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Cory Doctorow

@pluralistic@mamot.fr · yesterday

Today's threads (a thread)

Inside: Surveillance pricing lets corporations decide what your dollar is worth; and more!

Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/24/price-discrimination/

#Pluralistic

A busy 1950s grocery store. The scene has been altered: the massive, menacing, glaring red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey' hovers over the store, shooting red beams into the cash register. The store -- but not the shoppers at its front -- is suffused with red light.

Image:
Cryteria (modified)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en — A busy 1950s grocery store. The scene has been altered: the massive, menacing, glaring red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey' hovers over the store, shooting red beams into the cash register. The store -- but not the shoppers at its front -- is suffused with red light. Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

Jerome

@dl2jml@mastodon.radio · 8 hours ago

@pluralistic The surveillance changes more than the price. If the customer is rich or desperate enough, the system will jack the price up indeed. But if the customer is poor and not willing to pay, the system will then present junk which is cheaper to manufacture.

The system always optimizes profit taken from the customer's pockets.

Deb Nam-Krane

@dnkboston@apobangpo.space · 17 hours ago

@pluralistic Every time I read about this topic, I think about when I was introduced to "customer specific marketing" in 1995-96. At my food co-op. We had no idea where this would lead. But four years later at the PR firm I worked for--in IT--when people were talking about getting coupons for baby products when they were still pregnant, the picture was much clearer.

Todd Knarr

@tknarr@mstdn.social · 15 hours ago

@dnkboston @pluralistic Or when they started getting ads for pregnancy and baby products when, as far as they knew, nobody was pregnant. And then a month later the doc says "Your daughter is expecting.". Walmart found out the hard way that parents don't appreciate marketing being that personal.