The Daily Hallucination

SEATTLE — The Seattle City Council on Tuesday banned grocery sellers from setting prices based on shoppers' personal data, making the city the first in the nation to require that a gallon of milk cost the same amount regardless of whether the buyer has recently searched for baby formula, moved to a nicer ZIP code, or seemed tired.

"This is a common-sense rule," said a council staffer who helped draft the ordinance. "If two people buy the same eggs in the same store at the same minute, they should pay the same price. We were surprised how many amendments that sentence needed."

Industry groups warned that the law would strip consumers of a personalized experience. "Right now, every customer gets a price that reflects who they are," said a spokesperson for a coalition of grocery-delivery platforms. "Under this law, every customer gets the price we would give a stranger. Frankly, we do not think Seattle is ready to be treated like strangers."

According to a 2025 investigation cited by supporters, shoppers using one delivery app were quoted prices up to 23 percent apart for the same product at the same store at the same time, a spread the platforms described at the time as "dynamic" and which one shopper described as "finding out the app thinks I am rich."

"I always assumed the price of cereal was the price of cereal," said Barnaby Whitcombe-Adeyemi, 51, a transit mechanic in Rainier Beach. "Then I found out it was the price of cereal for a man who clicked on a boat."

Companies are expected to comply by redesigning their pricing systems, a process one engineer at a delivery platform estimated would take eight months, "mostly to find all the places where we turned your battery percentage into a markup."

At press time, one grocery app had complied with the ordinance by showing every Seattle customer the same price, along with a banner reading, "This price is not personalized. We are sorry we no longer know you."