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by bryanrasmussen 1569 days ago
I seem to remember articles from lots of sources, I believe Stratechery was one, about a decade ago advocating for this kind of pricing scheme of using analytics to figure out the price that people will pay and charging them that. A lot of the examples was based on income level which of course made me think, hey here I've struggled all my life to get into the middle class and now they want to change up how you pay for things so at the end of the month I can buy the same amount of things and have as much left over as when I was poor.

Anyway I am against it, find it immoral, and think the EU should have some regulations forbidding it.
3 comments
thatguy0900 1569 days ago
The funny thing is if everyone decides you can pay more because you make more you could well end up with less money than if you had a worse job.
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genewitch 1569 days ago
"Move to Silicon Valley", they said. "You'll make more money", they said.
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mattalex 1569 days ago
Arguably this is already illegal under article 21 of the EU's charter of fundamental rights https://ec.europa.eu/info/aid-development-cooperation-fundam...

Specifically the social origin, genetic features, and property should cover this.

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vermarish 1569 days ago
The report from Mozilla argues that (paraphrasing:) it would be both technically and legally messy to try and regulate the details of pricing algorithms. It is much more feasible to introduce privacy laws so that the use of a consumer's data for personalized pricing is transparent, fair, and lawful. (page 27 of the original report [0])

I feel very cynical about this. The best solution they can come up with is to let the GDPR deal with it? It's hard to believe that unchecking 5 boxes every time I visit a new site truly aligns with their goal of transparency. The researchers suspect that a lot of personalized pricing schemes are in violation of the GDPR, but I just don't know what enforcing compliance will change.

Coincidentally, I just started writing an essay in my ethics class on methods to deal with unethical algorithmic decision making. I'm very happy to discuss this.

[0] https://www.consumersinternational.org/media/369078/personal...

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bryanrasmussen 1569 days ago
How about GDPR 2.0, if PII is involved in personal pricing schemes and you are found to be in violation you will need to inform all of the customers paying higher than your lower rate what you did to them, pay the money back, and have a higher minimum fine and a higher maximum fine.
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