithm recommends items based on what the user has “liked” previously. These “liked” items can be found in a list of “Favourites”. Although not unlimited, vinted can recommend items from several countries, making the list of recommendations quite extensive. Furthermore, you are also able to follow other sellers, receiving notifications when they post new items. Vinted has designed their app in such a way that when you search for an item you can scroll for a long time to see all the items available to you that matches the description. The technology that vinted uses is not state of the art AI, but something that is very noticeable is the resemblance with social media algorithms as it has similar functionalities such as being able to follow one another, liking things, getting things recommended based on what you like, posting things yourself, searching for specific items/content and chatting. While both the way it was intended and the way vinted is used is different from that of Instagram for example, the similarities between functionality do not seem to be a coincidence as they do serve to keep the user from engaging with the app (in this case by buying and selling items).

3. Ethical concerns

This raises some ethical concerns. Vinted obviously wants to keep their user’s engaged. With every item you buy you pay a buyer’s protection fee. Moreover, when buying items you can choose to use their shipping service VintedGo (previously Homerr), which claims to be good for the environment. Incidentally this is also the cheapest shipping option. To put it concisely, Vinted wants to keep their user’s engaged because that is how to make money.

Negative effects of encouraging users to buy more

The way Vinted operates and the way it employs their algorithm(s) raises some concerns. First of all, although they claim that VintedGo is very good for the environment, there is an obvious downside to encouraging people to sell and buy more stuff. As more and more stuff gets sold, more stuff has to be shipped, which has a negative impact on the environment. Vinted also often sends the user notifications find new Favourites when their Favourite items are sold, creating the illusion of having to buy fast before the pieces you like are sold to someone else. This function thus encourages users to buy more and more as new thing get recommended everyday which you can then add to your Favourites and you will be pressured to buy those things and the cycle repeats. Moreover, although some items are truly secondhand (have been used by a previous owner for an extended period of time, which is good), some items are practically brand new. Due to the ease with which things get bought and thus sold via Vinted, it also does not necessarily encourage users to be mindful about the things they buy. They can buy new things and resell it once they’re tired of it, allowing them to keep buying more brand new stuff, which is also bad for the environment.

Negative effects of broadening the options

Second of all, Vinted has a say in which items are available to you based on what country you’re in. This seems wrong for a few reasons. One being that, if things have to be shipped from Spain for example, the carbon footprint of the package is obviously higher than if it were to be shipped from within your country. Setting the options of what you can buy to multiple countries also extends the amount of choice you have. This can lead to people feeling as though they have unlimited choice. Having more options available to the people buying (but also to the people selling) also contributes to the perpetuated buying/selling loop. This is due to the fact that if there are more options available, people will take longer to review the vast majority of them if they’re looking for something specific. But also for the recommendation algorithm it works best when there are more options available. All in all, this will also cause people to spend more time on the app, purely by being fed more options. And again, encouraging people to buy more items is in itself also bad for the environment.

Addictive design for engagement

And finally, the overall way in which Vinted is designed to keep users engaged also raises concerns regarding addiction. Many people are addicted to social media algorithms and the similarity between vinted and the average social media app is actually quite big. All the functionalities that were previously described combined with the broad scope of items Vinted lists as available results in an environment where there are many options, allowing users to scroll through the sometimes seemingly endless amount of items. Especially the functionality of being able to scroll for a long time seems to be rather addicting to frequent social media users. The indulgence in Vinted’s content list, however, also comes with a price (literally). As people can get addicted to scrolling through countless of items people can also develop an addiction to buying “new” things. Vinted makes it very easy to buy as you don’t need to communicate with the seller on where to send it to etc. as Vinted already makes all the necessary information available to both parties in order to have a smooth transaction.
Overall, Vinted is an app that truly makes it easy to sell and buy items that are usually secondhand. These downsides are things that mostly arise when the app is used excessively, as is the case with most platforms.

4. Recommendations

To address the concerns highlighted above, I have a few practical recommendations. The first being that Vinted could easily change the range of buying to within the same country. This would reduce the carbon footprint of some of the packages being sent and also limits the options of what people can buy.

Another practical recommendation would be to limit the amount of recommendations Vinted gives themselves. If user’s only have the option to search for specific items then perhaps they would be shopping more mindfully instead of constantly receiving new items that might be interesting to them.

Moreover, the pressuring notifications telling the user to find new Favourites when their items are sold out could also be removed. Again, this allows more space for the user to think carefully about their purchase, instead of buying something because they felt rushed.

And finally, within the company their could be given more thought on how to logistically ship the packages in a more sustainable way as well as how to keep the user engaged in a healthy manner. These two things would significantly improve the way in which Vinted operates. This includes both changes in the algorithmic framework of Vinted as well as the companies own views on these matters.