Some subscribers to the Washington Post have been receiving emails that their subscription rates will be going up, according to the Washingtonian. That part isn’t surprising, given the fact that Post owner Jeff Bezos has reportedly been upset that the newspaper is losing money, especially since ditching about half of his workforce. But some folks who scrolled down to the bottom of the email were surprised when they read about how the new price was determined: “This price was set by an algorithm using your personal data.”
It’s a concept called surveillance pricing, and it’s not entirely new. People can often be charged different prices for the same product, depending on any number of factors. If your phone battery is low, rideshare companies like Uber or Lyft might charge more because they know you’re desperate. Instacart was recently caught charging up to 23% more to some shoppers based on unknown criteria.
Many Democrats aren’t happy about it, including Rep. Greg Casar of Texas. On Monday, Casar wrote on Bluesky that surveillance pricing “should be illegal,” adding, “I have a bill to ban it.”
Last year, Casar and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan introduced legislation called the Stop AI Price Gouging and Wage Fixing Act. And last month, two other Democrats in the Senate, Ben Ray Luján from New Mexico and Jeff Merkley from Oregon, introduced very similar legislation called the Stop Price Gouging in Grocery Stores Act of 2026.
The Washington Post hasn’t explained how it determines pricing by using personal data. But there could be a number of factors, including zip code, estimated income, and purchase history. Bezos, the founder of Amazon, presumably has more data on what people buy than just about anyone in the country. And he’s a big supporter of utilizing AI to maximize profits.
The problem is that AI can’t really make up for losses any business might incur by offering a bad product. The newspaper first hemorrhaged subscribers—250,000 in one week alone—after Bezos stopped the Washington Post editorial board from endorsing Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election against Donald Trump.
The Washington Post had no reporters at the Academy Awards on Sunday, according to the paper’s former culture writer. And it was the last of the major news outlets to report that the U.S. had started bombing Iran late last month. The paper has purged any writer on the opinion side deemed to be liberal and has instead become a mouthpiece for the Bezos worldview—a worldview that happens to align perfectly with that of the Trump regime.
Bezos has been criticized for buying the distribution rights to First Lady Melania Trump’s “documentary” Melania for a whopping $40 million, but the movie itself helps explain why he’d bother. There are several shots of the Trumps with Big Tech oligarchs like Elon Musk, Tim Cook, and Bezos himself. All of these guys need something from Trump, whether it’s space contracts or just tariff relief.
News of what Bezos has in store for the future of his newspaper doesn’t instill confidence that it can survive much longer as a respected institution. The Washington Post’s news side still breaks major stories, but the New York Times reports Bezos’s big idea was to chop the newsroom’s budget in half and demand twice the productivity through AI. Columnist Dana Milbank and economics correspondent Jeff Stein both announced they were leaving the Post on Monday.
Businesses are increasingly turning to algorithms to set their prices, and it doesn’t look like that’s going to change anytime soon unless legislators get involved. At least a dozen states are considering legislation about surveillance pricing, but so far, only New York has passed a law in this area. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have much teeth since it only requires companies to notify consumers when a price has been set with AI.
On the other hand, New York’s law may be the only reason we know that the Washington Post is using AI for subscription rates. The paper has little other incentive to include the disclaimer: “This price was set by an algorithm using your personal data.” Notifying consumers may not fix the problem of surveillance pricing, but at least people can take it into account when deciding where they want to spend their money.
Source: Gizmodo