“This price was set by an algorithm”: News subscribers are surprised by a new line in their renewal emails
Outlets like Wired, NJ.com, and The Wall Street Journal are setting renewal prices just for you — and being forced to disclose it.
https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/07/this-price-was-set-by-an-algorithm-news-subscribers-are-surprised-by-a-new-line-in-their-renewal-emails/Open linkView original on lemmy.zip
4 replies
Instant unsub for me, if I ever saw it.
Make pricing tiers with different offers and let people decide if it's worth it, anything else is a scam.
Prices will most likely be set by the classic calculus optimization problems. Therefore, it will be imperative to “not purchase” until value is commensurate to utility. Easier said than done of course.
No. The reward for greed and narcissism should not be the same as the reward for providing a valuable service. The only reward they deserve is financial ruin; financial death.
I refuse to pay for any streaming services ever again, because they chose to enshittify and price gouge at every turn. Now, they get nothing. They can pry my media from my cold dead hands. But really, the world would be a better place if this class of parasites just killed themselves.
Algorithmic pricing deserves much more scrutiny.