Holy fuck I haven’t so delighted about current events in YEARS!!!
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Overall I've been pretty happy with Mr. Kinew and the NDP. They've been a lot better than the conservatives ever have been for our province.
The algorithm for collusion on prices is trivial.
Set price = competitors max price.
They're talking about the kind of algorithmic pricing that uses information about shopping patterns to try to charge some people more than others, not the kind of simple price-fixing racket that's likely been going on since Nanni was complaining about the quality of Ea-nāṣir's copper
What does that mean? I don't think it's possible to determine pricing without some algorithm to calculate it
I like Wab.
He is very cool. Have you seen his old rap videos? The conservatives tried to publicize this during the election here to make him look bad, but it backfired because it just made him look based af
What are the odds this will also come with enough support to enforce it properly?
Hard to say. I think there is strong public opposition to this practice though, so if there it occurs I think the chance of it being reported is pretty high. There is of course more follow up work that needs to be done after that, but thats still promising
No doubt - I'd rather have a law like this on the books than not.
But I hate under-enforced laws that are so troublesome to seek justice for that most people don't bother.
I agree that laws that you can’t enforce sort of just clutter up our legal system. And there are some contexts where this law would be hard to enforce, specifically when it comes to online shopping. In that context people won’t see how much other people are getting charged, so they may not realize that algorithmic pricing is at play. And it’s hard to enforce a law violation when no one knows that it’s going on.
But when it comes to shopping in person, this law would be easier to enforce, since in that context it would depend on people downloading an app to “see” prices. And that seems like something that is very easy to spot and prevent. So at the very least this law will be effective at preventing algorithmic pricing from creeping into physical stores.
It'll be great to shut it (!), but ride share apps (eg, uber) have already blown this door open. Not just surge pricing (ie, when there's high demand on the app, which doesn't use individual data per se). But folks, mostly with mobility issues, have told me that once they start making the same trip regularly in an app (eg, to the grocery store and back weekly) then that trip starts gets significantly more expensive for them in the app
I wonder if this would mean that Uber and Lyft will need to change how they charge people in Manitoba. I think you could make a case that its not the same though, because basing price based off availability of drivers is not necessarily the same as using personal data about a user to tailor the price to them specifically. In the first case it applies to everyone using the service at that time, in the second case it still varies person to person

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