Washington Post sued over alleged surveillance pricing
by Séamus Bellamy · Boing BoingIf you were fired or excluded from a job due to your race, age, or other demographics unrelated to the work you're being paid to do, it's called discrimination. But in our late capitalist world, the yacht-owning powers-that-be call it surveillance pricing. It's a sanitary way of saying that a company will screw you on the bill for services you bought from them, based on your shopping habits, where you live and other bullshit that they feel makes us more, or less, equal than one another. Live in expensive zip code? The price for your monthly sock subscription goes up. Living in subsidized housing? You pay the minimum that the sock company feels its product is worth. That's the way that taxes are supposed to work, for everyone. But using the model to price groceries, newspapers or cars is three shades of bullshit. According to Gizmodo, it's the sort of fiscal shenanigans that form the basis of a new lawsuit against The Washington Post.
A lawsuit was filed Thursday in D.C. on behalf of people who say their personal data was used by the Washington Post to jack up subscription prices. The suit seeks class action status. Some subscribers' notices read: \"This price was set by an algorithm using your personal data.\"
But wait, it gets juicier: there's a very good possibility that the Jeff Bezos-owned publication may also be using its subscribers' Amazon membership data to help decide upon the cost each individual has to pay. Because if a billionaire can't suck every last ounce of marrow out of the bones of your data, what is this world even about?
A lawyer from the firm pulling the lawsuit together told Gizmodo that they're going after the Post using the DC Consumer Protection Procedures Act, which disallows unfair practices like profiling consumers to decide how much they should pay for a product. The act covers folks in Washington, D.C., but just about every state has a similar law on the books, so don't be surprised if a version of this huge class-action comes to your jurisdiction.
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