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Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores
- someguydave 6mo agodirtbag egalitarianism wins again
- dfxm12 6mo agoJust going to Aldi and shopping for yourself insulates you from this nonsense, no? ETA: Aldi here is representing any store without a loyalty program
- cute_boi 6mo agoSometimes, you may not have an Aldi near you. Also, many people may not have the luxury of going to grocery stores because they have to work in an office for 8–9 hours.
- craftkiller 6mo agoNot necessarily. The easy way to implement this in-person would be to give customer-specific coupons. You could get an email that says "use your loyalty card at checkout and get $2 off eggs". Then you just give everyone a different discount and only the privacy-minded folks end up paying the (inflated) sticker price. A significantly more complex hypothetical that I don't think anyone is doing yet: With digital price tags and customer tracking you could show different prices to different customers in-person. For example, when Alice goes to the eggs it could say $2 and when Bob goes to the eggs it could say $4. Then you just need to track the customer to the register to make sure you give them the price that was displayed. I believe the amazon "go" stores were doing the whole customer tracking thing so we already have the necessary tech demonstrated in real stores.
- bobro 6mo agoi really doubt the downsides of adding that layer of complexity can compete with the upsides of surveillance pricing.
- fred_is_fred 6mo ago"The easy way to implement this in-person would be to give customer-specific coupons. You could get an email that says "use your loyalty card at checkout and get $2 off eggs"." This already happens. We've been getting personalized coupons from our local store for 15+ years now.
- dfxm12 6mo agoFYI, I specifically mentioned Aldi because they don't have loyalty cards. I understand that might not have been clear to everyone, so I'll edit my comment to make it clear.
- craftkiller 6mo agoAh, yeah I don't have an Aldi near me so I didn't know that. Regardless, the same approach could be applied via emailing coupons with barcodes to scan at the register. It'd just be less convenient for the customer than having it automatically applied via a loyalty card.
- brewdad 6mo agoThe store we usually shop puts out weekly loyalty coupons via email. Sometimes it's a free pint of ice cream. Other times it might be $5 off $20 of spend, etc. To my knowledge they aren't targeting these specials to specific groups because the cashiers always mention them before we even see them appear. It's possible their screen is giving them additional info that isn't mirrored to the screen we see though.
- fluxquanta 6mo ago>Then you just give everyone a different discount and only the privacy-minded folks end up paying the (inflated) sticker price. This is already happening at Lidl. I was standing in line one day and the lady in front of me asked if I had the app, because there was something like a $5 off $50 purchase coupon in there I could use. I did have the app and checked, but my coupon instead was for $15 off $150. Thinking a little more deeply about it, every time I go there I tend to spend an average of around $125. My hypothesis is that they have that data and know a customer's average spend, so they tailor the coupon's dollar amounts to the customer to entice them to spend slightly more than they usually do.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- wood_spirit 6mo agoMy mainstream supermarket in Nordics has for the longest time given individual coupons in their loyalty program. There are three tiers of discount. There are general special offers, advertised widely, to get people through the door. Then there are members only discounts, advertised in store, to get people to be members. Then there are mailed to members personal discounts that are uncannily accurate for what is running out to get you to go shopping now instead of later. These days the hand scanners and apps also tell you what coupons you have so you don’t need mail but junk mail is still regular. TBH as a shopper it works great.
- tokyobreakfast 6mo ago[flagged]
- u_fucking_dork 6mo agoTypical HN webdevery, doesn’t understand that more than one thing can be done a time.
- Starman_Jones 6mo agoMaryland’s crime solutions are working, and have been for some time. It’s in metaphorical maintenance mode, rather than needing active development.
- alt_4577 6mo agoMaryland minus Baltimore? Seems like Baltimore is in the top 10 for violent crimes, but drops to #12 for murder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
- Starman_Jones 6mo agoThat’s great news for a city that used to consistently be top 3. >> Since 2021 homicide numbers have down trended, reaching a 13-year low of 201 in 2024. Between 2021 and November 2025 there was a 61% reduction in homicides. In 2025 Baltimore recorded 133 homicides, its lowest in nearly 50 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Baltimore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Baltimore
- uejfiweun 6mo agoDude, this "surveillance pricing" is fucking bullshit. Good on them.
