Reading this and the Bloomberg opinion piece from another commenter, it seems much of the consternation around PFOF comes from the (mis)conception that a stock

Reading this and the Bloomberg opinion piece from another commenter, it seems much of the consternation around PFOF comes from the (mis)conception that a stock has a single price at any time. In reality it has a spread between the bid and offer. PFOF (in theory) just takes advantage of inherent patterns in retail trading to both offer better pricing _and_ still make a small profit, which is shared with the broker, allowing them to offer commission free trades.