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> And I'd say that it's questionably legal. If a store charged you more money because you were using a gift card, I think we'd all agree that the store had unjustly taken value from you. Here, Uber is allegedly charging people with credits a higher amount - essentially stealing gift card value.

Lots of things work this way though.

1) Airlines charge more to fly direct from A -> B while charging less for someone to fly from A -> B -> C. Some people try skiplagging to game the system but you run the risk of getting banned by the airline if you do that.

2) Another hilarious experience I have had is when I was paying things for my wedding. Some vendors (florists, cake makers, etc) will charge outrageous rates if you tell them it's for a wedding. But they will charge very reasonable rates if you claim it is just for a non-wedding family event (for the same amount of flowers, same size/layers of cake, etc).

3) A similar thing I have been warned about is electricians charging more if you claim you want an EVSE installed for your new Tesla as opposed to having just a regular NEMA 14-50 outlet installed in your garage. For the former, they will quote much higher while the quotes are cheaper for the latter (this is despite the exact amount of work and materials - you can even get them to confirm they are going to use the same gauge wire, etc).

I think they can do all of these tricks but once it becomes known that they are engaging in these shenanigans, it will dilute the value of their credits. So if Costco tries to sell me $100 Uber gift card for 20% off, then I will instantly value that 20% discount to be worth 0% and not purchase that gift card ever.

_generally speaking_ most data science is "we tried this and it improved this metric" the how and why is often poorly understood, and even when it is, it's often later once the system has been working for awhile.

But also I'm not convinced that getting someone to pay more is the same as screwing them over. For example - countries where fines are based on your income, or needs based programs that charge you less when you make less are mostly accepted as social good

Those things are not inherently as arbitrary and are also much more transparent which makes them hardly comparable in any meaningful way..

This is like physical shops offering different prices to clients based on how they are dressed and other indirect indicators.

> A PM/engineer decided "I bet we can create an ML model that will find suckers we can charge more," is basically the same as "I bet people with credits will pay more."

The difference is the former has an element of being one step removed, and we use that tiny accountability gap to sleep better at night.

The comparison to modern army drone pilots comes to mind... we're now exploding Enemies from the comfort of a playstation controller in a base somewhere in Utah. The PTSD comes in when the operators realize that tiny accountability gap has just been mental gymnastics to suppress what they've really been doing.