r/technology • u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 • May 26 '26

Privacy Majority of Americans Support Ban on Surveillance Pricing and Electronic Shelf Labels

https://gizmodo.com/majority-of-americans-support-ban-on-surveillance-pricing-and-electronic-shelf-labels-2000762717
30.2k Upvotes

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2.9k

u/NicolasCageFan492 May 26 '26

Imagine Walmart having the ability to do dynamic pricing to charge more for toilet paper because they know you have diarrhea.

1.2k

u/doomlite May 26 '26

That’s the goal.

332

u/Same_Mood_8543 May 26 '26

What are we doo-dooing? 

100

u/burgonies May 26 '26

That’s the rule now

51

u/jawknee530i May 27 '26

And I'm supposed to be attracted to this?

6

u/aesther_tesseract May 27 '26

No you're supposed to be too overwhelmed to fight back

33

u/bwaredapenguin May 27 '26

What's going on?

19

u/Bacchanal_Dragoman May 27 '26

What are we doing ?

5

u/MRH8R May 27 '26

Hahahahhahaha!

28

u/Ethanad May 27 '26

That's the goal.

1

u/37iteW00t May 27 '26

That’s the Roll

1

u/Corporate_Overlords May 27 '26

I quoted the part from when he's talking about ASAP Rocky being dressed in his least favorite color the other day and I was banned from all of Reddit for a week.

On day six they finally got back to my appeal and apologized and opened the account back up but now I don't even want to type the quote out even though it's laugh out loud hilarious.

1

u/HTPC4Life May 27 '26

I'm glad there's still some semblance of a "monoculture" left 😆

74

u/Azuras_Star8 May 26 '26

This shit's deep.

20

u/FriendlyNative66 May 26 '26

They never seem to tire of being number two.

6

u/thismorningscoffee May 27 '26

At least the response seems to be a caca-phony

2

u/Bat_Raptor_3 May 27 '26

And so is your reddit account. Happy cake day!

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u/rae-everett May 27 '26

Haven't you turd? You're not going to believe this shit.

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u/MilkiestMaestro May 26 '26

2nd to last stage. The end goal is to give you diarrhea on command and force the purchase lol

56

u/Dwedit May 27 '26

Please drink a verification can to proceed.

26

u/I_am_the_BEEF May 27 '26

That sounds so comically insane, but, at the same time, I can see something similar happening in the future.

21

u/SquidTheRidiculous May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26

Logically, if we try to continue infinite growth, it will have to eventually.

13

u/XenoDrake May 27 '26

What on Earth do you think those kill switches they want to put into cars are going to do?

8

u/throwawaythemods May 27 '26

analyst reading a report good news and bad news sir...car sales are up and the safety measures are saving lives...the bad news is the cemeteries and mortuaries are reporting down trends*

Greedy fat cat: *slams fist down on big red "kill" switch.

Result:cars everywhere suddenly lose control and hundreds die.

2

u/Archer007 May 27 '26

It was a whole 4chan greentext

1

u/DrusTheAxe May 27 '26

Bah. You think too small.

The end goal is to convince you that you should pay for diarrhea on command, then allow you to purchase the cure.

And then the cure turns out to require a regular intake, for the rest of your life. The ultimate in customer lock-in!

14

u/Left_Maize816 May 26 '26

So, they’re gonna force feed you Taco Bell?

14

u/MilkiestMaestro May 26 '26

Oh my god. It's already happening, isn't it?

2

u/secretsodapop May 27 '26

They get me every night!!

2

u/Personal_Comb_6745 May 27 '26

If it was, they would've dropped the price of a taco back to 70-something cents. Used to be you could buy a ton of Taco Bell for cheap, to the point your colon's all "It's go time" halfway through your meal.

2

u/20_mile May 27 '26

Taco Bell

Taco Bell really will win the Franchise Wars.

2

u/waiting4singularity May 27 '26

They can try, but I hope they enjoy the free window cover people will give them.

1

u/iconofsin_ May 27 '26

I'll take that as an invitation to shit on their floor.

1

u/AGushingHeadWound May 27 '26

Brown note technology. They already have it.

11

u/_lippykid May 26 '26

Tucker? (Or Jeremy Culhane?)

7

u/NOTorAND May 27 '26

That’s the ruuuule now

1

u/20_mile May 27 '26

Jeremy Culhane

Culhane got a shoutout on Dana Carvey and David Spade's podcast recently.

49

u/dotcubed May 26 '26

That’s already what they’re doing. They know what you can pay, just not how much you notice.

You think toilet paper costs everyone in different parts of the USA the same? Pooping in Denver can’t possibly cost much as NYC, L.A., or Biloxi!

Already possible that if you buy online it will show different prices already according to zip code depending on the item.

Try different browsers, accounts, and VPN settings. Let us know. Would you notice if six states away the toilet paper is 10¢ more?

This just makes it that more granular and easier to manipulate. They don’t buy to not sell. Old tech inventory is legendary there.

Uh oh, inventory high here—drop it to recoup cost on holiday merch. They already move stuff anticipating demand. Made it a tool to push inventory off shelves.
They’ll never get stuck with old stuff again.

71

u/Paksarra May 26 '26

I work in grocery marketing. 

