The Washington Post Is Using Reader Data to Set Subscription Prices(washingtonian.com) |
The Washington Post Is Using Reader Data to Set Subscription Prices(washingtonian.com) |
(I'm not the OP but I'm guessing this is what they're talking about?)
The price changes according dynamically according to demand.
To use an extreme example, you’d have wanted your model to have offered Warren Buffet the base price, or even a deal.
I recently wrote about the harms here and it made the front page at the time: https://digitalseams.com/blog/the-behavioral-cost-of-persona...
You’re in my RSS reader now.
How's that "I have nothing to hide" working out?
> What really interests Cian, who has published research[1] exploring how audiences tend to have less trust in media outlets that are transparent about their AI use, is the fact that the Post disclosed its use of algorithmic pricing at all. “If you ask people [whether they] want transparency on what’s behind your pricing strategy, people say ‘yes,'” he says. “But what we found in my research is a paradox, in the sense that people think that they want to know, but once they know, the reaction is worse than not knowing.”
> [1] https://ideas.darden.virginia.edu/AI-disclosure-dilemma
"People said they wanted to know if companies were putting feces into chocolate, but once they know, they stop buying that 'chocolate'. The reaction is worse than not knowing! What a paradox! The revealed preference is that consumers want companies to secretly include feces. I am a professor."
It's as though you caught a thief rifling through your pockets and they just looked you in the eye and said, "You caught me. I'm not stopping. What are you going to do about it chump?"
Part of me likes the idea of the price being set by how much you read, but the increasing amount of clickbait would probably make such a scheme not a good thing. I used to look at Google's news feed on my phone at times--lots of stuff that was clearly ads pretending to be articles but mostly you could pick out the interesting stuff. Now, though, very often the "interesting" stuff turns out to be AI garbage that doesn't actually say what it says it says.
> Surveillance pricing is a form of dynamic pricing where a consumer's personal data and behavior is used to determine their willingness to pay
First, you can use the airline's strategy to your advantage by planning early. It doesn't feel as unfair because everyone gets the same terms and the system is transparent and equal
WaPos daynamic pricing is simply maximizing value capture, without any way of a consumer benefitting. It's 100% lose-lose for the consumer. You always pay the maximum you are willing to pay. No discounts!
I was just answering OPs question about how airlines were transparent about their system and decided to answer it factually.
Plenty of digital services have the ability to do this, but don't. Honestly, I think the primary reason is that it's extremely offensive; it feels like saying "we're charging you more, for no reason, other than that we think you'll pay it".
The trick airlines use is to make the price discrimination transparent in a way that a customer feels is "acceptable" - time variance, seat variance and addons etc. It adds the same level of price discrimination, but because it's not directed _at the person_, the customer begrudgingly accept it.