Uber and Lyft Use Artificial Intelligence to Price Rides

Post by Doxin » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 10:57 AM UTC

drillsteps5 wrote: post #10

4d4m wrote: post #8

This is surveillance pricing, and it's wrong.

I heard that "surge pricing" , or "surveillance pricing", is wrong, but don't understand why. Shouldn't the service provider be free to charge whatever they want for the service they provide? And the consumer should be free to choose between multiple service providers to find the optimal value (price/convenience/features/whatever)? In other words, the root issue is not "surveillance pricing" but lack of competition.

Post by Doxin » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 7:53 AM UTC

drillsteps5 wrote: post #12

Doxin wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Increasing prices at busy times (i.e. surge pricing) is... to some degree defensible. Spying on people and charging different prices to different people for the same thing (i.e. surveillance pricing) is not. Can you imagine the mayhem if companies just straight up knew salary information for all of their customers?

>Spying on people and charging different prices to different people for the same thing (i.e. surveillance pricing) is not. They are not "spying", they are _legally_ using various data _legally_ collected on their current and prospective customers to set the pricing. Do you ever read T&C of any online services you're using? So how is this illegal? >Can you imagine the mayhem if companies just straight up knew salary i…