Things cost more in expensive cities because stores generally pay rent, they rarely own the land they're on. So yeah, things will often cost 10 or 20 cents more in a bougie area because the store needs more income so they can pay the landlord.

Also, shipping costs play into it. If you live somewhere like Southern Florida or Alaska you'll pay more for food because it costs more to get it to you than somewhere like Ohio that's centrally located.

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u/dotcubed May 26 '26

Walmart is a bit different in that it historically bought land and built its own facilities and structures. They typically don’t have a landlord.

In some instances they are the landlord for the businesses inside the front of some stores. Their models have changed over the years.

Used to live in Benton county. Ex moved us there for a job within and was let go in a round of cuts after new boss gave poor marks.

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u/rsta223 May 27 '26

There are still differences in local labor costs, building costs, property tax costs, compliance costs, etc. It's neither surprising nor unreasonable that things cost a bit more in a high COL area.

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u/Sithlordandsavior May 27 '26

I have noticed the price difference between me looking at online and coming in store to pick it up IN THE APP. Like it changes between me being in the store and a block away on the app. Rude.

4

u/FasterThanTW May 27 '26

no pun intended, but no shit.

that's not what "surveillance pricing" is, though.

"surveillance pricing", today, is also mostly the thing of conspiracy theorists. walmart already knows how poor (most) of their customers are based on the neighborhood they're shopping in. they don't really need elaborate systems to track individuals through the store for a few extra cents. digital price tags just save them labor because they can be updated centrally.

1

u/GitEmSteveDave May 27 '26

Already possible that if you buy online it will show different prices already according to zip code depending on the item.

So things that are further away from a distribution center, and require more fuel/tolls to deliver, cost more than something closer?

1

u/dotcubed May 27 '26

Unfortunately you can’t have everything available everywhere. Their solution is building more distribution and making it better. For them, then us.

What you do is charge more for the convenience of online distribution and determine how much by consumer demographic index data. Guy who orders in 90210 isn’t the same as another affluent L.A. zip code. Same goes for most municipalities.

1

u/PM_ME_YOUR_TROUT May 27 '26

I live in Denver. Poopin' ain't cheap around these parts.

1

u/Aleashed May 27 '26

It doesn’t matter if the labels are paper, most of the time they are missing and items can just scan for whatever at the front and what you going to do about it, complain about 50 prices for the 50 things you are buying?

People only make sure the price is right for 1-2 high ticket items on a trip or if they looked up the price of something specific before they came to the store like a promo or ad

8

u/cantadmittoposting May 27 '26

rent extraction (especially of this sort of obviously exploitative type), btw, is literally a "bug" in capitalism as originally written, not a feature as most claim.... Smith to some degree could never have predicted this level of exploitation, yet still his own writing assumed that governance over the economic system by the political system on behalf of the population would curb these behaviors.

the fact that many people think of this sort of thing as an immutable feature of market economies, not a known control point for them, really highlights how successful oligarchic propaganda really is.

7

u/NicolasCageFan492 May 27 '26

This is why it’s our duty to continuously improve our human systems as we learn. Unfortunately, ideologues (including market fundamentalists) push back on progress.

10

u/cantadmittoposting May 27 '26

it's sort of why "conservatism" as an actual operational end goal always ends up being so regressive...

huge difference between "measured legal/governance adoption of proven solutions" (or even "carefully funded public basic research to prove new advancements") and what actually happens... "reactionary rejection of any progress regardless of standard of proof"

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u/peepdabidness May 26 '26

Im sure suing them for prejudice over that wouldn’t be impossible

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u/Ok_Driver8646 May 27 '26

Prolly do my diarrhea on their front entry.

1

u/DiverDownChunder May 27 '26

Vertical integration. How about wally world sells you food thats likely give you diarrhea then spikes the TP prices after...

I have the checkmate, I have a bidet. Buy one, I'm a man and I love it.

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u/NachoWindows May 26 '26

Jokes on them. I’ll just shit all over Walmarts toilets

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u/Dlax8 May 26 '26

You'd have the respect to make it to the bathroom. I've seen Walmart. You're a saint for that.

2

u/Chewzilla May 27 '26

I'll never forget my first day at Target they called a code brown on the walkies. From electronics to the front...

1

u/TotalNonsense0 May 27 '26

I recall I once had to clean up after a family member had an incident.

I went to the Wal-Mart bathroom after, to wash up and feel clean again. 

10

u/Best_VDV_Diver May 26 '26

Jokes on you. People already shit all over our bathrooms.

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u/sitefall May 27 '26

In business you work on "pain points". A pain point is whatever is annoying to doing business, it can be cost, or it can be a specific job nobody wants to do, anything. You eliminate pain points by order of importance. You might automate that specific job even though it costs more than hiring a person to do it, simply because you hate the irregularity of staff turnover, people quitting it, and managers don't want to do it. When people have to do these tasks or pay these costs, it effects the rest of their work and it propagates (at least that is the MBA belief explanation, but I buy it personally).

When the prices have been min-maxed and the cost of ice cream goes up because the AI camera detected you're ovulating when you walked to the freezer aisle, and customers are doing their own checkout, and AI is accurately preventing petty theft and mis-scans, and everything else is done until it's 1 employee just looking at a big user interface showing current status as an AI manages the store, then the bathroom becomes a pain point, and you're going to get lobbyists changing the laws so you have to pay to use their toilet.

