Shopper Accuses App of Big Data Bias

A Beijing woman garnered attention on social media after accusing an e-commerce platform of using big data to profile and discriminate against customers. The woman surnamed Han wrote that she bought the same product on the same platform, which was not named in reports, from two different accounts on two smartphones, only to find the platform charged her two different prices. According to Han, she regularly uses one of the phones for purchases on the platform, spending a total of 260,000 yuan (US$38,235) over 12 years on the account. But on the other phone, which she rarely uses, the platform gave her a 25-yuan (US$3.7) discount. While customer service reps said the platform issues coupons to new accounts as incentives, Han accused the platform of basing their prices on customer profiles. Big data bias in e-commerce has been a hot topic in media since 2018, a trend to which consumers say they have little recourse.