[bdndndndbve]

I think the key insight that the article misses is that when consumers interact with an app they have an excess of trust in "the app".

I run an ecommerce site. It's hard as a small retail operation to keep inventory in sync and model the complex network of supplier relationships for special-orders: we can get some products in a day, some things in a week, some in 6 months. Nonetheless customers assume that the computer is the word of God, and that if the website lets them order a product that product must be available immediately.

When you make an app to do something that is illegal, people for some reason assume it is legal (or at least less bad) to do in the app. The presence of a computer intermediary somehow cleanses the action of moral ambiguity. I think this is because most people don't understand how computers work, and they assume that "the computer is always right".

This goes as far back as Babbage:

On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question

[ogleopoly]

The article isn't about consumer apps, though, it's about websites that all four companies in an industry use for "optimal pricing", which just launders collusion through a Python backend. I would considering giving the piece a reread.

[bdndndndbve]

I don't really see how doing collusion through a Python backend is separate from my point? They're doing an obviously illegal and immoral thing but wrapping it in a layer of technology which obfuscates and apparently legitimizes it. The consumer view is one aspect but the companies and regulators have the same perspective.