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Tinder Must Stop Charging Its Older Users More For 'Plus' Features, Court Rules (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The online dating service Tinder must change one of its key monetization strategies. A Los Angeles appellate court reversed a lower court's decision on Monday and told Tinder to stop charging older users more money per month for its "Tinder Plus" service. The proposed class-action lawsuit, filed by Tinder user Allan Candelore in February 2016, alleged that Tinder engaged in illegal age discrimination by charging its 30-and-older users $19.99 per month for Tinder Plus while offering younger users either $9.99 or $14.99 monthly subscription rates for the same services. Tinder Plus includes app perks such as additional "super-likes" which are more likely to attract a dater's response. In an initial trial, Tinder's defense argued that the pricing was based on market testing that showed a market-driven reason to offer lower prices to "budget constrained" users.
"Nothing in the [original] complaint suggests there is a strong public policy that justifies the alleged discriminatory pricing," Judge Brian Currey wrote in the appeal court's 3-0 ruling. "Accordingly, we swipe left" -- a joke based on the app's popular "swipe to reject" gesture -- and reverse." That reversal hinges largely on California's Unruh Civil Rights Act, which was passed in 1959 and protects "equal access to public accommodations and prohibits discrimination by business establishments." The ruling noted that some business-led discrimination is allowed by California state law, but it agreed with Candelore's argument that Tinder's age-targeted pricing is not.
"Nothing in the [original] complaint suggests there is a strong public policy that justifies the alleged discriminatory pricing," Judge Brian Currey wrote in the appeal court's 3-0 ruling. "Accordingly, we swipe left" -- a joke based on the app's popular "swipe to reject" gesture -- and reverse." That reversal hinges largely on California's Unruh Civil Rights Act, which was passed in 1959 and protects "equal access to public accommodations and prohibits discrimination by business establishments." The ruling noted that some business-led discrimination is allowed by California state law, but it agreed with Candelore's argument that Tinder's age-targeted pricing is not.
Are they? Insurance companies charge by the statistics. If younger people are statistically more likely to cost more, that's not the Insurer's fault.
Its a reasonable question in this context.
The principle reason for "Senior discounts" is that elderly folks are often poorer (Not always, theres plenty of rich old folk), and have likely been of a "service to the community" in the sense of having lived through conscription wartimes, and so on. So therefore its reasonable to offer a discount to the elderly, in the same way some businesses might offer a discount to the disable or unemployed.
Tinder in fact argued that in this case users under 30 where more likely to be "budget constrained" than a user over 30 and thus it justifed the policy. The supreme court considered this in detail and noted that the difference is that a 25 and a 35 both have a capacity to earn more money, however a retired senior citizen or a child does not have that capacity and thus the underlying generalizations are different, particularly as the same legislature that enables the anti discrimination laws also limits the ability of the very elderly or the very young to work and thus it carves out its own excemptions there to permit discounts for seniors and children.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.