Related for those that want to learn more about how retail establishments track you: "No Place to Hide" by Robert O'Harrow Jr. Details the marketing and retail industry's use of camera, AI, and customer tracking. The really scary part is that it was written in 2004.
Thanks for the recommendation. As for the year it doesn't shock me in certain aspects. The camera data in the early 2000's is something I didn't consider though.
I notice many people don't know or think that corporations use customer cards for more than a discount. I worked for one of the largest retailers in the U.S. and learned how far the "Plus" card data really goes. All of that data is sold as very in detailed profiles of customers to brokers who sell the data to other corporations and institutions.
I worked for them for 10 years and watched it evolve from data harvesting through rewards cards to utilizing the checkout as an avenue of further data collection through facial recognition cameras and even heat sensors throughout the store building heat maps of customer flow.
I am not sure exactly about the heat map data being sold or not, however, I am sure some broker could find a market for it but I do know the checkout camera data was sold.
The company started utilizing the card system in the 90's and its checkout camera with heat mapping in the early 2010's. Personally, I never used a customer card with my name or address just to maintain some privacy level.
It lacks any sort of depth and it doesn't look like there's any product in stock honestly. I think it needs more work before it'll be a product people want, and even then, what's the market? I don't think retailers stocking junk food are going to be swapping out their doors for these at all. It's just not worth the investment, more than likely.
I see something similar to this in the testing done for self driving cars. There's a lot of cars driving around that have a lot of sensors, sometimes on my 15 minute drive I see 5 or more. I'm sure that these cars are tracking information about the cars they drive past and have enough resolution to uniquely identify drivers. The fact they all share information with each and can aggregate that into a cohesive picture feels like an extreme invasion of privacy, even though I'm theoretically driving around in the public domain. Now, I still use Google maps to navigate around, so they know my location anyways, but I guess my fear is that more and more, even if you were able to totally 'disconnect', there's still no way to keep yourself private. This has probably always strictly been the case, my movements could always theoretically be tracked, but the capabilities are just becoming more and more clear to me.
It really feels to me like the line between public and private needs to be re-evaluated, and even though life will go on anyways, the future worries me quite a bit.
Honestly my biggest frustration with this is how much a complete waste of resources this is. The same practical effect could be achieved by installing the trackers/whatever on the outskirts of a standard door, replacing the price labels with 7 segments LEDs, and beefing up the glass insulation a bit; instead we are slapping a giant custom screen that has to be powered 24/7 over the mess that's probably going to end up more fragile than the average phone and uses more rare-earth's than the tesla parked outside.
I recently went into a local Best Buy location after not having stepped inside one in about 10 years...
...aside from being impressed at how low the price was for a Samsung 85" QLED 4K television (about $3k USD - dirt cheap IMHO) - I was more intrigued by the price labels on the racks and such.
It was something I only noticed after being there for 30 minutes or so, which either shows my age, lack of awareness, or something like that - or it shows just how things now blend in.
All of the labels were some kind of "e-ink" based wireless tagging system.
They had fooled me for a good while that they were the old-style paper labels that BB used to use, stuck in slip-case transparent windows on or near the merchandise. To my eyes, they were almost flawless. Looking closer, I could see certain issues that (besides the fact of the electronic frame they were in - which was really thin and subtle) revealed their true nature: Missing pixels, jaggies (like a bad fax), etc.
Best Buy used to be "the place" I went for electronics, when they first came to the Phoenix area (early 90s). I helped
to establish my credit using their in-store credit card system.
But that recent experience of visiting them left a bad taste in my mouth. It wasn't the price labels, or even really their prices (which really weren't too outlandish) - it was just the whole feel of the place. Something seemed off about it, like it was trying to be something that just wasn't "it" any longer.
Kinda like how K-Mart felt when places like Target and Walmart became "big" (I find both of those places, though, to feel similar to BB as well).
The only thing I can attribute this to is how easy it has become to shop online for stuff, and the fact that I do most of my shopping online period. The only stuff I don't shop online for has been groceries and other food items. I expect that to change in the future, though.
My only other shopping experiences - and the ones I enjoy - have been at what can only be described as "second-hand marketplaces" - used book stores, surplus electronics outlets, junkyards, hamfests, etc.
Strangely, I prefer "shopping" at these places more than the general "commercial" outlets. For some reason, they are more comfortable to shop at/with - they feel less sanitized and more personal to me...
