https://fxtwitter.com/MorePerfectUS/status/1821563057060925522
Before going to the store to pick up some menstrual products for my partner, I shave and put on a full face of makeup so the cameras read me as female and don't give me the "clueless man" price gouge.
Imagine walking up to the products and watching the price go up. This will probably end in a lawsuit. Grab a product at x price and when you scan it it's y price. They can justify that in court, I don't care how business friendly the system is it's going to be struck down.
Well let's be clear about the tech they use. It's too slow to dynamically change based on who is shopping. The labels typically use eReader type displays which only update periodically for price updates. Need a 2450 cell battery that can last about 6 months with a single price change a week. Changing the prices more often drastically drains the battery life. And they require constant vigilance to make sure they haven't just randomly turned themselves off (seriously sometimes they randomly forget what price they should be showing).
I guess what I'm saying is if you want to ruin one of these stores those labels are expensive as fuck so bring a small jewelry kits and destroy as many as you can to fucking ruin a stores bottom line because no way in hell head office will approve sending out another thousand labels so they'll be forced to go back to paper labels.
They definitely have insurance and also you'll wind up in jail, so this seems like bad advice
I think you'd need a magnet strong enough to fuck up a kindle screen which I don't know if you can find those. Honestly you could just pop them off with a screw driver and take them. Or take the battery out and leave the shell the battery is the expensive part.
Probably end in a lawsuit
I fucking dare them to change the price on me when I'm at the store in my wheelchair lmao easiest $200k I'll ever make.
Grab a product at x price and when you scan it it’s y price.
In Poland it's often a thing already with printed tags.
There's definitely a limit with how hard big corps can fuck people on pricing. Even whole foods/amazon got in trouble for incorrectly weighing and overcharging people for prepared foods.
There's definitely a limit
currently? Where? I only see companies with one foot over the line waiting to see if the govt blows the whistle and it looks like the ref ain't blowing.
It's gonna accelerate even more. There's definitely a limit but it will be ours
It's mostly when they break the illusion of being "fair" like in the whole foods example or when someone price gouges during a natural disaster and enough people draw attention to it.
Kind of like with other injustices, the system will only make a token adjustment on the release valve when the pressure builds high enough.
Yeah, agreed. There's still a long way to go before we hit that hypothetical moment when we cannot take anymore. Thing is i just don't see the folks in charge not dragging us to that future.
I'm just using my personal observations to bolster this feeling but roll with me a minute take a look at cereal boxes for example. They're constantly morphing in size, shape, and price to find that sweet spot of how much we can take, but what they apparently cannot do is reduce "growth". They also can't seem to allow the rate of shrinkflation to slow down to where it's unnoticeable, the rate 'sustainable'.
They've already decided this is the line. We aren't getting raises, we aren't getting healthcare, we aren't getting food, we aren't getting anything from them unless we take it by means outside electoralism, and with a stance that firm and no release valve comin' from them they're creating a future where we'll have to.
Even if we only end up getting a release valve like The New Deal it'll come from all of us seeing the system is unbeatable from within, taking direct action and the power of our labor into our own hands... and i think (hope) that this hard-line stance they're taking will force a majority to understand what only a small portion do currently.
Kraft in Canada wants $6.50 for a box of their vegan mac & cheese.
Grab a product at x price and when you scan it it's y price. They can justify that in court, I don't care how business friendly the system is it's going to be struck down.
Imagine being a customer service worker dealing with this shit, people already lose their fucking minds if "the price is wrong" even if they just read the wrong fuckin sign
I don't know ma'am, I just work here... thinking about no longer working here tho
That's silly they should just scan the mask and offer coupons for n95s and cold medicine etc
don't forget 'if you don't like it shop somewhere else!' most 'somewhere else's available being premium stores or places doing the exact same thing
yeah i'll take my angry customership to target which already has digital tags, and costs more money or whole foods, which costs even more money
the mcdonalds near me has big ass promotional sticker things plastered over every window so you can't see just how empty it is most of the time
I wonder how long this last until someone breaks them or tik tok mafia starts sharing RFID chip hacks for free meat.
RFID chip hacks for free meat.
Cyberpunk Trailer Park Boys
doing my grocery shopping in a goddamn morphsuit to avoid getting gouged
Printing out a bunch of those "we fed 10,000 faces in to the computer this was what the average nana looks like" faces for each demographic category and wearing them as masks to see which race/age/gender is being offered the lowest prices.
This sounds so cruel and dystopian.
Surge pricing is just another name for price gouging.
Partner: Honey why are you putting ICP face paint on?
Me: Going grocery shopping.
I mean knock yourself out, but I'm still ringing up every item as a 50¢ can of generic tomato soup.
I'm like 99% sure Walmart's self checkouts has started doing random false positives for bad ringups. Last two times I've been there I'll be swiping my stuff and despite getting the beep telling me it's been scanned it'll throw an alert to call someone over saying I added stuff to my bags without scanning. Then I had to wait while they went through my shit.
