Companies have always tried to wring every last dollar out of customers. That’s capitalism at its most basic. But modern tech has turned that ordinary greed into something more invasive and predatory, giving businesses the power to track, profile, manipulate, and squeeze people with a level of precision that used to be impossible, and people are fighting back.
You’ve probably heard the term surveillance pricing by now. Or dynamic pricing. Or personalized pricing. Maybe you’ve heard of electronic shelf labels (ESLs) that can change the price of goods in a split second from thousands of miles away. Hypothetically, all of that can be paired with AI to really squeeze each customer.
There’s no shortage of jargon for the way life in the 21st century has been carved up into personalized offers, prices, ads, services, and experiences, all shaped by the personal data companies collect from us every day. But is surveillance pricing the same thing as dynamic pricing? What about surge pricing, like with Uber? And what other terms are used that may be in the same universe but mean slightly different things? We’re here to help answer those questions for you.
Surge Pricing
It makes sense to start with surge pricing, given that it’s a term most Americans have probably experienced firsthand. You open Uber and plug in the address where you’d like to travel. You see the price and, for whatever reason, maybe you don’t want to leave just yet and do the same thing an hour later. The price has tripled, thanks to what’s been dubbed surge pricing.
Surge pricing is a way of rapidly changing the price based on changing market conditions like supply and demand. In the case of finding an Uber ride, maybe there has been more demand because you’re looking for a ride at a time when a large event is letting out. Or maybe it’s rush hour and a lot of people are trying to travel at the same time.
Surge pricing evokes an image of prices going up, but not down. And for that reason, it’s relatively close to surveillance pricing, which also makes it a less neutral term than other options. But calling it surge pricing also ignores that the price does indeed go down when demand goes down.
And Uber isn’t just reacting to supply and demand in a vacuum. The company can also alter prices based on things like the amount of battery that a given user has left on their phone. That, as we’ll discuss later, is what’s called surveillance pricing.
Algorithmic Pricing
Algorithmic pricing is the practice of changing the price of goods and services with the help of high-tech tools. It involves the use of an algorithm to make the price go up or down, based on whatever parameters the business might set. And it’s difficult for the average consumer to figure out what may be driving the algorithm because it’s all a black box to us at the end of the day.
Types of pricing like surge pricing may utilize algorithms, but they don’t necessarily need to do that to achieve the same goal.
New York passed a law that requires consumers to be told when a price has been set by an algorithm, which is how subscribers to the Washington Post discovered that the Jeff Bezos-owned newspaper is doing just that. A lawsuit was filed in June alleging that it’s an unfair and deceptive practice.
Dynamic Pricing
Dynamic pricing is similar to algorithmic pricing, but doesn’t rely on the more modern idea of an algorithm in the 2020s to help set the price. Dynamic pricing has arguably been in existence as long as capitalism has been around. Retailers raise and lower the price for any number of reasons across history.
Paul Singer, an expert who worked in consumer protection at the Texas Attorney General’s office under Ken Paxton for over 20 years and is now a partner at Kelley Drye & Warren, told Gizmodo that dynamic pricing isn’t inherently a bad thing.
The way that Singer looks at it, dynamic pricing is when the price of goods listed by any business fluctuates based on external factors. There can be factors like availability of certain items, demand, or the time of year. If the weather changes, the price of a cold bottle of water can go up or down. Presumably up when the weather is hot and down when the weather is cold.
But surveillance pricing, which Singer prefers to call personalized pricing, is more about the individual who’s making the purchase.
Surveillance Pricing
Here in 2026, surveillance pricing has probably become the most common term for the umbrella of different dynamic pricing strategies that have emerged. But what makes surveillance pricing unique?
Surveillance pricing uses your personal data to set the price, and it’s right there in the name. You are being watched. Your every move, your choices, your immutable characteristics—they’re all being used to create a profile of you. And that profile is being used to determine the maximum price you’re willing to pay. Your pain point, as it’s known.
Fundamentally, people find it creepy. And that’s a problem, according to George Slover, Senior Counsel for Competition Policy at the Center for Democracy & Technology, because it goes against the issue of fairness—that people should all be paying the same price for the same goods.