Walgreens probably still does those late night stickers for price changes, if anything needs to be digitized it would be that. For the benefit of the employees that have to do that painful mess of a price change constantly. Next time you visit a Walgreens or similar store and see tags everywhere just consider how much waste there is to do that every week, sometimes with the same prices just a new colored sticker.
We've had digitized (eInk, LCD) price tags for well over a decade now. They just haven't seemed to take off anywhere except for Kohls (at least in my area).
I assumed they were playing the old Facebook trick. "We don't save the images, just the data model that our computer builds from the images, so it's totally ok."
The whole advertisement industry and everything related to it is rotten. Why is today's marketing so filled with vile psychological tricks, creepy things like these coolers, always on mics, analytics about EVERYTHING, store smells and "branding, profiling and recommendation engines...I could go on and on about how advertisement is infuriating today. In old days, you might see ads in a magazine or a newspaper in the same way we see ads on Google, but they didn't have the kind of people coming up with insanely creepy ideas like today. I don't want to hang out with these folks. Who are these people?
It is infuriating.
Are there any sane alternatives to advertisement today? I don't want banners and flashing ads. Is there a model of advertisement which is "pull" instead of "push"? Kind of like trade shows but for the internet? I LOVE going to trade shows. There is so much value as an industrial consumer (I am an engineer) in attending trade shows - they provide real life demonstrations, new technology, latest methods and processes, face-to-face with people and I honestly don't mind people scanning my badges because there is consent.
Here in Australia they recently installed video advertising screens at many city tram stops in Melbourne. They are portrait-orientated 6 feet tall screens installed in the tram shelter wall where people stand and lean. The problem is on hot days these displays heat up. The fans inside start spinning fast and noisy. Hot air is blown out the bottom, right at people standing waiting for the tram, and the whole display is too hot and noisy to lean against or stand near.
Consumers and the general public are always the last to benefit from "modern" advertising technology. It's always someone else who benefits, never the general public, who must cop noisy hot, overly bright video displays, or creepy surveillance so that someone makes more money selling those spaces. It's how the modern world is at the moment.
> Why is today's marketing so filled with vile psychological tricks
Because we didn't outlaw them, and mostly liberalised regulations around advertising. If they can, they will. It really does seem to be as simple as that.
Well it's simple, because the better you can advertise and market to individuals, the more product you can sell and the more money you can generate. And if it's your business to market to people and generate profit, you are more inclined to find any method you can to market to people before your competitors beat you to the punch.
The corporate world and particularly finance industries have been using data to make better informed decisions for decades. The creepiness of advertising I don't mind, because it's simply based on data to provide better recommendations and makes sense if you have the data. For me it's the frequency of advertisements being shown to me all the time.
If I had to choose, I'd rather have more informed advertisements than a massive array on them. For example, when watching TV if I have to see commercials I'd rather see them about the latest graphics cards than about the new L'Oreal skin cream.
> Why is today's marketing so filled with vile psychological tricks
A few key factors:
1) Outside of maybe the controlled substances market, it's hard to separate people from their money.
2) B2C businesses can't survive on a simple buyer-seller relationship anymore, so they are branching into analytics-heavy BS like "customer experience" and "service design", which ironically involves a lot of covert crap like this
3) The biggest tech companies in the world harvest and sell data to B2B customers. You'll be hard pressed to find a successful software company not Apple) in this day and age that's actually selling something not based around optimizing your sales funnel and theoretically "making you more money".
Display ads are the sane alternative you are asking for.
Imagine the article had an ad for a privacy-respecting inventory prediction and optimization tool for grocers, and maybe a second ad for an ad blocker.
That’d be totally cool from a privacy perspective (no tracking), and the ad purchasers would be paying a premium (prime real estate) to the site (actual content producers).
I think we are mistaking creepy for analytical visual profiling and database management. The idea of physical customers being captured as users with records of personal sales trends based on demographics, social behavior, and appearance is interesting. Ads will exist whether we like it it not. If tracking software can at least make these annoying ads more accurate, why not? Not to mention, the survelliance will reduce shop lifting and provide more details to authorities by pinpointing suspects.
Creepy is the right word. It might even be too soft; some of my non-technical friends would probably prefer "target that needs to be razed[1]".
> The idea ... is interesting.
The Teller-Ulam design[2] is "interesting". That doesn't justify using it.
> Ads
Ads are the least interesting use for behavioral data[3]. Why are you ignoring all of the other uses (including malicious uses)?
