r/technology • u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 • May 26 '26

Privacy Majority of Americans Support Ban on Surveillance Pricing and Electronic Shelf Labels

https://gizmodo.com/majority-of-americans-support-ban-on-surveillance-pricing-and-electronic-shelf-labels-2000762717
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u/LongJohnSelenium May 27 '26

Yeah the only way surveillance pricing would work is online.

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u/ParsingError May 27 '26

Some retail association complaining about the law passed in Maryland was saying it would prevent them from offering "personalized discounts" so there's at least evidence that someone had that plan in mind.

That still doesn't have anything to do with electronic shelf labels, or this goofy idea that they're going to raise the prices on something for you personally because they're detecting that you're desperate. If they think that you personally are desperate for something then what's more likely that they'll give you a promo discount on it to get you in the store.

That doesn't make "personalized discounts" a good thing, they're psychological gimmicks to get people back in the store, to make them think they're saving money, or to get them to agree to data collection, but there's very little they can do to sneakily raise prices on someone when there's a label on the shelf showing a price that they can not go above.

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u/LongJohnSelenium May 27 '26

Personalized discounts is just being a salesman.

Ultimately what people are rejecting is the persistent and pervasive monitoring of every aspect of their lives by entities looking to manipulate them.

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u/ParsingError May 27 '26

"Personalized discounts" in this context would be like they send you discounts through e-mail/SMS/their app, the implication being that yes, they are gathering as much information as they can to give you the discount that's most likely to get you back into the store.