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Comment by baddox | Hacker News Reader

> Price discrimination only works if people can't easily identity that discrimination is in play.

While this specific pricing model seems odd to me, I don't think I agree with your general claim. I think everyone understands the iPhone product line, with different prices for different amounts of storage space. As far as I know, that works really well for Apple, yet it would be difficult to have a more blatant example of price discrimination.

edit: There are several people claiming that price discrimination requires the products to be completely identical. I maintain that is not how the term is used in economics. I replied with more detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9135084

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Price discrimination is when a business charges different prices to different groups of consumers for the same product or service.

Charging different prices for similar goods is not pure price discrimination.

The widely accepted and used definition in economics refers to products that are identical or nearly identical, or more specifically, whose functions and costs of production are nearly identical. Student editions of software, for instance, are often functionally limited, but it is widely listed as an example of price discrimination. Some econ textbooks will make a distinction of "pure price discrimination," which requires the products to be literally identical. Note that the identity function for products is not always obvious.

I maintain that the iPhone's storage pricing is a clear example of price discrimination.

"Price discrimination" means charging different users different prices for the same product/service. Apple charging different prices for different amounts of storage space is not price discrimination.

"Price discrimination" is widely used to refer to identical or nearly identical products whose cost of production is nearly identical despite being offered at significantly different prices.

I think what he means is charging different prices for different users for the same product.

I wonder if it matters that Tinder is a service not a product. In MS Office it is possible for two people to have the same user experience. But on Tinder the people that you interact with are the product. Legally this distinction is probably irrelevant.

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