I have a suspicion that making spending public would increase spending rather than decrease it. People already spend money on expensive items for social signaling of how well they're doing but there's always ways around that (bootleg items, sales, etc.). With this they'd have no choice but to actually spend the money for social signaling.
Interesting idea. When people post stuff on Linkedin, under their public “professional” persona, they tend to behave in a certain way. I wonder what would happen if this was a social network, where your posts consist of stuff you spend money on. How much would it change the way you handle your dollars.
I'd argue that it would have a detrimental effect, where you must be spending money on whatever is considered hype at that point in time or else you are consider not cool and get cancelled.
There was definitely some failed startup that just published people's credit card purchases in a giant feed... maybe it was just an earlier iteration of Venmo? I've been Googling but can't find it.
Man unintended side effect, wow, I wonder how many other ones there were with things like this? Finding out someones sexual orientation when they order a sex toy?
I think it had a beta notification form thingie when posted, then other problems but now it looks like you can log in? It's getting spam and abuse though so it's maybe not quite at the public trying stage yet either way.
Good question! I'm really not afraid of that. These are normal San Francisco purchases IMO. Also there are filters on the backend so I don't share things like medical expenses which reveal much more.