[SATIRE]

RICHARDSON, Texas — RealPage agreed to update its pricing software this week following a Department of Justice lawsuit. Engineers discovered the algorithm kept raising rents because it assumes all humans can simply “spawn” more money upon request.

The software, used by landlords to set prices, treats a tenant’s salary like a software bug. It kept waiting for renters to download a patch that fixes being broke. “The AI believes poverty is a user error,” said Jennifer Morrison, Vice President of Reality Alignment. “It thinks if you can’t pay $4,000 for a studio apartment, you just aren’t clicking the right buttons in your bank app.”

Under the new settlement, RealPage must stop using private data to push prices up. The algorithm reportedly crashed when developers tried to explain the concept of a “budget.” It suggested that tenants simply sell their extra kidneys to improve cash flow. “We tried to explain that humans need food to survive,” noted Dr. Robert Kim, Director of Biological Inconvenience. “The model calculated that eating is an inefficient use of funds that should go toward security deposits instead.”

At press time, the algorithm was seen trying to evict the Department of Justice for failing to meet the new 500x income requirement.

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