“It’s an issue that people are really getting interested in because the idea is clearly disturbing,” Slover told Gizmodo, “…that the price I’m getting is different than the price that somebody else is getting and that maybe I’m having to pay more.”
Singer feels differently and points to loyalty programs at grocery stores as something where consumers can be given a lower price thanks to the “surveillance.”
“You don’t want to end up affecting things that could benefit consumers at the end of the day, right? You know, their ability to participate in loyalty programs, the benefits that come from things like electronic shelf labels,” said Singer.
And there’s politics involved in every name on this list, whether we like it or not, though that comes along with every label we choose.
Personalized Pricing
Personalized pricing is identical to surveillance pricing but preferred by people who are looking for a neutral term to make the practice sound more innocuous. Again, Singer likes the term personalized pricing because it doesn’t carry the negative connotation that one is being watched. It’s just the use of data from an individual.
The important part, Singer argues, is that businesses don’t deceive consumers into believing their data is being used in a way they didn’t sign up for. If a shopper gets a loyalty card, they are in some way signing up knowingly to have their purchase history used to offer deals.
“What this is really focused on is how much data does a business have about you, and how are they potentially using that data in a way that you, as a customer, don’t expect or understand?” Singer told Gizmodo.
“And so it’s thinking about customer data from that standpoint and ensuring that you’re not using it in a way that consumers are going to ultimately look at and say, I didn’t expect my data to be used that way, or I didn’t think that you were going to be, for example, setting a price that is specific to me, whereas somebody else might get a different price.”
Everyone likes a deal, right? But many people don’t feel that lower prices are what their data is being used for.
Bespoke Pricing
Bespoke pricing is identical to surveillance pricing and personalized pricing but preferred by people who are looking for a more neutral term as well.
Slover prefers the term bespoke pricing when he’s testifying to state legislatures about the concerns his organization has when companies use personal data to set a price.
Electronic Shelf Labels or Digital Shelf Labels
When Walmart announced it was rolling out electronic shelf labels (ESLs) or, as the company calls them, digital shelf labels (DSLs) and had plans to include them in every North American store by the end of 2026, the company’s announcement was oddly defensive.
“Worth highlighting, DSLs operate on a closed system and do not interact with shoppers or collect any information about them,” Walmart said in a press release last March. “Some have wondered what these labels can do. Once you see how simple they are, it clicks: there’s nothing like a camera or microphone in them; they just display prices.”
Why would Walmart say this? Because people are assuming the worst when it comes to how electronic shelf labels will be used. Hypothetically, there is a world where ESLs can be used to flip prices multiple times a day and even change the price based on who’s in the store.
Are people who are more willing to pay a higher price for cereal walking around, something a store might know thanks to facial recognition? Why not jack up the price of cereal for an hour? It’s just a hypothetical scenario, but it would be technologically possible if someone wanted to build such a system. Walmart denies it’s doing anything close to that with ESLs.
Why any of this matters
Surveillance pricing; personalized pricing; whatever you want to call it, it’s very unpopular with the American people. A large majority of Americans, 68%, say they worry that surveillance pricing will increase the cost of goods, according to recent polling from GBAO Strategies distributed by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. And just 5% of Americans say they think surveillance pricing will lower the cost.
It’s really not more complicated than that. People don’t want to pay more for things like groceries or concert tickets or a night out for drinks. They want to be able to afford a decent life, something that’s become much harder as inflation soars and wages fail to keep up with that inflation.
At least a dozen states have introduced legislation to either ban or regulate surveillance pricing in some way, with Maryland becoming the first state in the country to institute a narrow ban on surveillance pricing for groceries. The problem, say consumer advocates, is that the law is basically toothless. Following in Maryland’s footsteps, New Jersey and New York have also passed laws targeting surveillance pricing, though New York’s governor has yet to sign it into law. And Colorado’s legislation was vetoed by the governor.
The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing this past week about surveillance pricing, and if there’s one takeaway, it’s that this is a bipartisan issue. Both Democrats and Republicans alike talked about how much they disliked the practice, with Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, using some of the strongest language against it.
“This is one of the biggest scams in American history—this marriage between the AI industry and these mega corporations,” said Hawley, “and they’re trying to pull it off against every American consumer.”
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