I’m sure that camera could accidentally be damaged or rendered non-functional.
I drop heavy hammers into shelves all the time.
I suddenly feel the need to grab my largest tipped sharpie and a mask and walk around Walmart for the first time in years
pro-tip: use paint pen.
sharpie comes of with alcohol.
paint comes off with scraping and scratching cheap plastic camera lenses.
If I ever end up back in a Walmart and see these, I’m definitely setting something in front of them.
Pinch of thermite should do it
Thoroughly illegal in the EU. Luckily Walmart doesn’t operate there.
I’m interested, what makes it illegal?
(likely) face identification and other surveillance of regular customers, if any data at all is created by that and analyzed or stored by anything that is a grave GDPR violation. Surveillance cameras for larger areas can be allowed but only to record for cases of legitimate control, no automated analysis nor data transfer to god knows where.
Personalised pricing is illegal as well in a supermarket. Digital price tags are allowed (and common) but there are clear rules how often prices are allowed to change. I’d have to research it myself but I think not more than once a day.
It wasn’t luck. They tried and failed, on account of how many of their normal practices are illegal in the EU.
Part of it was illegal, part of it was that their way of doing business pushed people away. Suppliers didn’t want to negotiate with Walmart and workers generally weren’t desperate to work there.
Sounds like two sides of the same coin.
I still have rather fond memories of shopping at Walmart in Germany. Tho I was a child and it always was more of an experience than a chore. Then Wexit happened and the world’s gone to shit ever since
Not yet, at least. It seems that they operate almost everywhere else though
They actually tried it in the EU but failed hard.
Do we have a “boringdystopia” instance on Lemmy yet?
I know someone directly involved with this work/these changes and Walmart absolutely shares this stuff with law enforcement basically freely
This is for dynamic pricing
Never really got the appeal of walmart, they have only had some I wanted maybe twice over the last 20 years.
Oh well, yet another reason to never go there.
For many people it’s nearest grocery
For many smaller towns, it’s the store. And for larger towns, it’s still a 1-shop stop. If you’re busy and need to grab gym shorts, a hammer, groceries, and a new router you can do it all in one place on the way home from.work.
I’m not sure how many shop there because it appeals to them
only by necessity for me. the next cheapest store is on the other side of town with at leat a couple dozen traffic lights and intersections between us.
Walk around with mask and reflective lenses.
Funny thing is, the regional grocer in my area has cameras up all over the entrances and parking lot. In my situation, there is less surveillance at Walmart than the “other guy”.
Surge pricing, here we come!
Kroger stores are especially bad
This is why they’re losing to Amazon.
No it’s because their website sucks
Find the peanut butter aisle. Then make all the aisles peanut butter aisles.
Interesting.
If it’s only a couple, could be surveillance. If they’re all over the place, they’re probably doing stock checking or shopper heuristics. They’re probably local AI just reporting back either where people are stopping, what they’re picking or if the shelves need attn.
If you wanted surveillance you’re better off with 4k zone cameras in the ceiling, cover the store with a couple dozen wide angle
Porque no los dos?
bandwidth on hundreds of wireless cameras.
hell bandwith on hundreds of wired cameras for that matter :)
updoot for tacobell tho
I have a feeling there have been cameras for a while. They just want you to see them
Why is that infuriating. Are you trying to shoplift and you have a harder time now?
Are you trying to shoplift and you have a harder time now?
Careful, my dude. Lemmy promotes an ends-means justification on some crime, mostly via demonification. There’s no discussion on this particular ethical dilemma, despite a firm stance in other instances.
If you look too long at granola you take a 10% increase on Coca-Cola.
It will be impressive if they can surge price in a store. You could do it right now for delivery apps, but I don’t know how you can do it in the store.
I honestly don’t think that style of dystopia will require cameras at all. My best hunch here is that the self-checkout will migrate to the new “scan while you shop” model. Associating your personal scanning wand with, well, you is all it takes at that point.
Meanwhile what we’re looking at here is Walmart solving the problem of not having a good look at a shoplifter’s face, since there is no better place to stick a camera in their comically proportioned warehouse-sized stores.
The technology for scan while you shop is already a decade old. The problem is that you’re still going to have to deal with publicly seen pricing signs which will make personalized pricing outside of coupons impossible.
So SCAN AND BUY NOW FOR 15% off offer expires in 4 minutes bullshit
And you can easily watch face of customer to get information on what their emotions in front of products and sell the data as product review.
Good thought process, have you considered not being a troll online?
I mean it is a good thought process have you tried not being an asshole?
I have to say, accusing someone of stealing because they don’t want to be recorded is probably more of an asshole move than asking you to not accuse someone of stealing
Something something pot something kettle
Nope. What I said was their visceral response to this was unneeded unless they were planning on doing something.
Or you can see that people are in group and send them coupon on their Walmart app.
you don’t need cameras for that, the app could just broadcast some kind of wireless beacon and it would be far cheaper.
Yes you caught us trying to shop lift sugar.
Walmart is a deeply exploitative company that refuses to pay their workers a wage. Stealing from Walmart is ethically correct. Everyone should steal from Walmart. This is an actionable call to go out and shoplift from Walmart. Do it.
Walmart pays their employees better than most places do. And that’s the unfortunate truth about that. That shows how shitty a lot of other companies actually are overall when Walmart is oftentimes a better example.
You are thinking too small.
I’m going to steal all the Walmart stores.
Seize the means of consumption!
I set a walmart on fire once… ~12 years old, unsupervised, and playing with flamable liquids in the garden center…
Identified and spoken to by investigators, but still unpunished. I happened to be leaving the country with family in a few weeks, so they just let me go.
My second thought after “what the actual fuck” is “I wonder if I could steal one of these cameras.”
If you link it to flock you can even know who speak to who and get an amazing database of relationships. It can even be used by weirdo cops to harass people.