It's likely 'random' in the same way TSA random pat-downs are
Worse! I'm needlessly shamed and I don't even get my junk fondled!
Whenever I'm at a self checkout and it beeps for an employee they don't even look at what caused it, just clear the alert and go back to waiting for more alerts
During a hurricane the price of water is going to shoot up like a fucking cricket match. What a cursed society we live in
The only time I've personally seen price controls is during hurricane season. Hopefully, some company will do this shit, the government will actually do something, and then these things are killed forever.
Why even use labels at that point? Just use facial recognition at check-out to match customers to financial data and charge personalized prices based on income.
personalized prices based on income.
Every price becomes a % of people's income
The Gotah Program has been realised
there was a, i want to say amazon? store that "did" that and by facial recognition--automatic pricing they actually meant laborers in a third world datacenter combed through video footage to tally people's bills
Yeah, Amazon Go. It wasn't personalized to your income or anything, and yes it was the ol' classic "by AI we mean a bunch of people in India".
Taking measures that make shoplifting obviously more moral than actually paying for things, absolute galaxy brained moves.
Capitalism does inspire innovation; though everyone who is not an investor or executive that can capitalize from said 'innovation' finds it repulsive.
My store has a security guard with a gun present at all times. Some of them just have the blue polo, black military pants, combat boots, and gun. Other times the guard on duty will be in full CoD drag with a plate carrier (often without plates) boots bloused in to their black bdus. They always hang out right next to the exits with the self checkout.
Depends on your local jurisdictions. Some places have what's called "Shopkeeper's privilege"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopkeeper%27s_privilege
Small business tyrany, amirite? I think most places have a policy to let people walk and then use surveillance to build a case over time so they can avoid liability, but the security pukes don't necessarily know that.
Also- exercise extreme caution at Target. Target spends a lot of money on cutting edge surveillance and coordinates with the cops. They'll build a profile and let you walk out with stuff until you trigger the dollar amount for felony charges then set the cops on you.
Fun '2020 George Floyd uprising fact; The Target that was looted and burned in Minneapolis was a laboratory location for testing new surveillance and repression techniques. They worked very closely with the MPD. It wasn't targetted randomly or opportunistically, it was a source of oppression in a mostly PoC community and was destroyed in retribution.
Which is why I advocate lazy shoplifting instead of the running out of the store variety.
Go in, have 70-ish dollars worth of merch in your cart, scan and pay for maaaaybe 15-20 (less if possible), and leave; easily repeatable, and you will get way less scrutiny. Admittedly harder to do if store has RFID gates
Exact method varies store to store; if the store has a pressure sensor in bag area, just don't bag your stuff up, scan it in cart with scanner gun, and make it look convincing that you're getting everything if there are store staff members watching. If asked why you're not bagging, just say you're trying to help the environment (which you are also doing by helping screw over a megacorporation). And always, be nice to the staff (sans rent a pig), they're just trying to get by, and being nice to them also makes it easier on you as you will likely get less attention.
Lol my grocery doesn't even have bags anymore. Like maybe they have paper bags hidden somewhere but idk where they are.
One of the supermarket chains I shop at recently removed the free small plastic bags that used to be at the checkout. They even had the gall to claim they did it to be green and sustainable.
So now you either have to buy a big overpriced plastic bag, even if you just have a couple of items or you have to balance your groceries in your arms.
Fuckin' Kroger. Moved to an area where they and other big stores are the only options.
Where I used to live, they had a sub called "Lucky's Market" that was semi-fancy, but had decent deals. They killed it to move in directly, dragged their feet, then covid hit and they pivoted to deliver only. So I was already bitter having to shop there.
My opinion improved a bit when people there said they were unionized. Decent deals (but you gotta use their stupid card).
Then their self checkouts started yelling if you move too quickly or slowly scanning.
Now this shit.
If you see this, you leave the store and never return. And if you work there, you want to burn down the store first.
In much of the us there's only one or at most two options. Or there's a grocery store and walmart.
Did you know you can buy the tags online? and with some electrical know-how you can make them say what you want. A little time and effort and now you have a tag that says whatever price you want on it. If they got switched at the store at that point, well, how would you know? Just work in teams to make the switch less obvious on the cameras.
Even though this wouldn't change the price at check out, I love the chaos this would cause
I almost feel bad for the minimum wage clerks who would have to deal with the angry deep discount shoppers.
Iirc some places have laws that merchants must honor the price on the shelf to prevent screwing customers at the cash
how you can make them say what you want
ok, so I should steal them.
I thought the video was going to be about making fake barcodes, for example, photocopy the barcode of the cheap item, print it to a sticker, put the sticker on the expensive item of the same weight, enjoy discount, or be about generating unauthorized clearance barcodes, but going to the grocery store and changing them all to say cool things like crakkka down, ACAB, America Delenda Est, etc. is cool too.
Someone did that something like that once when I worked at a best buy. Someone returned a cheap go pro in an expensive go pro's box. Then I accidentally sold it to someone else, who was irate when they came back.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
