National implications as other states consider similar bans
3 Yesterday · 11h ago · 3 posts · 15 comments · 2 sources · development 3 of 3
The New York State Legislature passed a similar measure in spring 2026, with Governor Kathy Hochul having until year-end to sign. Maryland, Connecticut, and New Jersey have also signed bills banning surveillance pricing. Seattle's ordinance may inform similar efforts nationwide.
“will make Seattle the first city in the country to take on algorithmic price discrimination for groceries.”
Mayor Katie Wilson, Seattle Mayor · mastodon ↗Mayor Katie Wilson Seattle MayorGrace Gedye Senior Policy Analyst, Consumer ReportsCouncilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck Seattle City CouncilCouncilmember Bob Kettle Seattle City CouncilConsumer Reports Consumer advocacy organization
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Seattle banned algorithmic pricing in grocery stores. It’s the First Law of Its Kind in the US https://www. thestranger.com/news/seattle-v otes-7-2-to-restrict-algorithmic-grocery-pricing/ # Seattle # Groceries # AI # Surveillance # SurveillancePricing
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The devil is really in the details:> The bill also permits a vast array of discounting practices while requiring increased transparency around discounts and placing some limitations on how consumers can be profiled.The issue isn't "hey, you gave me a custom price that was disadvantageous". The issue is that "you gave me the regular price for some…
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There are a lot of commenters responding to this that appear to be confused about the Constitution and government power in the US.The federal government has the power to regulate the conduct of private actors and to regulate the activity between private actors. The Civil Rights Act is an obvious example.Relevant to this discussion, obviously HIPAA…
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The best solution is a constitutional amendment that actually enshrines a right to privacy. Among other things, the retention, aggregation, correlation of any personal data should be illegal (including for commercial purposes). (Storage on behalf of users in encrypted form could be made OK. Could also be refined to support retention of data of the…
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I’m most concerned about data that would normally be illegal to collect or give to advertisers still making its way into their databases anyway. It would be illegal for your doctor to sell details about your health conditions to advertisers, but they may be able to infer it anyway from your purchasing or search data.Add AI to the mix and it gets…
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Would it? The 1st is a prohibition on the rights of government, not private parties. Would the new amendment apply to the government, or to private sector, or to individuals? In any case, the 1st and the 28th? would continually be butting heads, since the 1st prohibits congress from passing laws that would enforce the 28th (and by extension, the…
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True story #1: whenever we go on vacation, wife and I check rates for Uber and Lyft on both of our phones, and consistently we get different rates up to 15% delta.True story #2: I am eyeing a nice Seiko watch on Amazon, the price has been oscillating between $296 and $316. Whatever, thinking about waiting for black friday. Then the other day the…
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Why is this limited to groceries? I don't want to pay a different price than others for any category of item, not just groceries.Should gyms be able to charge me more based on my weight? Should airlines charge me more because they know I need to travel urgently? Should pharmacies charge me more for medication because they know I have a chronic…
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I think a better solution would be to force retailers to submit accurate pricing information to price comparison aggregators preferably in real-time straight from their inventory system, and give consumers easy access to live price comparison data. If everyone knew how much your retailer is screwing with you, surveillance economy would cease to…
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Your solution is so efficient and workable that I highly doubt we will ever be able to implement it. Any future has to be something we can arrive at from where we are today, and since your future involves a few large corporations dropping their hands on fistfuls of cash, it's going to be really hard to get to it.
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I think it's fine to allow it but if you're going to price things based on the individual buyer, you then should be forced to accept counter offers. Make everything negotiable.$5.00 for a gallon of milk? No, I'll give you $2.50. Back and forth until you find a mutually agreeable price.
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You are broke, with no prospects and last hundred bucks in your account.You are show up at a macdonalds, hungry.The AI reads you and decides - nothing to be had from this hungry guy in the future and prices your last burger at 100.Excellent future.
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This is impossible is you consider the financial sector - any kind of unsecured private lending like mortgages become dead in the water, fraud detection goes out the window, money laundering, etc.
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This is simply untenable. Institutions of all kinds have been keeping records connected to individuals for millennia.Try to run a school when you can’t maintain data on the students.
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Seattle really doing its best to confront every single strawman argument regarding the high price of groceries other than the obvious and true ones.
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Has buying groceries online been normalized to this extent? I still feel dirty about it, but maybe I’m too old fashioned.
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Will Seattle City council also implement one parking fee for all neighborhoods and times of day?
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This will make the world much poorer. You might think that's worth it but it's true.
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The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) is the educational equivalent to HIPPA.
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