Thought Mozilla was making a Web browser
That's alright, we're all taken for a ride every now and again.
Tinder’s pricing algorithm can charge users up to 5x more for same service
71–80 of 174 posts
Re: Tinder’s pricing algorithm can charge users up to 5x more for same service
#72Not a Tinder user or investor, but this makes me curious. Why is it okay for insurance companies to sell me products with hyper-personalized pricing (often based on sex, age, and race), but it's not okay for Tinder or other tech companies to do so?
My answer to that question is that the cost of the insurance varies based on demographics (you didn't mention the biggest variables like driving record, vehicle type, loan/lein and collision) while the Tinder service cost is basically the same for all users. The most sense it makes for Tinder to do is to chage men more than women, which they already did. Insurance cost is determined based on actuarial tables, whereas…
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Re: Tinder’s pricing algorithm can charge users up to 5x more for same service
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is that bad? That's how free markets work. Note, the post this is a reply to originally said "You mean a company becoming more efficient at extracting money from customers".
Inquiry: My understanding is that free markets work in a setting with informed consumers who can make educated choices between competing services. Is my understanding incorrect?
It can be proven that they work perfectly, i.e. cannot be improved on, under certain strong conditions. They work less than perfectly otherwise. But most markets are never near those conditions and empirically work quite well for the set of thick, widely traded markets with good[1] information.
[1] Not perfect
Re: Tinder’s pricing algorithm can charge users up to 5x more for same service
#74Not a Tinder user or investor, but this makes me curious. Why is it okay for insurance companies to sell me products with hyper-personalized pricing (often based on sex, age, and race), but it's not okay for Tinder or other tech companies to do so?
Because sex, age, and race are statistically significant factors in how much the insurance companies will pay out for each demographic. Personalized pricing for a digital service with a more-or-less constant cost-per-user doesn't make sense here (unless you want to maximize profits by unfairly discriminating against certain demographics).
In the US, insurance rates certainly cannot vary by race.
Re: Tinder’s pricing algorithm can charge users up to 5x more for same service
#751. It isn't obvious to me that dating for older people is to be treated as the same service as dating for younger people. There are profound differences. Dating as a 20 year old female is a completely different situation to dating as a 40 year old of either gender. 2. Even if it is the same service, what is the problem with Tinder charging some people an extra $20? This isn't an essential service in any way. 3. found…
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Re: Tinder’s pricing algorithm can charge users up to 5x more for same service
#76They're basically applying enterprise level pricing to a consumer product. You ever try and check the price for a SaaS service only to find that you have to contact them? They will explain they need answers to a bunch of questions to know if the product is a good fit for you. What they're really trying to do is figure out the max you will pay.
it also feels a lot like haggling where knowing the price is key. without knowing what everyone else is paying you don’t know if it’s a good deal or not
Re: Tinder’s pricing algorithm can charge users up to 5x more for same service
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah the narrative has really changed. It’s not that different from the lab leak theory
I wonder what other opinions we aren’t allowed to have today that could end up being true?
A whole host of things :) You can’t get rid of the truth, only ban it for a moment.
Funny thing is religion and monogamy were built to solve this tinder problem. Society has known about it for a long time
Re: Tinder’s pricing algorithm can charge users up to 5x more for same service
#78Re: Tinder’s pricing algorithm can charge users up to 5x more for same service
#79Not a Tinder user or investor, but this makes me curious. Why is it okay for insurance companies to sell me products with hyper-personalized pricing (often based on sex, age, and race), but it's not okay for Tinder or other tech companies to do so?
Insurance premiums are based on massive tables of probable risks.
E.g., I'm a redhead living in the Southern Hemisphere who has been active in the outdoors all my life and who smoked for 30 years.
So to get insurance that paid out in the event of terminal illness, I had to either pay a massive premium, or agree to exclude melanoma and lung cancer.
Makes sense - redheads produce minimal melanin, and there is far more UV exposure in the Southern Hemisphere due to the ozone "hole" that forms over Antarctica every year and drifts north onto southern South America / southern Africa / Australia / New Zealand. So as a ginger who had spent a lot of time outdoors under a harsher sun, I'm definitely in one of the rows in that actuarial table that's coloured red in Excel.
(And smoking is self-evident).
Now, back to Tinder. Are they charging based on risk? No.
They're charging what people will pay. And I'm willing to bet that they consider a recently divorced 48 year old man is able to pay more, and if I'm being uncharitable, desperate enough to do so.
So your comparison is very much apples and oranges.
Re: Tinder’s pricing algorithm can charge users up to 5x more for same service
#80Disclaimer: I think Tinder is a rent-extracting garbage app, BUT, philosophically speaking, why is dynamic pricing unfair? If the algorithm detects that based on your biography, location and usage patterns, you would keep using this service even if it charged you 5x as much, isn't that just the market becoming more efficient?
It may not be unfair, but is certainly undermining market dynamics. Normally, the price is fenced by multiple factors involving the entire spectrum of that particular market segment. With undisclosed personal pricing, prices aren't fenced anymore by known factors and the market isn't "well informed" anymore (if you believe in such things). We may think that being subjected to an essentially uninformed market may be deemed as unfair.