Yes, agreed and exactly - and now Amazon's "price history" AI button helps Amazon keep shoppers from using independent (more reliable) tools.

I think what makes this worse is that Camel Camel Camel may not be able to even function in a surveillance pricing world. It requires an objective same-price basis, and once surveillance pricing algorithmically re-prices for each shopper, a single-point third party can no longer track the price reliably for everyone.

Then the reason why surveillance price tracking is so unrealistic is because shoppers would need to actively submit and refresh their pricing for any comparison site to be valid, and that just isn't going to happen.

I think unfortunately that overestimates the amount of information and discernment shoppers exercise, versus doorbuster/marketed deals and brand loyalty. Going back to net neutrality, "disclosure" just meant that fine print would be used to disclose, along with false "benefits" like saying you get "free" Netflix data on your cell plan, to sell it as a feature.

When you are online, as well, you will have no idea what anyone else is paying. The retailer will completely control the information environment unless consumers put forth an unrealistic, disproportionate amount of time to compare prices.

Disclosure is not how you kill stuff like this, it's how opposition to this dies.

Deathbed repentance, Republicans love it. Think it's their cheat code to sell their souls for money and power and not be damned.

They are going to "enforce" disclosure rules but not enforce to prevent the substantive harms of surveillance pricing. It's framed (and many stories and readers and commenters run with the narrative) that it's a restriction, when it's actually a permission. This means that unlike the direction Lina Khan's FTC was taking to prevent surveillance pricing, it is saying to companies, "It's fine to surveillance price as long as you disclose." Meaning, open season.

It's the difference between, for example, enforcing actual net neutrality versus enforcing "disclosure" about violating net neutrality.

The story and headline are pushing a narrative that hides what is happening.

The FTC made sure we didn't call it "surveillance pricing" and shifted from prevention to disclosure.

https://prospect.org/2026/08/21/ftc-says-it-will-enforce-surveillance-pricing-it-wont/

In the US, a minor cannot enter into binding contracts without the parents co-signing, and the T&Cs argument here is almost certainly going to be rejected by a court. They are just throwing spaghetti at the wall and being corporate litigation counsel - i.e., leaving no hour unbilled.

At least in the US, you have a very narrow window to cancel and then you're stuck with it, unless you pay a huge premium for a refundable ticket. But I agree, practically-speaking, the only solution in a late-stage capitalist marketplace is to create some crowdsourced pricing information to identify pricing outliers. Which, truly, isn't a good solution.

If we had a functional government, this would be regulated/prohibited on an emergency basis, since in theory government is supposed to represent people and not corporations. Unfortunately, in 2026, we're livestock to herd and fleece.

Sorry, all our steam is being used to build aircraft carrier catapults.

The theory on The Other Site is what I also agree with: They took #1, fed it into an AI 3D modeler to get #4, fed that image into a 2D style AI model to get #2, and then went back to #4 and used AI in-painting and lazy Photoshop to remove some elements to get #3.

"Not Found" error. From the link, I assume you're deeplinking to a temporary/personal tokenized download.

This doesn't seem sarcastic.

/s

What is the x-axis on this chart? Time?