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.