> make these annoying ads more accurate,
The idea that target advertising's purpose is to make ads less annoying or more accurate is a scam. Advertising isn't concerned with your interests, it's there to get you to buy something. Ads of often more annoying on purpose, in an effort to get you to notice it. Targeting can make your ads less "accurate" (from your perspective) because you don't need to be pushed toward buying things in which you are already interested. Instead, targeting lets people that want to change your mind about needing a product show their ad only to people like you.
> the survelliance will reduce shop lifting and provide more details to authorities by pinpointing suspects
This is exactly the type of additional use-case I was talking about. Now what about when (not if) malicious actors get their hands on that data? Or it gets sold to your insurance company?[3]
The focus on "advertising" in all of these discussions is misleading. It's not about ads. It's about creating an information asymmetry in the market in order to exploit people.
The market is a hidden-information game. If you know that I need the medicine or I'll die, you can charge me every cent I own for it and I have to pay. If I know that you need to sell to make your monthly repayments, I know I can lowball you. The party with the most information is at an advantage. And invading peoples' privacy puts them at a commercial disadvantage.
Don't see the big deal about yet another screen/ advertisement platform, especially in a public convenience store. The fact that 'it watches you' is a creepy for sure, but don't forget they've already got video cameras in most these stores. Admittedly the intent is different (crime prevention vs marketing), but I couldn't care less if they know what kind of soda I like.
You might not care if it's just soda, but what about when it's along every aisle in the super market? What about at a pharmacy?
A super market app on your smartphone (which was installed for coupons) pops up a notification on Tuesday to remind you to get condoms. Based on your history it knows you pick them up on the way home (it's date night).
Your wife gets personalized discounts on sanitary pads on the 12th every month because it knows her cycle based on transaction history.
A pro-life organization purchases whole sale data from one of the analytics firms and harasses those who get the morning after pill.
At this point it's too late. As a consumer you have no choice, there is no competition left in the market place that doesn't do this.
If journalists make a big noise about it at some point the chains argue this subsidizes the price of basic produce which directly helps those on low income. Now the message is if you value privacy, you ~hate the poor~.
I just hate the feeling that we're moving towards a world where you can't go anywhere without being sold something or having your thoughts manipulated by a carefully crafted advertising campaign. I can control to some extent what I see online, not so much in the "real world".
Whether or not a retail chain is doing it now doesn't really matter. Stop assuming that the "security camera" is in any way there to protect you. Yes, maybe that's one of its functions, but HD video is HD video and they could very easily be using that same video feed for any number of other things, all while you smile and ignore the ubiquitous black domes.
Let's not forget that casinos have been doing everything everyone is paranoid about in this thread for decades, and not just with cameras. Players cards, RFID chips, facial recognition, relationship databases... Have you ever seen a sign saying "hey, this camera uses facial recognition to track your path between blackjack, the bathroom, and the craps table"? Of course not, they all look exactly like the security cameras everywhere else.
But the security cameras offer some value to consumers; they are there to protect people. They are purely an expense for the store owner.
In contrast, these nasty CoolerScreen things are there to extract value from your interactions with them (without consent). The bulk of this will go directly into CoolerScreens' pockets. A small pittance will likely be given to the shop owners to keep them happy. What's in it for you, the consumer? Absolutely nothing.
At what point do we decide the surveillance/manipulation is actually creepy and too far? When the computers/gadgets are in our bodies, under our skin? How will stop it?
Video cameras aren't building personal profiles on you with ml.
> I couldn't care less if they know what kind of soda I like
You creeping intrusiveness will stop with beverage preferences? What if certain beverages are correlated with political leaning, like veganism?
This. It's literally a store--of course there is going to be advertising. That's why it's free to walk in the door, because you are there to either buy or be sold something.
[+] [-] Simulacra|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sphinxpy|7 years ago|reply
I notice many people don't know or think that corporations use customer cards for more than a discount. I worked for one of the largest retailers in the U.S. and learned how far the "Plus" card data really goes. All of that data is sold as very in detailed profiles of customers to brokers who sell the data to other corporations and institutions.
I worked for them for 10 years and watched it evolve from data harvesting through rewards cards to utilizing the checkout as an avenue of further data collection through facial recognition cameras and even heat sensors throughout the store building heat maps of customer flow.
I am not sure exactly about the heat map data being sold or not, however, I am sure some broker could find a market for it but I do know the checkout camera data was sold.