- tokyobreakfast 6mo agoHope you renewed your Prime membership because they're the worst offender.
- xnx 6mo agoDo different Prime members get different prices?
- nekusar 6mo agohttps://dailydot.com/amazon-charging-more-prime-members https://dailydot.com/amazon-charging-more-prime-members It appears so, yes. And prime pays more per item.
- jotux 6mo agoNot defending the legitimately douchey things amazon does, but it explains it right in that article : >In short, an Amazon listing features prices not only offered by Amazon, but by other sellers. Some of these sellers may offer the items at a lower price, but the order will not be fulfilled by Amazon and won’t be subject to Prime’s shipping discounts and faster delivery. If you're a prime member and logged it, it will prioritize purchases fulfilled by amazon and delivered with prime delivery. If you click "Other sellers on amazon" there will sometimes be sellers that are cheaper with shipping than purchasing through prime.
- xnx 6mo agoPricing will become increasingly adversarial. The Internet did too much to expose price differences to customers, so sellers are responding. Customers will need aggressive agents to price-shop on their behalf. Take hotel booking as one of the current nightmares of price visibility. Total price often isn't exposed until you show up at the hotel.
- ngcazz 6mo agoCustomers require consumer legislation and protections, not further entrenchment of AI oligopolies.
- Henchman21 6mo agoCitizens require a lack of surveillance. Full stop.
- zbentley 6mo agoCitizens in the developed world have been heavily surveilled for decades. All of them. And the penetration/rate of increase of surveillance has been increasing rapidly. There are plenty of downsides to that, and I don't agree or think it's beneficial, on balance. But "citizens require a lack of surveillance" is far from the present-day truth, or even remotely practical as an aspiration.
- throwaway85825 6mo agoCitizens require the ability to surveil the watchers. When flock data was FOIAd for the politicians license plates the flock data was exempted from FOIA so fast.
- lotsofpulp 6mo agoThe only legislation needed is one that requires transparent, searchable pricing. If the sellers can use automation to set prices, then buyers can use automation to sort prices, making all the pricing games moot.
- tt24 6mo ago[flagged]
- Terr_ 6mo ago> Banning a pricing model should be unconstitutional "Unconscionable contracts" and "Usury" called--you're behind on your debt and your kidney is being seized. :p There's also some not-so-fun history there when it comes to charging people based on their skin-color.
- tt24 6mo ago[flagged]
- trollbridge 6mo agoNo they shouldn’t be.
- tt24 6mo ago[flagged]
- trollbridge 6mo agoI just don't think it would be a good thing for people to be selling off their organs in a commercial fashion.
- tt24 6mo agoI understand, and I disagree with you, I think it would be a good thing.
- tombert 6mo ago"too high for my liking" is doing a lot of work there. Some of these loans are outright predatory, with multi-thousand-percent interest rates. These aren't loans that people who have better options are taking, and moreover I think a lot of people really don't understand how horrible that can be. Call your congressperson to get more funding for math education, and then maybe we can argue we should get rid of usury laws. I guess I feel like the term "consent" is weaponized; did people opt into these loans? Sure, I suppose in a sense, but these are extremely desperate people and it is hard to say that what they opted into is "consent" in the classic sense of the term. They only take these loans because they feel like they don't have other options, not because they were able to compare rates across different banks and choose the best, and upon accepting these loans they can very easily get into situations where paying off the debt is functionally impossible. Not sure how I feel about selling organs so I won't touch that one.
- bediger4000 6mo agoOne thing about "surveillance pricing" I've not seen addressed is that it destroys the usual model of demand curve. A given buyer may be judged to have the resources to pay a particular (high) price for a good, but other factors may be relevant: that buyer might need to save on good A in order to buy more of good B. The "surveillance pricer" would demand a higher price for good A because it has no information about need for good B by the buyer. That's a simplistic example, but we've been lectured about consumer choices, invisible hands of marketplaces, demand curves and marginal value for so long I'm genuinely shocked that ill-defined "predatory pricing" is the issue we see in the news.
