Seattle looks to ban surveillance pricing with the "Fair and Transparent Pricing Ordinance" - and the disinfo has already started
As my Mom said when I described surveillance pricing to her, “How can they get away with doing that? That shouldn’t be legal!” Indeed.
"Today, Mayor Katie Wilson, City Councilmembers Alexis Mercedes Rinck and Dionne Foster are announcing a new affordability policy to stop the price gouging, promote equal discounts for all, and make groceries more affordable.... The Fair and Transparent Pricing policy will bar large online and brick-and-mortar grocery retailers from using sensitive personal information such as employment status, race, gender, social media posts, browsing history, chatbot conversations, or other similar data to set different prices for different customers."
– City Leaders Announce New Grocery Affordability Policy: “Equal Discounts for All”, August 6
Surveillance pricing (also known as algorithmic price-based discrimination) is where corporations use vast quantities of personal data to set individualized prices ... in other words, they'll charge you more if they think they can get you to pay more. A couple of examples:
- The algorithms that set the prices take into account whether you’ve just been paid. People who live paycheck-to-paycheck often have to wait to buy groceries for their family until they are paid, so it’s a perfect time for stores to maximize profits by charging them more.
- The algorithms also take into account whether a woman is menstruating – data that they can get from period tracking apps – and so can charge her more for sanitary product.
As my Mom said when I described surveillance pricing to her, “How can they get away with doing that? That shouldn’t be legal!”
Indeed.
And the Fair and Transparent Pricing Ordinance quite rightly prohibits algorithmic price-based discrimination for groceries, diapers, personal hygiene and grooming items, and over-the-counter drugs. Mayor, two city councilmembers propose banning some grocery-pricing practices on West Seattle Blog has a lot more details.
If you're in Seattle ... TAKE ACTION! Tell the City Council to ban surveillance pricing!
As I said in my testimony for a similar bill proposed in the state legislature earlier this year (which also includes a more detailed discussion of surveillance pricing and links to some excellent reports),
"The need for prohibition is especially clear when it comes to groceries. Food is not a luxury. Purchases of food are necessary for survival."
Big Tech and Big Grocery successfully lobbied the state legislature to kill that bill ... and they've already started the same tactics in Seattle. As Councilmember Rinck says about the mass-text I excerpted in the image at the top of the article, "Hmm I wonder how they got everyone’s phone numbers…."
Here's how I tried to counter the disinfo in the comments I sent to the committee Thursday afternoon.
"[B]ig 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. This ordinance won't cause the sky to fall. Despite lobbyists' ludicrous claims to the contrary, the definitions in section 7.35.010 clearly allow loyalty and rewards programs, coupons, and discounts.
What the definitions don'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. This ordinance will save the average family of four over a thousand dollars a year, money that would otherwise be going to big retailers and Big Tech."
Friday morning's committee hearing, starting at 9:30 am, starts the process. After that; in a couple of weeks, the same committee will vote on amendments. It wouldn't surprise me if industry is resigned to something passing and decides to focus most of their energy on pushing for amendments to try to neuter it.
Surveillance pricing bans are extremely popular; New Jersey just became the third state in the country to pass one, and the Senate Judiciary Committee just had a hearing on Your Data, Their Profit: The Consumer Cost of AI Surveillance Pricing. Then again, Big Tech and the NGRA have a lot of lobbying power here, and things are very tense right now between Mayor Wilson and the city council.
So it'll be interesting to see how things play out. Stay tuned!
I'll live-skeet the Friday morning hearing from the Washington Privacy Organizers account.