The company started utilizing the card system in the 90's and its checkout camera with heat mapping in the early 2010's. Personally, I never used a customer card with my name or address just to maintain some privacy level.
[+] [-] whoisjuan|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] exodust|7 years ago|reply
https://i.vimeocdn.com/video/737135814.webp.png
[+] [-] Adamantcheese|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mathgeek|7 years ago|reply
Perfect example of how there will always be a company that will do whatever they want as long as local laws don't prohibit it.
[+] [-] OldHand2018|7 years ago|reply
Both Walgreens and the company making the technology are based in a place where this is illegal.
[+] [-] akamoonknight|7 years ago|reply
It really feels to me like the line between public and private needs to be re-evaluated, and even though life will go on anyways, the future worries me quite a bit.
[+] [-] tomatotomato37|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cr0sh|7 years ago|reply
I recently went into a local Best Buy location after not having stepped inside one in about 10 years...
...aside from being impressed at how low the price was for a Samsung 85" QLED 4K television (about $3k USD - dirt cheap IMHO) - I was more intrigued by the price labels on the racks and such.
It was something I only noticed after being there for 30 minutes or so, which either shows my age, lack of awareness, or something like that - or it shows just how things now blend in.
All of the labels were some kind of "e-ink" based wireless tagging system.
They had fooled me for a good while that they were the old-style paper labels that BB used to use, stuck in slip-case transparent windows on or near the merchandise. To my eyes, they were almost flawless. Looking closer, I could see certain issues that (besides the fact of the electronic frame they were in - which was really thin and subtle) revealed their true nature: Missing pixels, jaggies (like a bad fax), etc.
Best Buy used to be "the place" I went for electronics, when they first came to the Phoenix area (early 90s). I helped to establish my credit using their in-store credit card system.
But that recent experience of visiting them left a bad taste in my mouth. It wasn't the price labels, or even really their prices (which really weren't too outlandish) - it was just the whole feel of the place. Something seemed off about it, like it was trying to be something that just wasn't "it" any longer.
Kinda like how K-Mart felt when places like Target and Walmart became "big" (I find both of those places, though, to feel similar to BB as well).
The only thing I can attribute this to is how easy it has become to shop online for stuff, and the fact that I do most of my shopping online period. The only stuff I don't shop online for has been groceries and other food items. I expect that to change in the future, though.
My only other shopping experiences - and the ones I enjoy - have been at what can only be described as "second-hand marketplaces" - used book stores, surplus electronics outlets, junkyards, hamfests, etc.
Strangely, I prefer "shopping" at these places more than the general "commercial" outlets. For some reason, they are more comfortable to shop at/with - they feel less sanitized and more personal to me...
[+] [-] blue4|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heywire|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] huffmsa|7 years ago|reply
So they're just going to magically improve their models with zero real-world data?
I can hear the noses growing.
[+] [-] everdrive|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] technobabble|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] glup|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spectramax|7 years ago|reply
It is infuriating.
Are there any sane alternatives to advertisement today? I don't want banners and flashing ads. Is there a model of advertisement which is "pull" instead of "push"? Kind of like trade shows but for the internet? I LOVE going to trade shows. There is so much value as an industrial consumer (I am an engineer) in attending trade shows - they provide real life demonstrations, new technology, latest methods and processes, face-to-face with people and I honestly don't mind people scanning my badges because there is consent.
[+] [-] exodust|7 years ago|reply
Consumers and the general public are always the last to benefit from "modern" advertising technology. It's always someone else who benefits, never the general public, who must cop noisy hot, overly bright video displays, or creepy surveillance so that someone makes more money selling those spaces. It's how the modern world is at the moment.
[+] [-] m463|7 years ago|reply
It seems business models and revenue streams have prevented the pendulum from swinging the other way.
[+] [-] NeedMoreTea|7 years ago|reply
Because we didn't outlaw them, and mostly liberalised regulations around advertising. If they can, they will. It really does seem to be as simple as that.
[+] [-] NoPicklez|7 years ago|reply
The corporate world and particularly finance industries have been using data to make better informed decisions for decades. The creepiness of advertising I don't mind, because it's simply based on data to provide better recommendations and makes sense if you have the data. For me it's the frequency of advertisements being shown to me all the time.
If I had to choose, I'd rather have more informed advertisements than a massive array on them. For example, when watching TV if I have to see commercials I'd rather see them about the latest graphics cards than about the new L'Oreal skin cream.