- Tangurena2 6mo agoYou might think that grocery stores in poor neighborhoods have lower prices than wealthier neighborhoods (because poorer customers are more likely to shop around for bargains). The opposite is true. Wealthy customers have the time, energy and money to be able to shop around. Poor people are stuck in "food deserts". Some thought experiments for you: 1. This store is located between your employer and your home. The time is "right after typical working hours". The presumption that the algorithm can predict is that you're picking something up from the store to make for dinner, therefore you have no time to price shop and therefore we can charge you more because you have to have it now. 2. American shoppers tend to have very high brand loyalty. If you always buy product_A and never product_B, then the algorithm can charge you more for product_A because your demand is quite inflexible. This post of mine from a few days ago has links you might be interested in: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47848128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47848128 > I'm genuinely shocked that ill-defined "predatory pricing" is the issue we see in the news. There are lots of evil people out there working very hard at extracting more than their fair share of wealth from others. Far too many people believe in the "Just World Hypothesis" - that "what goes around comes around". There are lots of random bad things and bad people that hurt innocent people. There might actually be some positive benefit that could come from surveillance pricing. However, once you've known or worked with some of the more predatory people then you'll see just how hard this technology can be used to screw others.
- nzach 6mo ago> While the law bans setting higher prices through surveillance pricing, it doesn’t address reducing prices. If a company raises its prices for everyone, and then offers individualized discounts, “suddenly you’ve arrived at the same outcome,” McBrien says. While I agree with the intent of this law, I don't think it will be effective. If you have a system capable of jacking prices up you can just multiply this calculated delta by -1 transform that into a discount. To effectively prevent this practice you probably need to ban any kind of personal discount. I don't think we will ever see such law, nor do I think this would be a good idea.
- gruez 6mo agoYeah, sounds like a law that's passed because it sounds/polls good (ie. "affordability"), even though it's addressing a non-existent problem and is trivial to work around.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 6mo agoUber pays drivers differential rates depending on how desperate they believe the driver to be. I can believe that UberEats demands a higher premium depending on the item and what they infer about you.
- gruez 6mo agoRight, but the law mentioned in TFA is specifically for grocery stores
- 0cf8612b2e1e 6mo agoFrom TFA Maryland’s law bans grocers and third-party delivery services from using a person’s personal data to set higher prices.
- gruez 6mo agoThat says nothing about the driver?
- int32_64 6mo agoIs haggling an individualized price? What's stopping companies from allowing arbitrary bids on any item they can choose to reject? What if the future of the grocery store is eBay, a true nightmare.
- solnyshok 6mo agoor you will ask bids for your shopping list, and get replies from several retail chains (or, rather their AI agents).
- Tangurena2 6mo agoCulturally, Americans do not haggle and do not to well in cultures where haggling is the norm. It would take a massive cultural shift before negotiating price is even close to normal. Part of this is why so many employees do poorly when negotiating salary during the interview process. Disclaimer: my father was in the oil business and we lived a lot in the Middle East among other places.
- Loughla 6mo agoAmericans don't do well with anything perceived as confrontation, speaking in general terms. Haggling is on that list. It's why my son sold so damn much popcorn sitting outside of a grocery store for the boy scouts. He asked everyone, and a wide majority of people are too polite to just say no thank you. I don't know why it is, because Americans are also pretty aggressive about certain topics. But confrontation, even low stakes like price haggling, is a problem.
- aquir 6mo agoThis sounds crazy! Makes budgeting impossible! Imagine someone is on low income and doesn’t know how much the grocery shopping will cost! Whoever came up with this should be burned
- lotsofpulp 6mo ago>Imagine someone is on low income and doesn’t know how much the grocery shopping will cost! Go to a food market in a developing country, and that is how it works. Everyone is haggling for everything all the time.
- Loughla 6mo agoExcept with haggling, I can talk the price down to keep it in my budget. That's stressful and unnecessary really, but at least there is an avenue to lower the price inherent in the system. Try haggling at somewhere like wal mart. Go to a cashier, or hell, the store manager and try to get them to reduce the price.
- evanjrowley 6mo agoIf stores raise their prices and cite this law as the reason why, that will fit with Maryland's overall theme as an eccessively exepensive state to live in.
- culi 6mo agoMore Perfect did a great investigation on this and Instacart https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osxr7xSxsGo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osxr7xSxsGo https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=osxr7xSxsGo https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=osxr7xSxsGo
- orangecat 6mo agoGosh, I hope colleges don't find out about this pricing strategy.
