> such as if amazon gave you a bad customer credit score for your excessive returns?
Is amazon going to tell me that up front? In the restaurant case the manager can explain the issue to the customer and ask them not to come in again. It becomes immediately resolvable whereas in your example I have no idea what just happened to me.
> Word travels around, does it not?
The difference between the analog word and the digital word is extreme.
> compared to some vibes sitting in some guy's head?
I live in a town of 2 million people. These vibes have zero impact. Add them to a database that can be tied to my credit card number? Now they have real impact. I don't think that's a reasonable or desirable outcome.
The problem with these systems isn't their mere existence it's their draconian implementations.
>Is amazon going to tell me that up front? In the restaurant case the manager can explain [...]
In either case they can explain, it's entirely orthogonal to the question of whether it's in-person or not. There's no technical reason why Amazon can't send you a email saying that you were banned for excessive returns, for instance. Moreover I can imagine plenty of reasons why a restaurant manager might not want to explain the precise reason, such as the threat of lawsuits, or not wanting to create an argument/scene. See also, why some HR/hiring managers are cagey about why you were turned down for a job.
>The difference between the analog word and the digital word is extreme.
The difference between a hyper-connected metropolises of today, and a random village in the 1800s is also extreme.