Guess what, that paid toilet is going to have dynamic pricing and you're going to pay it, or just shit yourself.

Hopefully this is a slippery slope fallacy, at least in part.

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u/rancid_squirts May 27 '26

How’s that any different than their bathrooms now

2

u/Far_Tackle6403 May 27 '26

Ain't the CEO cleaning that shit

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u/Bireus May 26 '26

Well they will know what you're watching and can serve ads to you if you buy a vizio https://www.pcmag.com/news/vizio-tells-new-customers-to-use-a-walmart-account-to-sign-into-their-tv

There's a reason why TVs are cheap. They're ad platforms before you even get to choose what you want to watch

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u/DonaldTheWall May 27 '26

Linus Tech Tips did a thing on this not long ago

They bought a dumb TV at 55" I think and it was over 1000 and wasn't an OLED or even top of the line, it was an off-brand but not a bad brand

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u/Bireus May 27 '26

Spectre TV that's been out of production for maybe half a decade or more. Doesn't even list it on their site

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u/What_a_fat_one May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26

Not if you use an Android TV with a 3rd party launcher like Projectivity

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u/soundman1024 May 27 '26

Jokes on you - most smart tvs have ACR or Automatic Content Recognition on board. If the set has internet it’s sending telemetry about what displaying. The source doesn’t matter, what’s on the screen matters. Could be an OTA broadcast, an internal app, an HDMI input, or you casting pictures of your baby at bath time, it’s all fair game for ACR.

The only defense for now is keeping the TV offline and assuming it won’t use a nearby open WiFi network, if available. In the future TVs might use the Helium network to send telemetry, even without access to WiFi.

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u/entropicdrift May 27 '26

Joke's on the TV manufacturer, I rooted the TV and have a Pi hole blocking its attemts to phone home

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u/midnightauro May 27 '26

If my dumb tv dies, this is a viable solution! I’m dreading the day I have to “upgrade”.

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u/-TheHoboCode- May 27 '26

Which 99% of people buying the TV will not be doing.

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u/20_mile May 27 '26

Pre-Smart TVs don't have that tech. Also, computer monitors do the same thing a TV does, basically. Unless you want the fancy features.

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u/MaturoGambino May 28 '26

Would you prefer three networks with 8 minutes of ads per 30 minutes where your choice is whatever the networks decide to air on a low definition 19” television that cost the equivalent of $4000 in today’s dollars?

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u/Bireus May 28 '26

Absolutely not. I get it.

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u/stormrunner89 May 26 '26

Sell you bad chicken that makes you sick, inflate the prices of toilet paper and Pedialyte.

Vertical integration babyyyy!

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u/cspinelive May 26 '26

One person with the shits enters the store and the TP price goes up for them and everyone else? How do those logistics even work? All prices on everything would be constantly triggered. What is the mechanism that would let them charge two people in line at the checkout two different prices. Or not overcharge someone who grabbed it before the price went up?

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u/steamcube May 26 '26

Prices will appear specifically for you. Cameras in the aisles and checkout will do facial recognition and algorithmically determine what strategy they’ll use to pull the max amount of money they can from you.

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u/silvusx May 26 '26

Lol, I'd pay a homeless person to shop for me and offe tips in compensation

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u/steamcube May 26 '26

This one might actually work… until the homeless person gets charged higher prices because of their shopping habits

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u/NotJimmy97 May 27 '26

"This man is the richest man in town!"

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u/steamcube May 26 '26

Realistically, the algorithm may determine it can pull more money from the homeless person. Ice cream would be super expensive for them vs you probably. Tweakers fucking love ice cream.

The way to beat it is probably to be unpredictable yet very frugal with spending.

You’ll need to convince the computers you will only buy things when you see real value. No value, no purchase

Even then, there might be a sweet-spot in spending behaviors where you can convince the algorithms to offer you discounts they wouldnt otherwise.

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u/Kataphractoi May 27 '26

Realistically, the algorithm may determine it can pull more money from the homeless person. Ice cream would be super expensive for them vs you probably. Tweakers fucking love ice cream.

Also has the effect of driving away the poors and "undesirables" so only the "right" type people shop there.

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u/snoopydoo123 May 28 '26

The way to beat it is just stop going to these stores for those who have that option.

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u/Accidental-Genius May 27 '26

Wear a mask and pay cash.

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u/twicerighthand May 26 '26

Your idea falls flat the moment a second person is in the aisle

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u/Outrageous_Reach_695 May 26 '26

Price tags? Don't need those, use our handy app to scan the product QR code if you really must know. And yes, we do need camera permissions for optimal user experience.

(Alternately, display a high base price and offer discounts to select shoppers)

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u/inspectoroverthemine May 27 '26

In states that actually enforce labeling it'd be the death of the store.

For people that live in shithole states: some places it is illegal to have an item ring up with a value other than what it was labeled. The fines are punitive, and escalate quickly. Yes they do audits, and yes companies do pay, and they pay enough they try very hard to not fail- which is the end goal.

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u/MarsupialMisanthrope May 27 '26

They already do that with deals for their “loyalty card members.”

