Seattle Fair and Transparent Pricing Ordinance Public Comment

August 7

I'm Jon Pincus from the Nexus of Privacy, here to support the Fair and Transparent Pricing Ordinance.

"Algorithmic price discrimination", also known as “surveillance pricing” means they'll charge you more if they think they can get you to pay more. That shouldn't be legal.

But big tech firms and large retailers make a lot of money from surveillance pricing, so they're already using egregious lies to lobby against this ordinance. Don't believe them. Despite lobbyists' ludicrous claims to the contrary, the ordinance clearly allows loyalty and rewards programs, coupons, and discounts.

What it doesn't allow is retailers using these mechanisms as sneaky back doors for black box algorithms that use our personal information to set individualized prices. And that's a good thing – for consumers. Rose Feliciano of Technet for example asked you to allow them to set prices high for everybody and use algorithms pricing to give selective discounts. How transparent is that?

So please pass the Fair and Transparent Pricing Ordinance, and resist industry attempts to weaken it.

August 21

I'm Jon Pincus from the Nexus of Privacy, here to support the Fair Pricing and Transparency Ordinance and urge you to resist industry lobbyists' pressure to weaken it. Please don't add amendments with loopholes allowing them to feed our personal information to black box algorithms to "optimize pricing" by charging some people more than others for the same item. And just as importantly, please do not weaken enforcement.

A strong private right of action is vital. Large corporations are extremely expensive to take on. One example: the state AG sued Meta for blatant violations of campaign finance law in 2018, and Meta stretched the case out for it wasn't until earlier this summer when the Supreme Court finally upheld the fine.

The City Attorney has limited resources, so won't be able to bring very many of these cases. Without a strong private right of action, large retailers and delivery services have a strong incentive to break the law in hopes they can dodge accountability. And the Fair Pricing and Transparency Ordinance only applies to large retailers and delivery services, there's no risk of the private right of action harming small family businesses, which aren't even covered entities.

Of course lobbyists will claim that a private right of action will cause the sky to fall. They always say that! Back in 2022, for example, they made similar arguments in the state legislature with the private right of action in My Health My Data. Guess what? The sky hasn't fallen!

So please ignore lobbyists' spin and lies, and keep the enforcement provisions – and the rest of the ordinance – as strong as possible.

September 11

I'm Jon Pincus from the Nexus of Privacy, here to support the Fair Pricing and Transparency Ordinance. Thank you councilmembers Rinck and Foster for all your hard work bringing this ordinance, and to Councilmember Saka for co-sponsoring.
Please build on this excellent foundation by passing as a strong a bill as possible.

Don't give into industry lobbyists's threats about "unintended consequences" and they're mass texting campaigns spreading disinformation. They want loopholes, and as Julie [Bouanna, of Washington Fair Trade Coalition] said, they're very sneaky about proposing plausible-looking "clarifications" that really give them the ability to use personal information in all kinds of underhanded ways. Like mass texting campaigns for example!

I talked last time about the importance of a strong private right of action. We don't want to let them break the law. and then just think they can probably get away with it or pay the fines as a cost of doing business. The ordinance very rightly exempts small businesses – they're not even covered by this ordinance – and only applies to large retailers and delivery chains. and when the big guys break the law, we really need meaningful accountability.

So please pass a strong version of this bill out of committee as possible and then defend it firmly as it reaches the full council.

September 22

My much longer written comment, including more detail about the amendents, is in the appendix to A golden opportunity in Seattle: the City Council votes today on banning surveillance pricing. We only had one minute each so this was very brief!

Councilmembers

I'm Jon Pincus of the Nexus of Privacy, asking you to pass the Fair Pricing and Transparency Ordinance — and to reject amendments A, C, D, E, F, and G.

We've all seen the headlines about the risks of AI and need for regulation. You have a golden opportunity to do something concrete TODAY to protect Seattle consumers, workers, and independent grocers – and be a model for other cities and states considering similar bans. Please do not throw away this opportunity by adding loopholes and weakening enforcement.

Amendments A and C completely destroy the bill's protections by allowing personal data to be used for individualized pricing by manipulating discounts. That's just a different way of implementing surveillance pricing and charging some people more than others.

D opens up loopholes, E weakens enforcement, F opens up a loophole by encouraging backdoor data sharing, and G gives lobbyists a mulligan to undo all your good work by pressing the state legislature to pass something weaker

So please reject all these amendments, and pass a strong version of the ordinance today!

Thank you to the bill's sponsors for all the hard work, and this is a great step to build on.