- chimeracoder 6mo ago> Gosh, I hope colleges don't find out about this pricing strategy. They've been doing it for years; it's called "financial aid". It is literally the textbook example of how to get people to pay different amounts for the same thing based on what they are willing or able to pay. It's also why the recent shift in immigration policy has affected top-tier universities so much: domestic education is, by and large, subsidized by international students who are almost exclusively admitted on a need-aware basis, allowing the schools to ensure the financials work out on paper. Now that there's been a huge drop in international applications, they need to make up the loss in revenue, so they're shifting those costs back to domestic applicants.
- jglamine 6mo agoYes, that's the joke. I think the parent post was sarcasm.
- richwater 6mo ago> Now that there's been a huge drop in international applications, they need to make up the loss in revenue, so they're shifting those costs back to domestic applicants. Or, gasp, cut bloat.
- fc417fc802 6mo agoProvided the criteria are transparent and directly applicable I don't see the issue. I wouldn't object to a grocery store that offered standardized discounted rates if you applied with documentation of your financial situation. Whereas an opaque operation with the goal of maximizing the final bill on an individual basis using entirely arbitrary criteria is dystopian and clearly extremely consumer hostile. I can hardly claim omniscience but my understanding is that by and large universities bin students into broad categories and apply a uniform rate schedule based on demonstrated financial need (plus academic performance in some limited cases), with international students generally billed at the highest rate.
- geremiiah 6mo agoIs this why grocery stores are so keen to get you to use their coupon app or hand them your phone number? I always refuse, but I always wondered what they do with the data.
- Tangurena2 6mo agoThe amount of "discount" is so much that they must be getting a large income stream from the data. Whenever I see something where the shelf sticker claims a lower price for "digital coupon" (meaning: use their app), I put the item back onto the shelf and move on. I'm willing to use the loyalty cards, but I am not willing to allow the sort of surveillance data that phone apps provide. Margins on items at grocery stores is pretty thin. For them to be able to offer 50¢ or $1 off for items by using their app, that tells me that they are making more than that much from the data about me. My suspicion is that they're earning at least 10x that much from the data.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- bombcar 6mo agoThe dirty secret is there is no income stream from the app, and the data they recover isn't worth much. What it is is that the people who are price-conscious will clip the coupons and use the loyalty - those who are not will not.
- xp84 6mo agoYup, it's that simple. And effective. As I was raised pretty poor by most people's standards, I can't help but jump through whatever annoying hoops to save a buck. But there are a lot of well-off people who would find it kind of taboo to essentially digitally "clip coupons."
- fzeroracer 6mo agoYes, unfortunately as an example to the problem here my grocery store charges around 20-30% more for the privilege of not using the app. Eventually I relented because I needed the 'savings' and it was the only grocery store available to me.
- crazygringo 6mo agoSadly, this article doesn't explain how this "surveillance pricing" (which is just a scarier-sounding synonym for "dynamic pricing") would even work in a physical grocery store. Like, prices are displayed on the shelf for everyone to see. And they have to match what you pay at checkout. So how the heck would a grocery store even do this? And this law is specifically around grocery stores. Like, there was a big kerfuffle a while ago about how Wendy's was going to engage in dynamic pricing so that a burger would be cheaper during the slow period at e.g. 3-4 pm, compared to the lunch rush. But that wasn't personalized. And the outcry was so strong they never did it, no law needed. Also, this law excludes loyalty programs and promotional offers, which seems to be the main way that groceries have engaged in dynamic pricing in reality -- the advertised price doesn't change, but they give certain people certain coupons. And of course, my parents were clipping coupons from newspapers decades ago, as richer people couldn't be bothered, whereas people trying to make ends meet was clip and save religiously.
- chucksta 6mo agoFacial recognition https://epic.org/krogers-surveillance-pricing-harms-consumers-and-raises-prices-with-or-without-facial-recognition/ https://epic.org/krogers-surveillance-pricing-harms-consumer...
- nsxwolf 6mo agoHow is this supposed to work? There’s hundreds of people in the store. Someone is always right next to me. How will the can of peas know which price to display
- themafia 6mo ago> There’s hundreds of people in the store. Where are you shopping? I get groceries the most I've seen is 30 people at a time. > How will the can of peas know which price to display People are talking about facial recognition and smart phones driving this. What they're missing is that your shopping cart is likely to contain a selection of items which make it _highly unique_. Not just on the day you're shopping but across large spans of time. Of course the lowest tech is I can just put a tracker in your cart or in your basket.