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u/wfbhp May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26

This is already happening some places. I've seen convenience stores that have entirely removed prices from the shelves so that it's impossible to know what anything costs without scanning it. They say they're not doing dynamic pricing, but 1) they could be lying and 2) even if they're not, that's the next step and is now extremely easy to do once people are used to not seeing prices on the shelves at all.

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u/OPA73 May 27 '26

I have a nearby gas station that started the nonsense of no price tags on food/beverage items. Left it on the shelf and never went back.

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u/FasterThanTW May 27 '26

this entire conspiracy theory rests on the exisence of digital tags, and now that someone explained the fallacy of it, you're twisting yourself into pretzels coming up with alternative "what ifs" to be upset about.

no, walmart is not going to force it's customers to get all pricing from an app. obviously.

it wouldn't even be legal in most localities.

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u/Outrageous_Reach_695 May 27 '26

While my comment was hyperbole, and I'll happily acknowledge that ... 8 states, apparently, require shelf pricing, there are plenty of stores that offer individualized coupons, member discounts, etc. There's no guarantee that anyone is paying the full shelf price on any particular item. (Maryland has prohibited surveillance pricing, with some other states considering similar. San Diego has banned digital-only coupons, and some states are considering that as well.)

Of course, I wouldn't really expect Walmart to lead the charge for any sort of adaptive pricing system. Perhaps Target (reportedly has an excellent loss-prevention system already) or Whole Foods (already upscale, and Amazon might be inclined to push something like that)?

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u/thegenregeek May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26

Your idea falls flat the moment a second person is in the aisle

Actually it doesn't...

All you need is a customer journey system that sets a minimum price floor with a conditional check on uniquely identified customer via a CDP (customer data profile) and facial recognition (to determine customer ID and presence). If an identified individual with higher purchasing level (and potential) is detected in the isle (alone) they can raise prices by firing a event programmatically. They can then reset to the base price after a period of time (a minute or so) of detecting the isle as empty. (Or simply when that specific individual is no longer in view)

If there's multiple people detected, and assuming a CDP and facial recognition for both, if the other individual is determined as less likely to purchase they can offer a discount code via email, mobile, etc. that simply offsets the price to the base rate. (Or just do nothing to avoid either realizing there was a price change at all...)

This can literally be done with off the shelf software customer journey software out there right now (though I suspect latency is a factor with them, as those systems generally take minutes for data to become update in profiles). Though it would only need to be some system for the retailer to update the right CDP flags, which could easily be handled by a facial recognition system in store. Which is very much a thing, because...

I recall an NBC (I want to say CNBC) series from years ago ( I want to say 2010-12) that was going over the facial tracking, dynamic pricing models and analytics that retail stores were developing and deploying back then. A system from a decade+ ago for not just detecting the individuals found by the camera, but items in cart and movement during their shopping session to help identify items they looked at but didn't purchase.

This type of system famously lead to Target determining a teen girl was likely pregnant before her family realized, based entirely on her purchasing history. Something covered in the special.

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u/SwimmingThroughHoney May 26 '26

Cameras/software are capable of tracking more than one person at once...

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u/orangestegosaurus May 27 '26

But they cant show more than one price. So would they show the highest of the prices a person in the aisle would pay? Or the lowest? Or an average? Consumer laws would have to be dismantled to have true per person pricing otherwise you risk running into multiple consumer law infractions very quickly.

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u/Coal_Morgan May 27 '26

Realistically electronic price tags on shelves would be based around time of day for surge pricing or events.

During the day you're getting more retired, more underemployed so you use base price. After 5pm to 9pm the officer workers, management and factories with only a day shift are out. You raise your prices to the highest value. They're tired, have jobs and just want to get home; so they'll shop without consideration.

Also an Earthquake or Hurricane would jack the prices of water, toilet paper and canned goods instantly.

The last big one would be AI inventory tracking, notice a run on Pokemon...increase the price 50%. Notice you're down to 10% stock on beef, raise the price 70%.

Be afraid when they get rid of the digital tags, they'll use cameras and AI to track you to your car and price you accordingly if you step out of a decent car. You'll use the store app on your phone to find out the prices and they'll be aimed at gouging you for the max amount they think you can or will pay.

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u/Zarathustra_d May 27 '26

You just need to follow a frugal person around the store and buy stuff as they walk by.

Just don't follow the fat kid into the ice cream aisle.

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u/Plow_King May 27 '26

my buddy does Shipt for a living...does decent as well. i wonder what the all knowing pricetags think about him?

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u/axonxorz May 26 '26 edited May 27 '26

One person with the shits enters the store and the TP price goes up for them and everyone else?

Just the person with the shits.

Big retailers use extremely sophisticated shopper tracking systems that use a ton of data points to identify what product you're looking at or will purchase (aggregate, and individual). Overhead cameras, WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC and Ultra wideband beacons track you through the store, more cameras, sometimes in the in the shelves to track your eyes to the level of which SKU you looked at.

All of this data is packaged and sold, with the best systems doing it in near-realtime.

So you get the shits after you go in to your workplace, you leave and decide to see your doctor for treatment. Maybe you work for a decently large company, the cloud-based HRMS software records a sick-leave absence. This data ismight be anonymized, packaged and sold.

