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.

  • @7112
    link
    English
    357 hours ago

    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?

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      185 hours ago

      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.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      16
      edit-2
      6 hours ago

      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.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        53 hours ago

        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.

        • sunzu2
          link
          fedilink
          123 minutes ago

          Correct, DNC is there to ensure that Democrats never do anything too much to hurt the owner class.

  • @frunch
    link
    English
    54 hours ago

    “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!”

    • @pHr34kY
      link
      English
      4
      edit-2
      2 hours ago

      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.

    • @BigBrainBrett2517
      link
      English
      34 hours ago

      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.

  • @dbkblk
    link
    English
    12
    edit-2
    6 hours ago

    Why don’t Americans put pressure on legislation like Europeans did with the GDPR?

    • @Boddhisatva
      link
      English
      338 minutes ago

      Because, for the last four or five decades, the wealthy in America have used assorted media to foment never ending religious, economic, and racial culture wars between different elements of the middle and lower classes. That constant state of conflict keeps the American people from ever being able to unite and accomplish anything at all.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      62 hours ago

      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.

      • @atrielienz
        link
        English
        31 hour ago

        Americans care but they’re bad at organizing. Significantly so. They fight amongst themselves and get caught up in drama. They spread misinformation and don’t like facts that conflict with what they believe is right. So these kinds of movements stagnate unless someone with a specific type of charisma gives them a direction to follow.

        • sunzu2
          link
          fedilink
          125 minutes ago

          The sheep needs a good daddy shepherd the issue isn’t we haven’t had a good daddy and the last we had got killed by the ruling class.

          So we haven’t had a a pedom friendly daddy since then. He won’t ever happen again IMHO

          Only viable option is decentralized direct action and hope others act in the same to create pressure on the money changers

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      23
      edit-2
      6 hours ago

      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.

  • Amoxtli
    link
    fedilink
    English
    -153 hours ago

    Prices are not static. Learn basic economics. Poor people paying poor prices is not bad thing.

    • @Pretzilla
      link
      English
      554 minutes ago

      Ya got that backwards. The Poor Pay More is a real thing and a documentary movie title if you’d like to enlighten yourself.

    • sunzu2
      link
      fedilink
      129 minutes ago

      And this is a prime example of when idiots talk out of their ass

    • sunzu2
      link
      fedilink
      222 minutes ago

      That’s good direct action but let’s not pretend like it does more than it really does.

      But yeah solid action IMHO