*Surveillance pricing lets corporations decide what your dollar is worth.*
* Algorithmic wage discrimination doesn't need to use third-party
surveillance data: Uber, who invented the tactic, use their own in-house
data as a way to make inferences about drivers' desperation and thus
their willingness to accept a lower wage.*
Uber stands accused of optimizing its pricing algorithm to manipulate
both riders and drivers so that they make out worse and the company
profits more.
Note that this is not an injustice of nonfree malware. The software
for the pricing algorithm runs in Uber's own computer. It is, I
suppose, Uber's private software, but if it were someone else's
released free software that Uber used a coy of, Uber would have the
right to make the same modifications in its copy.
The app that riders must use to be customers of Uber is nonfree software
and does have a malicious surveillance functionality,
but the computerized manipulation being criticized here is not
particularly related to that.
What makes the manipulation possible is that Uber forces its customers
to identify themselves, so it can make a complete record of its
dealings with each customer. It has a similar asymmetry of information
about each driver (and that could hardly be avoided). The results
are unjust because they are dooH niboR at work, enriching the rich
owners and pushing down the low-income drivers.
In my view, the lessons are (1) don't assume that all nasty behavior
of computing is causes by nonfree software, (2) governments should
stop Uber from identifying its customers or requiring them to run
nonfree software, and (3 governments should regulate drivers' pay to
keep it higher.