People are Making Bots to Snatch Whole Foods Delivery Order Time Slots

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for AnonymousCoward:

People Are Making Bots to Snatch Whole Foods Delivery Order Time Slots:

Social distancing and stay-home orders have led to booming demand for grocery delivery services. In some big cities, people report not being able to find an open delivery time slot for days or weeks at a time. And now Motherboard has found a series of bots that automatically give some people an upper hand when limited delivery time slots are available on Amazon Fresh or Wholefoods.

A slew of developers have made bots and other tools that, in some cases, automatically hunt for a free delivery slot, grab it, and then complete the user's food order, making sure they have a much better chance of buying food before other people snatch up the slot. While some of the developers told Motherboard they designed their bots to help those in need, such as senior citizens who may need to stay inside as exposure to the coronavirus could be more serious for them, others are dealing with the ethical issue of releasing a tool that can clearly be abused, by allowing those who can figure out how to use a technical tool to buy food while others go without.

[...] Data scientist Pooja Ahuja publicly released her own bot a few weeks ago, which checks for a free delivery slot on Wholefoods or Amazon Fresh. Her tool goes a step further though, and can also checkout automatically.

"You just have to run the bot once, and as soon as there is a delivery slot available, it secures it for you, and completes the entire process through checkout," Ahuja told Motherboard in an email.

[...] "Yes, it's an unfair advantage over others who aren't tech-savvy but may still need to purchase items urgently."

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