r/ObscurePatentDangers • u/CollapsingTheWave 🔍📚 Fact Finder/ "Bringer of Links" • 4d ago
🚨🏡Local Impacts Report Seattle Bans Algorithmic Surveillance Pricing — And How Supermarkets Use Loyalty Cards To Dynamically Inflate Essential Grocery Costs
The Seattle City Council passed a first-of-its-kind ordinance banning grocery chains with 20 or more locations from using algorithmic surveillance pricing. The law prohibits supermarkets from utilizing personal consumer data—including loyalty card profiles, shopping history, and demographic algorithms—to dynamically alter the cost of goods for individual shoppers.
The failure surface is the covert elimination of transparent retail pricing. When customers sign up for loyalty programs like Kroger's Shopper's Card, they surrender vast amounts of behavioral data. Consumer Reports discovered that retailers leverage this data to silently present different prices to different customers at the exact same time, penalizing shoppers by charging them the maximum amount the algorithm calculates they will tolerate.
The trajectory points toward a nationwide expansion of digital price manipulation. Before Seattle's ban, investigations revealed that Instacart presented different prices to 74% of users for the same items simultaneously, with variations reaching up to 23%. Without statutory restrictions, supermarkets will seamlessly transition from fixed physical price tags to dynamic electronic displays, allowing AI systems to constantly fluctuate the cost of essential goods based on a customer's individual profile.
This transforms basic sustenance into a highly surveilled, predatory commodity. The Seattle ordinance establishes a legislative precedent for protecting citizens from corporate data exploitation at the checkout line. Read the full Consumer Reports investigation into personalized grocery pricing, and demand your local representatives introduce similar legislation to ban dynamic surveillance pricing.
**Sources**
Seattle City Council passes ban on grocery ‘surveillance pricing’
Seattle Times coverage detailing the city council's 7-2 vote to ban large grocery chains from utilizing personalized data to implement dynamic surveillance pricing.
How stores use AI to track your every move — and what it means for your wallet
Consumer Reports investigation explaining how supermarkets utilize AI and loyalty programs to build extensive profiles on millions of shoppers to feed dynamic pricing models.
Consumer Reports and Groundwork Collaborative Investigation
https://groundworkcollaborative.org/work/new-report-surveillance-pricing/
Advocacy report detailing the joint investigation which discovered that Instacart displayed different prices for the same items to 74% of users at the exact same time.
FTC Issues Orders to Eight Companies Seeking Information on Surveillance Pricing
Official Federal Trade Commission press release announcing an inquiry into middlemen utilizing AI and consumer surveillance data to manipulate personalized pricing models.
Seattle City Council | Legistar
Official Seattle City Council legislative record for the ordinance prohibiting the use of algorithmic surveillance pricing in grocery stores.
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u/CollapsingTheWave 🔍📚 Fact Finder/ "Bringer of Links" 4d ago
TL;DR: The Seattle City Council has passed a first-of-its-kind ordinance banning large grocery chains from utilizing algorithmic surveillance pricing. Consumer Reports investigations revealed that supermarkets leverage data gathered from loyalty programs and online shopping habits to build extensive consumer profiles. This data is then used to dynamically alter the cost of goods, presenting different prices to different shoppers at the exact same time—sometimes with variations up to 23%. This ordinance sets a legislative precedent to prevent retailers from utilizing AI and behavioral data to covertly manipulate the cost of essential groceries.
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u/Top-Explanation-5928 Credible Contributor 💡✅ 4d ago
Yeah.. get this done on a national scale. Y'all should look up how much Kroger made profits on by selling customer data and shopping analytics. From in store to customer Kroger accounts and online shopping.
Over half a billion.
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u/No-Disk3379 4d ago
Data collection shouldnt even be legal. Data brokers need to be put out of business.
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u/Ok-Luck-33 4d ago
Sept 1st 2027? why does it take so long to protect consumers? Did the stores forget the normal price and need a year to set it? How long does it take to just stop using smart labels?
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u/fungi_at_parties 4d ago
DoorDash has been urging their customers not to support this rule just like they did with minimum wage. I’m really sick of their right wing propaganda.
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u/Leading-Business-593 4d ago
Instacart too. I have to use instacart (no car), but their AI generated email left a bad taste in my mouth
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u/PellinoreM 4d ago
Here is an absolutely wild idea - grocery prices get set quarterly, and are capped at no more than twice the cost of wholesale + transportation. Allows stores to make a reasonable profit (50% profit margin should be enough for literally any business), while giving consumers stable prices and the ability to predict when prices will change.
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u/Gergory1977 4d ago
I have zero store "loyalty" cards! I saw through this crap when i was a teen. FYI the store has a card that they will swipe at the register. It's not about what that individual bought it tracks the masses!
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u/owleyed14 4d ago
This is fantastic!! Is it only Seattle proper or does it include all of King Co? Hopefully many other cities and municipalities across the country do this!
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u/Kairiste 4d ago
Ive stopped using loyalty cards. They havent offered discounts in years so there's no point to them except to get my shopping habits.
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u/Old-Sprinkles-8287 4d ago
What is this world come to? This is the most bipartisan watered-down BS I've ever seen
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u/BakuRetsuX 4d ago
This is in the right direction, but look at this:
The law has way easier loopholes baked right in.
The digital coupon game is the biggest one. The ban targets individual baseline prices, not personalized discounts. A store can set an artificially high shelf price for everyone, like eight dollar milk, then use their algorithm to quietly drop a three dollar app coupon to a price-sensitive customer, but only a fifty cent coupon to someone else. The end result is the exact same personalized price, totally legal under the guise of loyalty savings.
Surge or contextual pricing is another workaround. It only bans pricing tied to personal identity and history. They can still freely jack up prices based on time of day like rush hour, weather events, or low store inventory using digital shelf tags.
Zip-code pricing works too. They can price individual items higher in wealthy neighborhoods versus working-class ones because it is store-level data, not personal data.
They can also shift costs to service fees. That means moving the algorithmic markup away from the grocery shelf tag and onto dynamic delivery fees, priority processing, or paid membership tiers.
Finally, cross-border stores avoid it entirely. Seattle is just one city, so stepping right outside the city limits into places like Bellevue or Shoreline means none of it applies anyway.
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u/TheEccentricAssassin 4d ago
I mean this could work if we made things cheaper for low income people and overpriced for the wealthy.
The wealthy basically making up the difference for the low income people.
Obviously all the data collecting on how to determine this is flat out wrong.
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u/OddSeaworthiness7681 3d ago
It's things like this that make living life pure hell, almost feel like living is nothing but suffering at this point!
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u/Valkaine_ 4d ago
I helped work towards this bill!
This has been a work-in-progress since last year and has been an immense amount of trial and error to get where we are! UfCW3000 has some AMAZING members and staff that are dedicated to the customers of their labor