In its long-awaited artificial intelligence strategy released Thursday, the Carney government said it will “strengthen its privacy laws to ensure that Canadians’ personal information is not used inappropriately, including for surveillance pricing.” Government officials did not give further details or clarify when asked if that will be an outright ban on the practice.
I think they misunderstand what people are complaining about.
People don’t want discounts for one person while another gets overcharged. It’s a good thing if it threatens discounts. Everyone wants to pay the same price for the same thing.
Discounts can be annoying even when they’re “fair”
It’s annoying when something was discounted yesterday, and now you have to pay more. Or when you just bought something last week, but now you could have saved a bunch because it’s some arbitrary special day. Temporary discounts of any kind are inherently unfair and manipulative.
Tip: Some stores, realiizing you can return a product and re-buy it at the current discounted price, will retroactively price match themselves within the return window.
They don’t misunderstand at all. They don’t want them forcing the app down their customers throats so they can collect data on their buying habits and sell it. The unfair pricing is just them forcing people without the app to pay unreasonable prices.
Discounts have a good reason, mostly advertising and some seasonal discounting and lots of storage clearance. So this is fine and to be expected. Nothing unfair about being incentivized to buy seasonal food because its cheaper when its growing in your region at the moment. This is where capitalism gains some efficiency for food distributing. Most stores in Germany announce the discounts up to one week prior, so people can somewhat plan their discounts to save money.
Yeah, maybe you have more faith in humanity than me, but I think there are tons of people who would be ok with this assuming that they’re the ones getting the discount.