(1/10 🧵) If you live in NY, you may see a new warning: “THIS PRICE WAS SET BY AN ALGORITHM USING YOUR PERSONAL DATA.” This mandatory disclosure went into effect late last year, and it’s the first attempt by a US state to grapple with a new generation of surveillance pricing.

(2/10) You know dynamic pricing—think Ubers, flights, or concert tickets that surge based on supply and demand. “Surveillance pricing” takes this to a new level: using your data to set a “price for you” based on your predicted breaking point. This is, increasingly, everywhere.

(4/10) In 2025, Delta tested Fetcherr, reportedly an AI designed to find the highest price a consumer will tolerate. Delta has called that characterization inaccurate, but on investor calls execs hyped the tech as a “super analyst” that would end static prices. (Link to picture)

(5/10) Walmart, Whole Foods and Kohls are switching to electronic shelf labels that display dynamic prices. Kroger deployed them with Microsoft AI—a setup a 2024 Senate inquiry warned could enable “surge pricing” via facial recognition. (Kroger claims it will only lower prices.)

(6/10) Uber tracks battery life. Former exec Keith Chen noted in 2016 that users with low battery are more likely to accept surge pricing. Uber says it doesn’t use that data to set prices, but the correlation remains a point of regulatory scrutiny.

(7/10) Since John Wanamaker popularized the price tag in 1861, fixed prices have functioned as a de facto social contract. For 150 years, that ensured a market standard: the same cost for every customer, regardless of their background or negotiation skills.

(8/10) Now, we’re going back to the bazaar. But this time you’re not up against a shopkeeper. You’re up against a massive digital infrastructure calculating your personal price tolerance.

(9/11) This trend has its defenders—Wharton’s Z. John Zhang calls it efficiency, and says it will lower prices. But legal scholar Veena Dubal has called it “discrimination.”

(10/11) In this new normal, costs are individually adjusted to a consumer’s maximum threshold and wages to a worker’s minimum floor. The next time you see a price, know that it may not reflect what the item is worth—but what the algorithm believes *you* are worth.