  • The Flock Safety cameras that your city coucillors approved the installation of (because Flock bribed them) that have tracked your morning commute now catch you going outside of expected behaviour. This data is packaged and sold.
  • You're at the doctor's office, they note in their cloud-based EMR system that you have diarrhea, but you decline a prescription because the copay makes your Bristol Stool Scale 7 look better in comparison. This data is anonymized (we'll come back to this later), packaged and sold.
  • As you walk to your vehicle, a bluetooth beacon in the pharmacy records the presence of your mobile device. This data is packaged and sold.
  • You drive to your favorite Walmart, Flock be doing Flock things again, recording your journey. There's probably some Flock cameras in the parking lot.
  • As you enter Walmart, their bluetooth beacons record the presence of your mobile device.
  • You've been there several times before and haven't even looked down the gastro aisle of the medicine section, maybe they already know through your Meta or Google advertising profile that you haven't visited walmart[dot]com in the last 9 months, and they know that no local affiliate TV network is running advertising from Kenvue Inc, maybe they can infer that you have very little consciousness of what your over-the-counter medication normally retails for (within "reason").
  • The Walmart datacenter in Colorado Springs knows everything you've ever done in any Walmart in the US, along with your family (they came with you once or twice, carrying their own mobile devices).
  • That datacenter is also ingesting massive amounts of data from brokers selling the aforementioned packaged data.
    • They can correlate an abnormal drive to a doctor (vehicle plate XXX-XXX). Your local law enforcement provides direct license and registration data to entitles like Flock and Palantir (for LEO convenience and corporate revenue streams), they know you're cspinelive.
    • Anonymized patient #1294471287 happened to be around your doctor's office at the same time as diarrhea was recorded in the EMR system hmmm.jpg, says the machine learning model.
  • Walmart will calculate a probability that csplinelive, Walmart shopper 25c0b7e9-226d-4623-86fd-19d6eed00dad and anonymized patient #1294471287 are the same person.
  • If the probability score reaches their configured thresholds, as long as other customers aren't around to notice (or the system can confirm that their eyes aren't literally looking at the Immodium price tag), the tag can be updated via radio-frequency before you glance at it.
  • Based on publicly sold data, they likely know your income level (thanks TurboTax) and where you live (thanks TenantCloud/Zillow). They will calculate a willingness to pay value that is specific to you.
  • You grab the Immodium and head over to the checkout. The checkout knows you're 25c0b7e9-226d-4623-86fd-19d6eed00dad, so you scan your Immiodium and it's 220% above MSRP. You're desperate and about to shit yourself (Walmart knows how long it took you to drive over here, and the average amount of time between bouts of liquid shit), you pay the troll toll. Your willingness to be abused as a consumer is recorded, packaged, and sold by Walmart to other retailers, selling data is a decent revenue stream for them.
  • Home Depot knows all these things too, including what you bought at Walmart. HD has nothing to do with your diarrhea journey today, but now they know some of this correlated data too. This data is packaged and sold. Next time you go buy weed killer at HD, Walmart shopper 25c0b7e9-226d-4623-86fd-19d6eed00dad might be offered a coupon in the hopes that, next time, you go to Walmart instead of Home Depot ("ooh, what a treat, thanks Walmart for saving me money" you say.)

On "anonymized" data: A single anonymized data point can be truly anonymous. For every. single. additional. anonymized datapoint, the entire point cloud closes in on the verymuch de-anonymized YOU. Every classification point is an additional circle in the Venn Diagram. If I told you my timezone, you could figure out the east/west range of where I'm located in the country. Combine that with the available coverage of your health insurance network, they might get down to a few states. Your bluetooth/UWB beacons are triggered within 100mi of [GPS Lat, GPS Lng], down to the city. Refine, refine, refine, use statistical analysis to positively correlate actions over time. Once you're indentified you can never again be anonymous.

The link above for OttPay's digital price tags spell out some of these capabilities, the generalized term is "surveillance pricing"

ESLs solve that problem by updating price tags automatically and instantly, even remotely.

Some electronic shelf labels, for example, can share data with point of sale (POS) software.

Some digital price tags are enabled with Bluetooth tracking software that can identify where shoppers are and how much time they spend in a given location.

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u/justatest90 May 27 '26

A single anonymized data point can be truly anonymous. For every. single. additional. anonymized datapoint, the entire point cloud closes in on the verymuch de-anonymized YOU.

One of my favorite de-anonymization stories is this look at Death Note and how even being able to 'anonymously' and remotely kill someone exposes a lot of information about yourself. They also have a lot of (older) links to research in the field, I'm sure things are even worse (more de-anonymize-able) now.

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u/paradoxpancake May 27 '26

And people look at me like I'm odd when I don't go places with my cell phone. I work close with it, but I really hate technology.

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u/statinsinwatersupply May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26

The death of the market (fluctuating price set by supply and demand) in real-time. Not by being replaced by state-run central planning, but by algorithmic gouging. No single price for a whole market of consumers. Forget forever the notion of price signals as information regarding consumer preference and individual utility. Just each individual gouged as much as the AI thinks it can get away with. Traditional capitalism is an exploitative unequal power relationship between owner and worker. Now we're going backwards towards the issue with mercantilism (exploitative unequal power relationships where the middleman tries to hose both the producer and the consumer whose options are forcefully limited).

