The Majority Of Americans Support Banning Surveillance Pricing (For A Good Reason)
bgr.com • • business
Key Points:
- A recent poll by GBAO Strategies reveals that 68% of Americans believe surveillance pricing and similar technologies will lead to higher grocery prices, with 67% supporting an outright ban on such practices.
- Surveillance pricing uses personal data such as spending habits, location, age, race, and gender to set individualized prices, raising significant privacy concerns highlighted by groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
- Investigations, including one by Consumer Reports, have found that some users were unknowingly subjected to price variations of up to 23% through AI-driven pricing experiments, such as those conducted by Instacart.
- Dynamic pricing, which adjusts prices based on demand and inventory rather than solely personal data, is also widely used by retailers like Amazon and Walmart, though it still leverages customer browsing and purchase behavior.
- U.S. senators are actively working to regulate or ban these pricing methods due to concerns over consumer fairness and privacy.