Sen. Klobuchar introduces antitrust bill to fight price fixing and bring down costs

(ABC 6 News) – Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, along with Democratic colleagues introduced a bill preventing companies from setting higher prices with algorithms.

It’s called the Algorithmic Collusion Act. The legislation comes after a Justice Department lawsuit and other private lawsuits revealed that big corporations use algorithms to raise prices and limit competition.

That includes the landlord company RealPage, which used algorithms that facilitated collusion to increase rents by over $3 billion in 2023.

This proposed legislation will make such collusion to lower costs for families and support small businesses. It aims to do this by closing loopholes in current law by presuming a price-fixing agreement, require companies that use algorithms to disclose the fact, ban companies from using non-public information from competitors to train pricing algorithms, and direct the Federal Trade Commission to study its impact on competition.