Algorithmic Rent-Pricing Litigation Expands Under New State and Local Laws
40 points by toomuchtodo 3 hours ago | 15 comments
nativeit 57 minutes ago
I’d imagine it’s not so simple, especially without a functional legislative branch, but we could really use a “digital bill of rights” that could provide a comprehensive set of baseline protections and standards for things like this, online privacy, data protection, whatever stops Meta/X/et al from being maximally harmful, etc..
replytoomuchtodo 3 hours ago
From https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-time-ba...
reply> Our work against algorithmic rent-fixing is starting to bear real fruit. Multiple cities have passed laws prohibiting corporate landlords from using rent-fixing software, including San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, Philadelphia, and Providence, RI. These laws aren’t complex and don’t require unwieldy market definition, you just have to show that the defendant is using nonpublic information in an algorithm to set prices. And they are being enforced, with six different lawsuits now pending.
boredatoms 2 hours ago
Will they just stop using an ‘algorithm’ and have a mathematician sit there and state numbers that are of unknown origin?
replydemibabs 2 hours ago
Can you elaborate on what is meant by “rent-fixing”?
replyarrosenberg 11 minutes ago
A bunch of landlords all use the same software to tell them how to price rents. The software continually pushes prices higher and higher. The software requires landlords to use their pricing as a condition of use. Now you have a price-fixing cartel for rent.
replyhiddencost 2 hours ago
Like "price fixing". Landlords illegally colluding to artificially inflate the price of housing.
reply
Then they got sued by the company that was targeted, and immediately waffled and canceled the ban.
What's insane about all of this is that we also have Rent Control. There is no greater price fixing mechanism than Rent Control. Rent Control ensures that all landlords must seek the highest possible rent, because they are (potentially) tethered to it for life (of the tenant).
So if you create an economic system where sellers never will allow prices to go down, why bother banning price fixing -- its practically baked into the housing code.
Bunch of self absorbed people who rode safely and on the rails of their culture and think they're a novel thinker pedaling banal cable news tropes of their bygone days