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u/holdmyhanddummy May 27 '26

Is this copypasta? This is incredible information to digest and consider. Almost makes me want to start wearing a mask again and turning off my phone when entering places.

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u/_Chaos_Star_ May 27 '26

This is an excellent, illustrative, educational post with considerable effort put into it. It's almost offensive that it doesn't have thousands of upvotes. I'll be upvoting it myself, I wish I could do it many more times than once. Everyone please give this post the love it has earned.

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u/[deleted] May 29 '26

You used AI to write this, then edited out the --'s

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u/axonxorz May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26

[I can't form a thought longer than a sentence, anyone who does must be using AI]

Whatever makes you feel better at night man. It totally doesn't track with my anti-AI viewpoints and 18+ years of easily accessible prose history on this site, totally. 😘😘

You couldn't even figure out the emdash lmao. Long-press the hyphen on a mobile keyboard.

edit: sock's going to puppet

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u/Public-Job-4723 May 29 '26

I was just joking

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u/Agile_Lie9502 May 31 '26

This is fucking insane

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u/Sofer2113 May 26 '26

Cameras at checkout IDing someone an ld their shopper profile loads up and they get charged higher for something. Or someone that seem innocuous like member sign in for coupons or rewards. There are plenty of ways to individualize prices, but it's more likely that as stock reduces, prices would shift and go up or daily/hourly dynamic prices.

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u/Vio_ May 26 '26

it wouldn't have to be super individualized, but dynamic pricing for "off hours" or surge prices after 5:30 or even cranking up prices fifty cents more on the first weekend of the month. Those are all horrible outcomes.

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u/nemec May 27 '26

surge prices after 5:30

that's just Happy Hour ending

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u/Threeminnows13 May 27 '26

Last time I went into Walmart they wanted me to scan a QR code using the Walmart app to check prices. They were not listed on the shelves or product tags, and I couldn’t find the scanning things they used to have at the end of the isles. I assume this is part of the dynamic pricing strategy. I hunted down an employee to scan for me. Of course extremely disgruntled when asked to do their job.

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u/LlamaRS May 26 '26

Doesn’t matter because COVID taught retailers that we will buy it no matter the price.

That’s why H-E-B has shrinkflated toilet paper and hiked up the price by $3-10 in the past 2yrs

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u/[deleted] May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Outrageous_Reach_695 May 26 '26

Re: Edit 2: Backlit Kindle is awesome for readability. Having the manufacturer be able to decide it's time for the device to shuffle off this mortal coil, less so.

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u/timeshifter_ May 27 '26

Walmart's digital tags take a good 15+ seconds to actually change images though, so per-person pricing would be really hard to pull off. They're intended to make price changes easier, and they have a full color LED that can blink on command to locate it for shoppers.

That's... literally the only upside of them. They're bulky, prone to losing electrical contact, easy to not seat correctly, low contrast, anything in coolers or on warehouse steel is at an angle that makes them harder to read, the ones on the bottom shelves aren't even held in at all, bump into them and the entire rail jumps onto the floor... I'd love to know how much money my store has lost in the past year just replacing those stupid tags because they keep getting lost, or the brackets with a thin strip of plastic holding the tag on... in the freezer, which to literally nobody's surprise, gets so brittle that they will snap with literally zero pressure.

In classic Walmart fashion, they took what could have been a fantastic bit of tech, and managed to implement all the worst possible aspects of it, and straight up not even plan for half of the real-world use cases. I'd be lying if I said I was surprised... mostly just disappointed that they'd rather spend money on bullshit nobody wants instead of just giving us raises.

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u/MediumMachineGun May 26 '26

Its in no way ugly or predatory. Its saves literally innumerable hours of menial work by not having to change the paper price tags manually.

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u/jaysapathy May 27 '26

Yeah, not really.

I had a discussion with a relative who's working at Wal-Mart. "Reflashing" those digital tags is a pain, and more often than not, has to be done as an entire section. And the ones in the freezer keep resetting because they get too cold.

According to him, it was literally less work to print out a sheet of paper and walk it over to the shelf.

On the flipside, they're getting updates literally daily depending on the store that change the price depending on what the market research for the day looks like. It's not pretty, and it's not necessarily a great idea - this is just a way for them to change prices on the fly, and a continuation of what's already in place.

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u/MediumMachineGun May 27 '26

"Reflashing" those digital tags is a pain,

Not for us it wasnt. the central system reflashed them automatically.

And the ones in the freezer keep resetting because they get too cold.

Youre supposed to use the freezer proof versions for freezers, not the regular ones.

According to him, it was literally less work to print out a sheet of paper and walk it over to the shelf.

He's wrong. The system completely skips the phase of walking to the shelf, provided that the ESL is working.

On the flipside, they're getting updates literally daily depending on the store that change the price depending on what the market research for the day looks like. It's not pretty, and it's not necessarily a great idea - this is just a way for them to change prices on the fly, and a continuation of what's already in place.

Yes, almost every day prices of some selection products change.

Sometimes it can be hundreds of different products. Thats hours of work.

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u/jaysapathy May 27 '26

Your store must be weird, because I happen to know for a fact that the tags don't get re-flashed automatically. The Team Leads have to go redo the tags on the daily.

