The agency said it cannot ban personalized pricing under its current authority, but it will pursue enforcement action against companies that fail to meet its disclosure requirements.
They are going to “enforce” disclosure rules but not enforce to prevent the substantive harms of surveillance pricing. It’s framed (and many stories and readers and commenters run with the narrative) that it’s a restriction, when it’s actually a permission. This means that unlike the direction Lina Khan’s FTC was taking to prevent surveillance pricing, it is saying to companies, “It’s fine to surveillance price as long as you disclose.” Meaning, open season.
It’s the difference between, for example, enforcing actual net neutrality versus enforcing “disclosure” about violating net neutrality.
Disclosure is how you kill stuff like this. Who’s going to patronize a store they know is charging them double what the next guy in line pays? This is 'murica, only poor people who can’t afford to get to the discount stores are supposed to be overpaying.
I think unfortunately that overestimates the amount of information and discernment shoppers exercise, versus doorbuster/marketed deals and brand loyalty. Going back to net neutrality, “disclosure” just meant that fine print would be used to disclose, along with false “benefits” like saying you get “free” Netflix data on your cell plan, to sell it as a feature.
When you are online, as well, you will have no idea what anyone else is paying. The retailer will completely control the information environment unless consumers put forth an unrealistic, disproportionate amount of time to compare prices.
Disclosure is not how you kill stuff like this, it’s how opposition to this dies.
unless consumers put forth an unrealistic, disproportionate amount of time to compare prices.
It kind of shocks me that services like camel camel camel didn’t get more popular over the past 20 years. They’ve been out there, they’re not hard to use, but it seems like people would rather blunder through life uninformed than take a minute to research before acting. This applies at retail, and the voting booth.
Yes, agreed and exactly - and now Amazon’s “price history” AI button helps Amazon keep shoppers from using independent (more reliable) tools.
I think what makes this worse is that Camel Camel Camel may not be able to even function in a surveillance pricing world. It requires an objective same-price basis, and once surveillance pricing algorithmically re-prices for each shopper, a single-point third party can no longer track the price reliably for everyone.
Then the reason why surveillance price tracking is so unrealistic is because shoppers would need to actively submit and refresh their pricing for any comparison site to be valid, and that just isn’t going to happen.
They are going to “enforce” disclosure rules but not enforce to prevent the substantive harms of surveillance pricing. It’s framed (and many stories and readers and commenters run with the narrative) that it’s a restriction, when it’s actually a permission. This means that unlike the direction Lina Khan’s FTC was taking to prevent surveillance pricing, it is saying to companies, “It’s fine to surveillance price as long as you disclose.” Meaning, open season.
It’s the difference between, for example, enforcing actual net neutrality versus enforcing “disclosure” about violating net neutrality.
Disclosure is how you kill stuff like this. Who’s going to patronize a store they know is charging them double what the next guy in line pays? This is 'murica, only poor people who can’t afford to get to the discount stores are supposed to be overpaying.
I think unfortunately that overestimates the amount of information and discernment shoppers exercise, versus doorbuster/marketed deals and brand loyalty. Going back to net neutrality, “disclosure” just meant that fine print would be used to disclose, along with false “benefits” like saying you get “free” Netflix data on your cell plan, to sell it as a feature.
When you are online, as well, you will have no idea what anyone else is paying. The retailer will completely control the information environment unless consumers put forth an unrealistic, disproportionate amount of time to compare prices.
Disclosure is not how you kill stuff like this, it’s how opposition to this dies.
It kind of shocks me that services like camel camel camel didn’t get more popular over the past 20 years. They’ve been out there, they’re not hard to use, but it seems like people would rather blunder through life uninformed than take a minute to research before acting. This applies at retail, and the voting booth.
Yes, agreed and exactly - and now Amazon’s “price history” AI button helps Amazon keep shoppers from using independent (more reliable) tools.
I think what makes this worse is that Camel Camel Camel may not be able to even function in a surveillance pricing world. It requires an objective same-price basis, and once surveillance pricing algorithmically re-prices for each shopper, a single-point third party can no longer track the price reliably for everyone.
Then the reason why surveillance price tracking is so unrealistic is because shoppers would need to actively submit and refresh their pricing for any comparison site to be valid, and that just isn’t going to happen.