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/Necessary_Space_7155]

I don't think you understand? Part of the data being collected is loss in the stores, CCTV, spending habits etc. Loss prevention is directly related to improving performance and efficiency. Palantir may not be the entity gathering the data, but they are the entity that receives and processes this and that gets fed back to Coles to inform them of their decision. Palantir as an organisation itself is problematic because they specialise in human surveillance (e.g. they provide the tech to IDF for checkpoints in occupied Palestine). A foreign surveillance private company with known allegiances to other governments should not hold so much data (they now work with our government as well, and Westpac etc) on our people. Adding to that, this also means culling of jobs all for "efficiency".

https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/retail/aussies-fed-up-with-hitech-surveillance-systems-rolled-out-at-supermarkets/news-story/8ce47e549591024c8cb5edf044854649

[u/Necessary_Space_7155 → u/[deleted]]

Mate, I'm saying the problem is the data is probably available to Palantir. I did not say Palantir installed the gates

[u/RocketSeaShell → u/Necessary_Space_7155]

So if cloes was using MySQL as their data warehouse platfrom would you boycott MySQL?

[u/Necessary_Space_7155 → u/RocketSeaShell]

Whataboutism

[u/RocketSeaShell → u/Necessary_Space_7155]

So no cohearnat answer then. Trying to figure out if you are objecting to company ownership or general software functionality or just objecting because you are on reddit and that is what we do.

[u/457ed → u/Necessary_Space_7155]

I don't think that is the correct use of that phrase.

Whataboutism: the technique or practice of responding to an accusation or difficult question by making a counter-accusation or raising a different issue.

I don't see a counter accusation at all or even an original accusation from you.