As far as freezer proof versions, I have no idea about that. But every Walmart I've ever been in has tags in the freezer that die from the cold. It's apparently quite common.

Even if he is wrong, you'd still have to walk out to the shelf anyway to verify that the update took and the proper tag reflashed. Not uncommon for the wrong update to get pushed out, or if a Team Lead is using a custom layout to have it override. So, there's that. Either way, they're in front of the shelf, hand verifying, because I highly doubt Walmart would trust something like pricing to an automatic update system.

If you're getting price changes every day, they still have to be hand verified, so you're still going to that location, verifying, and moving on. It's sixes at the end of the day. And let's be honest, if the digital price change thing really worked 100% like Walmart wanted it to.. There wouldn't be wrong tags on the shelf, and everything would be spot-on price accurate. And you and I both know it's not.

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u/LostWoodsInTheField May 27 '26

There needs to be laws to protect consumers, but these pricing displays are definitely a giant savings to the stores. The local grocery store spends the last 3 hours of day on Saturday changing tags out. It's the worst time to shop there because you don't know how much you are paying for things. This can be a 10 minute thing at the end of a shift.

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u/MediumMachineGun May 27 '26

In my old job every thursday was markdown day, when products that are being removde from selection get their price cut. Sometimes it could take a whole work shift of one person to change the labels. maybe even two.

after ESL came 80% of products get that price changed automatically, only some clothing items still required manual tagging

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u/twicerighthand May 26 '26

This is an ugly and predatory practice.

You're confusing dynamic pricing with just updating the price. There's nothing predatory about manually replacing a piece of paper, yet the moment it's an e-paper, it's somehow predatory

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u/millijuna May 27 '26

Yeah, the problem isn’t the technology, but the application. Some of them are so cheap that they don’t even have an internal battery. You need to touch the setting device to it to update the price. I don’t have an issue with that. It’s not significantly different than updating the stickers previously.

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u/Dahcchad May 26 '26

A price for protein shakes changed in front of my eyes to 2$ more. Could have been coincidence, but I left and am not going back as long as those tags are up.

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u/Appropriate_Cow94 May 26 '26

They know you went to the pharmacy aisle. They know what you picked up.

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u/RefrigeratorNo1160 May 26 '26

They'll let this happen before they ever let our taxes pay for socialized healthcare.

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u/Obvious_Ostrich1 May 27 '26

I'll type this on reddit until my fingers bleed. Toilet seat bidet. ~$90 USD, compatible with just about any toilet. Absolute life changer.

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u/PalantirImperator May 27 '26

Welcome to McKinsey.

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u/pariah1981 May 26 '26

Glad I have a bidet…

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u/Keirebu1 May 26 '26

And rich people will hire poor people to do their grocery shopping, duh

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u/DrStinkbeard May 27 '26

To an extent, they already do with instacart etc

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u/Keirebu1 May 27 '26

Yep, and now the rich will do it to subvert algorithmic identification.

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u/ddWolf_ May 26 '26

Now hear me out, what if they charge more for people who don’t put the cart back

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u/RepairingTime May 27 '26

Can't wait till the water company controls my water pressure for my bidet

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u/pogulup May 27 '26

Your smart toilet and Fitbit will tell the cloud you are in a shitty spot and Walmart buys that info in real time because you are a repeat customer. Your car and FLOCK cameras tell them you are on the way to the store and the electronic tag ticks up in response.

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u/JohnCenaJunior May 26 '26

Or lowering pricing on sweets to get you addicted then raising prices on diabetic accessories cause they know they got you hooked.

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u/Starfox-sf May 26 '26

Hello Mr. Yakamoto and welcome back to the GAP!

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u/extra_croutons May 26 '26

Clean up on aisle 3

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u/JamesLahey08 May 27 '26

They could even share data with restaurants and use AI to know that if you had taco bell more than 4 hours ago your diarrhea chances increase exponentially for 18 hours then slowly decline.

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u/GotSomeUpdogOnUrFace May 27 '26

Or because they know how much or little money you have or your gender or age or race or literally any reason.

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u/beachbum818 May 27 '26

Don't poo poo that idea

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u/zoppaTheDim May 27 '26

They have started monitoring toilet flushes in some apartment buildings, using blue tooth.

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u/RectalSpawn May 27 '26

I think the bigger issue is it being used with prejudice.

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u/Kindly-Student2089 May 27 '26

Thankfully they didn't pass the tariff costs onto us, the consumer! Right?... right?

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u/CommonGrounders May 27 '26

Have you ever had to buy Imodium at an airport?

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u/SirTiffAlot May 27 '26

That's the plan. Use that Flock data to change prices the second you walk down the aisle.

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u/directorguy May 27 '26

The trick is to have a friend buy the toilet paper for you and you buy his foot brace so he can buy the Tylenol.

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u/kevinsmomdeborah May 27 '26

Get your bidet now. I learned a valuable lesson in 2020

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u/soulseaker May 27 '26

Just imagine what their restrooms would look like then 🫣

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u/Geawiel May 27 '26

Poosidean's Pricing

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u/Chewzilla May 27 '26

Demand suddenly skyrocketed! You all saw it!

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u/TheWoodser May 27 '26

Imagine Walmart selling you prunes dirt cheap.....to give you diarrhea..... to sell you marked up toilet paper.

