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FTC Assigns Nine Companies the Awkward Task of Showing Their Pricing Work
· New York time
The Federal Trade Commission has ordered nine major companies to provide detailed information about whether they use personal data to charge customers more or pay employees less. The request is an inquiry, not a finding that the companies have done either thing. Its focus is the role personal information may play in decisions that directly affect prices and wages. For shoppers, a price displayed on a screen can appear simple even when the systems behind it are not. For workers, the same question concerns how employers arrive at pay. The agency wants the companies' information so it can examine those practices, rather than simply relying on the appealing idea that more data always means better service. The demand puts a less glamorous part of the digital economy in view: the rules and records that sit between collecting information and producing a number. Companies spend considerable effort making a transaction look effortless. Now they have been asked to explain what goes into the calculation. It is an assignment nobody can complete by writing 'the algorithm did it' and drawing a smiley face. The FTC has not announced the answers, but it has made the homework clear. Nine firms must show their work on a subject most customers encounter only as a final price or paycheck.
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