[+] [-] rchaud|7 years ago|reply
A few key factors:
1) Outside of maybe the controlled substances market, it's hard to separate people from their money.
2) B2C businesses can't survive on a simple buyer-seller relationship anymore, so they are branching into analytics-heavy BS like "customer experience" and "service design", which ironically involves a lot of covert crap like this
3) The biggest tech companies in the world harvest and sell data to B2B customers. You'll be hard pressed to find a successful software company not Apple) in this day and age that's actually selling something not based around optimizing your sales funnel and theoretically "making you more money".
[+] [-] hedora|7 years ago|reply
Imagine the article had an ad for a privacy-respecting inventory prediction and optimization tool for grocers, and maybe a second ad for an ad blocker.
That’d be totally cool from a privacy perspective (no tracking), and the ad purchasers would be paying a premium (prime real estate) to the site (actual content producers).
However, it is harder to scale, I guess.
[+] [-] wwweston|7 years ago|reply
Search. And contextual ads. Really pretty much what Google executed its meteoric rise on. But so 2005, right?
And the reason they're creepy today, along with the rest of the surveillance economy, is that wasn't enough.
[+] [-] mastrsushi|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pdkl95|7 years ago|reply
Creepy is the right word. It might even be too soft; some of my non-technical friends would probably prefer "target that needs to be razed[1]".
> The idea ... is interesting.
The Teller-Ulam design[2] is "interesting". That doesn't justify using it.
> Ads
Ads are the least interesting use for behavioral data[3]. Why are you ignoring all of the other uses (including malicious uses)?
> make these annoying ads more accurate,
The idea that target advertising's purpose is to make ads less annoying or more accurate is a scam. Advertising isn't concerned with your interests, it's there to get you to buy something. Ads of often more annoying on purpose, in an effort to get you to notice it. Targeting can make your ads less "accurate" (from your perspective) because you don't need to be pushed toward buying things in which you are already interested. Instead, targeting lets people that want to change your mind about needing a product show their ad only to people like you.
> the survelliance will reduce shop lifting and provide more details to authorities by pinpointing suspects
This is exactly the type of additional use-case I was talking about. Now what about when (not if) malicious actors get their hands on that data? Or it gets sold to your insurance company?[3]
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18775456
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon#Basic_pri...
[3] http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/shoshana-zuboff-q-and...
[+] [-] taneq|7 years ago|reply
The market is a hidden-information game. If you know that I need the medicine or I'll die, you can charge me every cent I own for it and I have to pay. If I know that you need to sell to make your monthly repayments, I know I can lowball you. The party with the most information is at an advantage. And invading peoples' privacy puts them at a commercial disadvantage.
[+] [-] reidjs|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] doesnt_know|7 years ago|reply
A super market app on your smartphone (which was installed for coupons) pops up a notification on Tuesday to remind you to get condoms. Based on your history it knows you pick them up on the way home (it's date night).
Your wife gets personalized discounts on sanitary pads on the 12th every month because it knows her cycle based on transaction history.
A pro-life organization purchases whole sale data from one of the analytics firms and harasses those who get the morning after pill.
At this point it's too late. As a consumer you have no choice, there is no competition left in the market place that doesn't do this.
If journalists make a big noise about it at some point the chains argue this subsidizes the price of basic produce which directly helps those on low income. Now the message is if you value privacy, you ~hate the poor~.
[+] [-] jamestanderson|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrismeller|7 years ago|reply
Let's not forget that casinos have been doing everything everyone is paranoid about in this thread for decades, and not just with cameras. Players cards, RFID chips, facial recognition, relationship databases... Have you ever seen a sign saying "hey, this camera uses facial recognition to track your path between blackjack, the bathroom, and the craps table"? Of course not, they all look exactly like the security cameras everywhere else.
[+] [-] luckman212|7 years ago|reply
In contrast, these nasty CoolerScreen things are there to extract value from your interactions with them (without consent). The bulk of this will go directly into CoolerScreens' pockets. A small pittance will likely be given to the shop owners to keep them happy. What's in it for you, the consumer? Absolutely nothing.
[+] [-] spinach|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fromthestart|7 years ago|reply
> I couldn't care less if they know what kind of soda I like You creeping intrusiveness will stop with beverage preferences? What if certain beverages are correlated with political leaning, like veganism?
[+] [-] morpheuskafka|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NikkiA|7 years ago|reply
Is what it'll be like 10 years from now.