r/LudditeRenaissance

Lindsay Owens, president of Groundwork Collaborative, presents a Shopper’s Bill of Rights written with Nia Law and Elizabeth Pancotti. The document, released in late September 2026, lists twelve protections for digital commerce. The video walks through several of them: the price shown must be the full price including mandatory fees, the same item at the same store at the same time must cost the same amount, canceling a subscription must be as easy as signing up, algorithmic price fixing remains illegal, dynamic price changes outside true scarcity should be limited, people should be able to repair what they buy, and AI shopping agents should work for the shopper rather than the company that pays for placement.

The surveillance-pricing section is tied to specific filings. DoorDash filed U.S. patent application 20260087024, “Detecting user agitation application interaction,” published March 26, 2026. It describes calculating an “agitation score” from real-time device data such as scroll speed, pause frequency, jerky scrolling patterns, click-through rate, battery level, and location, then using that score to decide which items or offers appear. Owens says the score is intended to shape what a user is shown. Separate Walmart patents granted in 2021 and 2023 describe electronic shelf labels that can change price based on what is already in a Scan & Go cart (the patent’s example is tuna and mayonnaise) and prices set from a customer profile and proximity to a store. Walmart has publicly stated it prices the product, not the person, and will not use or renew the 2023 shelf-label patent.

On subscriptions, Owens notes the FTC’s 2024 click-to-cancel amendments to the Negative Option Rule. Those amendments would have required cancellation to be as simple as enrollment. On July 8, 2025, the Eighth Circuit vacated the entire rule in Custom Communications, Inc. v. FTC because the Commission skipped a required preliminary regulatory analysis once costs were projected above $100 million. The rule never took effect. The FTC restarted the process with an advance notice in March 2026; as of early October 2026 no replacement federal rule has been adopted. Some state and local laws (California, New York, New York City) already impose similar cancellation requirements. Owens also points to existing antitrust law for algorithmic price coordination and to FTC right-to-repair enforcement actions against warranty practices that steer owners to branded parts and authorized shops.

The final section addresses agentic shopping. Owens says platforms such as Walmart’s Sparky and Google’s Gemini are changing how people research, receive recommendations, and eventually buy. Groundwork’s text argues that if AI agents shop on a user’s behalf, the rules should require the agent to prioritize the user’s interest over advertising or product-placement payments. The proposal is a set of statutory guardrails, not an existing statute. Polling cited by Groundwork found roughly two-thirds of respondents supported the package as a whole, with higher support for all-in pricing and easy cancellation. The document itself does not claim any of the twelve rights is currently federal law.

Sources

Groundwork Collaborative, “Shoppers’ Bill of Rights,” September 28, 2026: the twelve rights, including all-in pricing, a ban on personal-data pricing, predictable price changes, click-to-cancel, right to repair, and AI agents that work for the shopper. https://groundworkcollaborative.org/work/shoppers-bill-of-rights/

U.S. Patent Application 20260087024 (DoorDash), published March 26, 2026: method for calculating an agitation score from scroll behavior, pauses, and other device data and then performing an action based on that score. https://patents.google.com/patent/US20260087024A1/en

Eighth Circuit, Custom Communications, Inc. v. FTC, July 8, 2025: vacatur of the 2024 Negative Option Rule amendments on procedural grounds; the click-to-cancel requirements never took effect.

Groundwork Collaborative news release, September 27, 2026: polling showing roughly two-thirds support for the package and higher support for individual items such as easy cancellation and all-in pricing. https://groundworkcollaborative.org/news/groundwork-unveils-a-bill-of-rights-to-give-shoppers-a-fair-shot-in-the-21st-century-marketplace/