FTC orders nine businesses to explain data use in prices and pay
The agency's public 15-page template shows what it wants to know, not what any company does.
The Federal Trade Commission says it sent Section 6(b) orders to nine businesses to study how personal data is used in customer prices and worker pay. Its announcement names Delta, United, JetBlue, Lyft, Uber, DoorDash, Instacart, Target and Walmart.
The agency wants the inputs, tools and procedures involved, and it describes the work as a study, not a set of findings. The Commission voted 2-0. Each business has 45 days from receiving its order to respond.
The 15-page order the FTC published is a template with a placeholder where a company's name would go, so it contains no business's answers. It asks what goes into a price and how the figure is worked out, including whether those inputs change from one consumer, or one group of consumers, to another.
A separate section covers how jobs are assigned to workers and how their pay is set, including how customer pricing affects compensation. Read together, the requests treat what a customer is charged and what a worker earns as parts of one question.
The template also asks for the exact wording of disclosures to consumers or workers, along with where and when they appeared. Neither document shows whether any of the nine used a particular practice, or how large any price or pay difference might be.