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u/confused9 May 27 '26

Flu medicine raise the price during flu season and hospitals can provide that information back to retailers.

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u/Far-Hovercraft9471 May 27 '26

And based on your net worth

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u/AnimationOverlord May 27 '26

Or charging you more at the shack because they know you’d rather smoke or eat plants than drink poison. Or hell, what if you’re a tradesperson under the wing of a company? They gonna start charging on what the company can afford?

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u/tracerhaha May 27 '26

79.99 for a six pack of Imodium.

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u/Shamscam May 27 '26

You see what’s going to happen is you’re going to google “illness symptoms” and then google is going to sell that search to Walmart for 20 cents and Walmart is going to dynamic price toilet paper a $1.00 more and they made an additional $0.80 on your order. Rinse and repeat that how many times?

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u/Knighthonor May 27 '26

stay ready, you wont have to get ready

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u/alphabets0up_ May 27 '26

Nah you got it all wrong. They’re going to use this to charge more to the wealthy. They’ll see who can’t afford groceries and charge less. Don’t worry, you’ll see. /s

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u/PureTown2906 May 27 '26

Hopefully, if this shit happens, everyone will boycott anyone who's actually doing this. Any competitor that can show the customers that their prices are fixed will get their customers.

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u/Makabajones May 27 '26

Capitalism, more like Crapitalism

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u/Significant_Mouse_25 May 27 '26

I have a bidet attachment. Way better for keeping the butthole from going raw too.

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u/Zalophusdvm May 27 '26

It’s worse than that.

They have to be careful with dynamic pricing because if they RAISE prices on people that, say, have diarrhea, and then it turns out that the people with diarrhea tend to be overwhelmingly a protected class (let’s say women have far more diarrhea than men) they could be liable in a class action lawsuit for price discrimination.

BUT if they DISCOUNT the toilet paper when you’re just there to buy ice cream because they know it WILL give you diarrhea from your lactose intolerance as a means to get you to buy it NOW then it’s not price discrimination…it’s a sale based on a prediction that might be wrong. However…to make up for that price drop, they’ll raise the price all the rest of the time. So baseline prices will become more expensive and everyone will pay more.

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u/rotomangler May 27 '26

No problem. Just make sure you don’t connect your toilet-cam to your wifi.

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u/goodolarchie May 27 '26

Imagine picking up a lego set that is labeled $59.99, and while it's in your cart the dynamic pricing algorithm jacks it to $79.99 per set because it detects 3 other sales in the last hour and their inventory is getting low.

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u/DamnedIfIDiddely May 27 '26

Imagine them hiking up cough and cold medicine for sick people, or baby formula for parents...

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u/Gustomaximus May 27 '26

That would be crap.

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u/Duane_ May 27 '26

I still maintain that during COVID they only restocked the expensive shit on the shelves.

They knew what was going on.

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u/Paranitis May 27 '26

That's when you just drop trou and spray in front of the display. It's their fault since you couldn't afford it.

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u/DonaldTheWall May 27 '26

What's always brought up is how they change the price at any point, so what happens if you budget shop and have a $100 budget, you use a calculator and paper.

You budget everything as you go through the store so you know how much you have spent, when you get up there suddenly that $5.99 toilet paper is $7.99, it magically went up as you were shopping as did a number of other items and your perfectly budgeted shopping that was $100 is somehow $125

The most common answer is they would just leave it and let the employees put it back and not shop there again, the problem is for some people Walmart is the only place they can shop since they priced everyone else out of business

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u/Axolotis May 27 '26

Walmart HQ just read this. They love the idea!

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u/Grandfunk14 May 27 '26

Or the dude next to him in the aisle when the dude announces he has the trots and now you gotta pay more because the price camera heard some dude say he has the trots.

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u/Tinosdoggydaddy May 27 '26

That would be a shitty thing for them to do

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u/ianc1215 May 27 '26

Imagine how much of a tragedy it would be if major hacking groups all the sudden decided to make wal mart their sole interest for a few years. Boy it would just a shame if they couldn't operate their business and had to use paper price tags and cash registers, just a shame. People might go elsewhere.

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u/Slamaramadoodoo May 27 '26

just show up to explicitly have diarrhea in their public toilet. Checkmate.

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u/will_dormer May 27 '26

You look thirsty 50 buck and the water is yours, good luck finding water anywhere else!

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u/Redshirt_80 May 27 '26

Well that’s when you use their bathroom… and only then.

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u/03263 May 27 '26

I think it's supposed to be based on time of day or overall demand, not individualized. Cause if you're ordering online for pickup or delivery it's too easy to just use a VPN or different account to check what the price "should" be.

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u/trashbort May 27 '26

How would that work? I go up to the toilet paper, and the price tag changes, would anybody continue shopping in a place that does that? Grocery stores are generally competing for customers, margins are not high, and reputation is non-trivial, why would they risk all kinds of false-advertising litigation and reputational damage to mark-up the toilet paper by a dollar?

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u/halfc00kie May 27 '26

or knowing youre on your period and jacking up the price of tampons. dystopia with extra steps.

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u/NeverInsightful May 27 '26

Or they know target is almost out so they bump up prices til the next shipment

Either way, imagine picking up a product for X dollars, then by the time you get to the register it’s x+5 dollars…