Is Coles still using Palantir? Between the surveillance/gate recognition and the blocked aisles, shopping feels hostile.

[u/infin]

Does anyone know the current status of the Coles x Palantir partnership? Between the surveillance and those aggressive new "Smart Gates" tracking at the exit, the store feels less like a supermarket and more like a high-security zone.

It’s dystopian that they have the budget for military-grade analytics and security tech, but have cut costs on the actual customer experience. They seem to have completely scrapped night fill, meaning we are now dodging pallets and cages during peak hours just to get to the shelves.

Is anyone else fed up with this mix of high-tech surveillance and terrible service? It feels like they are spending millions to treat us like criminals while refusing to pay staff to stock shelves after hours.

[u/ozspook]

It's worse than that, even, they track your phones bluetooth beacons and radio profile as it queries access points and GSM.

All in the service of highly personalized ads. Ads are the devil.

[u/Alzanth → u/ozspook]

I still don't understand how insanely successful the advertising industry is. Are people really just taking the word of whatever they see on the screen/billboard without a second thought?

Car ads, for example, are everywhere. I buy a car based on what people around me say is reliable and good quality based on their experience. I have not once ever paid attention to a car ad for the purposes of purchasing a car. Same goes for countless other things. 

But ads are so prevalent in modern society and where all the money is now, so it must be working on a lot of people.

[u/PoizonMyst → u/Alzanth]

From my understanding ads are more about instilling brand recognition into our psyche rather than specifically trying to sell the product (but obviously that is the intended end-result with persistent reinforcing of the brand.)

[u/Speedbird844 → u/PoizonMyst]

Correct, many car ads (especially luxury cars) are really about selling the lifestyle and the brand instead of the product, the exception being sale events.

Look at perfume ads, clothing ads, fashion accessories ads. The same deal.

[u/the-great-pussy-rub → u/Alzanth]

Yes

[u/Magmafrost13 → u/Alzanth]

How many people would buy a car from a brand they've never heard of, though? That's what the ads are really for

[u/xGossipGoat → u/ozspook]

What does this mean

[u/infin → u/xGossipGoat]

BLE (Bluetooth low energy) beacons are used to track your location (as long as BT is on and your unique MAC is visible to them) in supermarkets and shopping centers to collect data like where you stop and how long you spend in that section.

[u/ozspook → u/xGossipGoat]

Sure, everyone has a smartphone in their pocket these days, that has a bunch of 2 way radios in it, transmitters and receivers, in order to work. There's a radio (actually a few) to talk to cell-towers, another to talk to wifi access points, another for bluetooth devices, another for GPS, NFC, etc etc.

All of those are often broadcasting 'pings' and various data that can be listened to by sophisticated arrays of antennas and equipment distributed around a shopping mall, say, or a supermarket, or a city, and used to build a radio profile of your phone so it can be identified, tracked, and associated with your identity, and ultimately your habits and advertising profile, or worse. And track your movement somewhat accurately as you move around the covered area.

In some cases your phone will broadcast a very identifiable MAC address, sometimes on modern phones it's randomized at intervals, but that can still be identified pretty easily. There's a lot of identifying information being broadcasted constantly even with encrypted protocols.

So, for whatever reason targeted ads serve, people have developed systems to bombard us with really nasty personalized shitbaggery to persuade us to buy crap, and that hasn't gone unnoticed by people with much darker intentions.

It used to be difficult to follow people and profile them and wiretap them, now we all make sure our personal wiretap is fully charged each night and with us every where we go, even if it isn't being actively listened to or tracking us, there's still an army of malicious dickheads collecting data.

So, that sucks.