Do nothing, to avoid stifling innovation and competition
There are some innovations we like and other innovations we don’t. Innovation of how to trick customers into paying fees that they wouldn’t pay if they would be fully informed is an innovation that’s valuable to stop.
Laws that make customers more informed about the deals to which they agree on help with encouraging the innovation we want and improve competition.
Require listing at a price that at least a large percentage of users actually pay, or the median or mean, in addition to the headline price, in as large or larger print, and require sorting that way be the default.
This sounds like a good general principle but it’s not a solution because you have to decide what you mean by the terms that are involved.
If you take the example of an airplane ticket, what’s included? The meal that’s eaten at the airport? The fee for the toilet at the airport? For trans-country flights, is buying duty-free jewelry included?
It would be possible to write a detailed list into the law. As conditions change in the future, that detailed list could stifle innovation because it locks in the status quo.
Require aggregation sites and services to list prices and have default sort options based on true cost or similar offerings, and perhaps impose similar rules on advertising, while letting the companies do what they want on their own sites. Stores that sell competing third-party devices are an interesting question here.
Many companies don’t like price aggregation websites. If you write that into the law, they could simply not give the price aggregation sites the necessary data and the airplane companies could effectively destroy the price aggregation websites for airplane tickets.
Laws that make customers more informed about the deals to which they agree on help with encouraging the innovation we want and improve competition.
I like the spirit of this, but want to mention GDPR as a counterpoint. One of the purposes of that law was to ensure that customers are better informed, and yet the mandatory cookie popups just made the experience of browsing websites much worse.
I think that GDPR actually made the average user better informed. Common knowledge is costly and it’s debatable whether the GDPR in particular balances the costs well, but it did provide more information.
As far as innovation goes GDPR did force companies to come up with a bunch of different innovations about protecting privacy that they otherwise wouldn’t have created. There are likely also innovations in ad-tech that are prevented through GDPR.
It was a relatively blunt instrument to get companies to innovate in privacy which they otherwise wouldn’t have. It had a cost of making other innovations harder.
The law could have been written better, but I don’t think there is a principle problem with the goal.
There are some innovations we like and other innovations we don’t. Innovation of how to trick customers into paying fees that they wouldn’t pay if they would be fully informed is an innovation that’s valuable to stop.
Laws that make customers more informed about the deals to which they agree on help with encouraging the innovation we want and improve competition.
This sounds like a good general principle but it’s not a solution because you have to decide what you mean by the terms that are involved.
If you take the example of an airplane ticket, what’s included? The meal that’s eaten at the airport? The fee for the toilet at the airport? For trans-country flights, is buying duty-free jewelry included?
It would be possible to write a detailed list into the law. As conditions change in the future, that detailed list could stifle innovation because it locks in the status quo.
Many companies don’t like price aggregation websites. If you write that into the law, they could simply not give the price aggregation sites the necessary data and the airplane companies could effectively destroy the price aggregation websites for airplane tickets.
I like the spirit of this, but want to mention GDPR as a counterpoint. One of the purposes of that law was to ensure that customers are better informed, and yet the mandatory cookie popups just made the experience of browsing websites much worse.
I think that GDPR actually made the average user better informed. Common knowledge is costly and it’s debatable whether the GDPR in particular balances the costs well, but it did provide more information.
As far as innovation goes GDPR did force companies to come up with a bunch of different innovations about protecting privacy that they otherwise wouldn’t have created. There are likely also innovations in ad-tech that are prevented through GDPR.
It was a relatively blunt instrument to get companies to innovate in privacy which they otherwise wouldn’t have. It had a cost of making other innovations harder.
The law could have been written better, but I don’t think there is a principle problem with the goal.