Your personal data, including your precise location, browser history, and even your mouse movements, is being used by some companies to show different prices for the same products—a phenomenon the FTC has dubbed “surveillance pricing.”
According to a new FTC report, retailers are hiring “intermediary firms” to algorithmically tweak and target their prices.
“Instead of a price or promotion being a static feature of a product, the same product could have a different price or promotion based on a variety of inputs—including consumer-related data and their behaviors and preferences, the location, time, and channels by which a consumer buys the product,” the FTC says.
Doesn’t this open up a clear pathway way to discrimination?
Even AI and data has bias, add that with malicious intent, and what stops a grocer from charging exploited communities higher prices?
Companies like Amazon been doing this for a long time. Yes, it’s discriminatory. No one has done anything about it. And they probably won’t for at least another 4 years.
Why 4 years? Edit: oh… Oh no.
Buckle up, buckaroos!
4 years
If we’re lucky. And even if we have another president and that president is a Democrat and even if that president has a Democrat super majority in the House and Senate, I am not convinced that they will prioritize breaking up monopolies.
Look at who’s coming into power tomorrow, and who’s sucking him off the most. This shit is about to get ten times worse.
Why don’t Americans put pressure on legislation like Europeans did with the GDPR?
Because they work three jobs to get food on their table and have to remortgage their house to pay for an ambulance. Privacy is a first-world problem and the US is a third-world country.
Americans in aggregate simply don’t care. They don’t understand this, won’t take the time to understand it, and don’t care enough to understand.
“Why pay for more Internet than you need to? Introducing MyPlan! Internet bills are getting out of control these days! And with tariff pricing looming in the near future, we understand how many folks need to curb their spending a bit to make ends meet. MyPlan only charges you for the Internet you use–and not for all that extra bandwidth you’re wasting month after month. Call one of our service representatives today!”
A plan like this would actually work if it were capped at the same price as an unlimited plan.
It never is though. Once I was lucky enough to exploit 1TB from a $70/month 5GB plan back in the days that my ISP didn’t offer anything competitive. I ran that hustle for years.
Sadly, I think the flat rate (which is inevitable) would be way more than what we want to pay. Then paying for the internet we use… So frickin expensive 😔 Great idea otherwise. It’d be awesome. We never use what we’re paying for… But it’s the minimum.
Prices are not static. Learn basic economics. Poor people paying poor prices is not bad thing.
Still ain’t buying their shit. I grow veggies and buy from Chinese market.
