Surveillance Pricing’s Flimsy Excuses: Cory Doctorow Attacks Corporate Justifications

The core argument

Cory Doctorow, the Canadian-British author and longtime digital rights advocate, has issued a withering critique of what he calls surveillance pricing and the corporate defenses now being used to justify it. In a widely shared essay, he argues that the excuses offered by companies for using personal data to set individualized prices are not merely weak — they are “the stupidest imaginable.” The comment has resonated among privacy analysts and consumer advocates who see personalized pricing as one of the most invasive and least understood developments in modern commerce.

Surveillance pricing is the practice of using data about a person’s location, browsing history, purchase record, device type, and even demographic profile to determine the price they see for a product or service. Unlike traditional price discrimination — such as student discounts or regional pricing — surveillance pricing operates in real time and is often invisible to the consumer. Two people looking at the same product on the same platform may be quoted different prices, and neither will know why.

Doctorow’s critique centers on the dismantling of every major justification that companies have offered for the practice. He catalogues them with characteristic bluntness: the claim that surveillance pricing helps customers, the claim that it merely reflects market conditions, the claim that it is necessary for business survival, and the claim that consumers are happy to trade data for convenience. Each one, he argues, collapses under the weight of the actual incentives at play, which are about extracting maximum revenue from each individual rather than improving anyone’s shopping experience.

How surveillance pricing works

The mechanics of surveillance pricing rely on a vast data-collection ecosystem that has grown in the past two decades. Retailers, ride-hailing apps, food delivery platforms, airlines, hotels, and streaming services routinely collect millions of data points about their users. These data are combined with third-party information purchased from data brokers, which compile detailed profiles from public records, loyalty programs, location signals, and online tracking tools.

A person shopping on a mobile device in an affluent neighborhood might be shown a higher price for a product than a user in a lower-income zip code. A returning customer might see a price increase because the platform knows they are likely to buy again. A user who has visited a competitor’s site may be offered a discount, while a user who has no alternatives is charged a premium. The pricing algorithms are designed to estimate not what an item is worth, but what a particular person can be made to pay.

This is a departure from conventional dynamic pricing, which adjusts prices based on objective factors like supply, demand, time of day, or inventory levels. Airlines and hotels have used such models for decades. Surveillance pricing, by contrast, uses subjective and personal factors that have nothing to do with the cost of providing a good or service. The target variable is the consumer’s willingness to pay, estimated from behavioral signals.

Excuses under scrutiny

In his essay, Doctorow takes aim at several familiar corporate defenses. One is the notion that surveillance pricing is a form of customer empowerment — that giving companies more data allows them to offer personalized deals and lower prices to those who would otherwise be unable to afford goods. Doctorow argues that this framing inverts the power relationship. If companies truly wanted to help lower-income customers, they would not need to hide the practice or manipulate information asymmetries; they could offer transparent subsidies or discounts.

Another excuse he dismantles is the suggestion that surveillance pricing is simply an accurate reflection of what a customer is willing to pay. That logic, he contends, treats a person’s data trail as an objective measure of their economic condition when in fact it is a record shaped by market manipulation, dark patterns, and the arbitrary choices of algorithms. A user who has been staring at a product for a week is not revealing that they can afford it; they are revealing interest, and that interest is used to raise the price.

A third defense is that surveillance pricing is necessary for companies to compete in a crowded market. Doctorow is skeptical of this excuse, noting that businesses have survived for centuries without tracking every click and keystroke. He points out that the true purpose of these systems is not competitiveness but rent extraction — the ability to charge each consumer the maximum possible price without triggering their decision to walk away. The underlying business model is not innovation; it is exacting control over the point of sale.

Broader implications

The implications of surveillance pricing extend well beyond the inconvenience of paying a few extra dollars for a product. Consumer protection experts argue that it breaks the basic contract of a market economy, in which prices are supposed to be a shared, understandable signal that lets buyers compare options. When prices are hidden behind individualized algorithms, comparison shopping becomes impossible. The market stops being a level playing field and becomes a manipulation layer between buyer and seller.

Privacy concerns are equally serious. To set a personalized price, a company must know intimate details about a person’s life: where they live, where they work, how often they search for health information, whether they are in financial distress, and what kind of phone they carry. This creates a powerful incentive for firms to collect more data than ever before, and it gives them a direct financial stake in using that data to exploit consumer vulnerabilities. Doctors, financial counselors, and social workers have warned that people in crisis are especially exposed to such practices because they are less likely to have the time or energy to shop around.

Legal scholars note that existing consumer protection laws were written in an era of uniform prices and visible tags. Most jurisdictions do not require companies to disclose when a price has been personalized. Even when they do, the disclosure is often buried in the fine print of a terms-of-service agreement. Regulators in the European Union have begun to address the issue under the General Data Protection Regulation, which grants individuals the right to know when automated decision-making is used. But enforcement has been uneven, and the technology has grown faster than the rules.

What’s next

Doctorow’s intervention comes at a moment of heightened scrutiny for algorithmic pricing systems. A number of lawsuits have been filed against major retailers and delivery platforms over allegations of deceptive pricing. Academics have published studies showing that mobile users are routinely charged more than desktop users for identical products, and that people who appear to be in a hurry are shown higher prices on ride-hailing apps during peak demand. Consumer groups are increasingly calling for legislation that would require businesses to separate uniform display prices from any personalized adjustments.

The most likely short-term change is regulatory transparency. Lawmakers in several countries are considering rules that would force companies to state clearly whether a price has been personalized and to explain which factors were used. Some proposals go further, banning personalized pricing for essential goods such as food, medicine, and housing. Others would require an opt-in model, meaning a company could not use personal data for pricing unless the consumer explicitly agreed.

Technology itself may complicate the enforcement of such rules. Price-setting algorithms are often proprietary, and companies argue that revealing their inner workings would expose trade secrets. Regulators would need to inspect models without making them public, a task that requires technical expertise and substantial resources. Auditors could be appointed to review algorithmic pricing systems, similar to the way that financial institutions are audited for compliance with anti-discrimination laws.

There are also signs that the industry is starting to retreat from the most aggressive forms of surveillance pricing, not out of conscience but out of reputational risk. A number of companies have been embarrassed by news reports that showed the same product costing different amounts for different customers. In response, some have introduced price guarantees or publicly pledged not to use individual-level data for pricing decisions. Whether those pledges are permanent or merely cosmetic remains an open question.

Doctorow’s essay is unlikely to be the last word, but it has crystallized a growing sense of unease. Behind the corporate happy talk about “personalized offers” and “smart pricing,” the underlying reality is simple: a system that watches every consumer move in order to charge each person exactly what they are willing to bear. The debate now is not about whether surveillance pricing exists — it clearly does — but about whether democracies will allow it to continue as an invisible tax on every digital interaction.