- josefritzishere 6mo agoAll 50 states should do this. It's violently anti-consumer to price in this manner.
- xp84 6mo agoNobody is actually doing this. It's mainly conspiracy theories. The real reasons for the e-ink tags that spook so many people is to save labor so they don't have to pay people to affix 40,000 little stickers to shelves every week.
- OptionOfT 6mo agoSadly, there is no provision in this law to allow consumers to sue the companies. You have to report it, and then maybe the office of the Attorney General _might_ impose a fine on the grocery store: https://governor.maryland.gov/news/press/pages/governor-moore-announces-legislation-to-protect-marylanders%E2%80%99-pocketbooks,-data-privacy-at-the-grocery-store.aspx https://governor.maryland.gov/news/press/pages/governor-moor... > Governor Moore’s proposal builds on the Maryland Online Data Privacy Act of 2024 by specifically targeting the intersection of data surveillance and essential goods pricing. Under the new legislation, violations would be treated as an unfair or deceptive trade practice under the Maryland Consumer Protection Act. The Office of the Attorney General would enforce the measure, with merchants subject to civil penalties of up to $10,000 for a first offense and up to $25,000 for subsequent offenses. If a grocer has the finances to deploy a system like this, they're close to the size of Kroger / Walmart. These fines are way too low.
- Tangurena2 6mo agoThe fines need to be something big enough to notice. There are currently lots of stores with one price on the shelf with a higher price at the register. In the past, it would be easy for it to happen by mistake. Now it is happening so frequently & systematically at the smaller retailers - like Dollar General or Family Dollar - that it is becoming a noticeable issue for states with poorer communities. > All told, 69 of the 300 items came up higher at the register: a 23% error rate that exceeded the state’s limit by more than tenfold. Some of the price tags were months out of date. > The January 2023 inspection produced the store’s fourth consecutive failure, and Coffield’s agency, the state department of agriculture & consumer services, had fined Family Dollar after two previous visits. But North Carolina law caps penalties at $5,000 per inspection, offering retailers little incentive to fix the problem. “Sometimes it is cheaper to pay the fines,” said Chad Parker, who runs the agency’s weights-and-measures program. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/03/customers-pay-more-rising-dollar-store-costs https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/03/customers-pa...
- throwaway85825 6mo agoIf a state AG is required to do something it wont happen. Only creating a private right of action changes behavior.
- Evidlo 6mo agoDo stores need minute by minute pricing? Could they just update prices at the end of the day?
- rockskon 6mo agoSadly the law Maryland passed contains enough loopholes and preemptions that it is literally worse than having passed nothing at all.
- bilsbie 6mo agoIs it weird to be pro free market but to be against this kind of pricing? I can’t seem to square the positions.
- CivBase 6mo agoDepends on what you mean by "free market". If you think "free market" means market participants should just be free to do whatever they want then yeah, it's weird. But if you think "free market" means that products and prices should be determined by supply/demand and a competitive race to the bottom between market participants, then it's not weird at all.
- fireflash38 6mo agoFree market depends on relatively equal knowledge. If there is significant knowledge disparity it's no longer free. Internet initially helped consumers with knowledge. Now that balance has shifted to more and more corporations knowing more. If we enshrine into law significant privacy expectations, that can restore the knowledge balance.
- HaZeust 6mo agoI mean if you're a laissez-faire capitalist, you can't have it both ways. But if you believe in anti-trust, regulation, and competition as external checks (typically enacted through governments) on capitalism's power - then you can indeed square the two positions.
- beasthacker 6mo agoI worry that increasingly sophisticated dynamic pricing could one day make it nearly impossible for anyone to get ahead.
- felooboolooomba 6mo agoSaturday afternoon and you want a steak? $300.
- class3shock 6mo agoConsidering we are getting there without it... yeah, definitely not looking good.
- Nevermark 6mo agoImagine if the state government tracked grocery transactions and adjusted taxes on each transaction to maximize total revenue from each store. Businesses would freak out at the data collection and financial manipulation.