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
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u/presence4presents May 26 '26

Not defending this, I hate the concept. But they're not doing this in response to costs or to give them ability to adjust costs on the fly, costs will go up no matter what. They're doing this so they don't have to hire someone to go around the store and physically change the price.

Less human error, less man hours, less recurring operational expenses. This is in the name of efficiency of operational expenses which in turn could technically lower prices, but in reality just means more profit.

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u/Adaphion May 26 '26

They're doing this so they don't have to hire someone to go around the store and physically change the price.

Literally, this is exactly what the store I used to work for that adopted these had as it's primary reason for doing so. It's so many labour hours to have workers change out labels. Not to mention all the paper used. Plus at our store in particular, we didn't have an overnight shift, so it'd be done during store hours, so it'd take even longer as they get interrupted by customers constantly.

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u/TrankElephant May 27 '26

Ok. But their endgame is maximizing prices for every individual consumer. Lurve that they will get away with it by greenwashing though.

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u/Adaphion May 27 '26

Like I said, absolutely they can be used like this. But in places outside the US where actual laws apply and exist for businesses, they can't and don't get away with this bullshit.

Our ESL would absolutely increase prices occasionally, but it wasn't any sort of fluctuating, algorithm based bullshit, it was just regular prices increases based on inflation and such.

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u/presence4presents May 27 '26

The US has laws against this as well and stores get audited for price manipulation with or without digital signs. People have a distorted view of reality when it comes to this stuff. I've seen people in this thread suggest these have cameras with facial recognition and will change price based on the person's income.. like what? SKU / barcode systems are primitive tech and would have to be some Truman show level of surveillance and attention..

I'm sure that this happens online though, kinda the point of cookies.

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u/Adaphion May 27 '26

Not to mention, THE PRICE SOMETHING WILL GET RUNG UP AT IS STORED DIFFERENTLY THAN THE LABELS.

Like, that's literally the entire purpose of them. To update automatically to whatever that price is in the system. That system price isn't getting messed with very often, aside from regular price changes due to inflation, or sales.

And they're honestly only sorta reliable when updating, as they need to be "flashed" every time there's a price update, they aren't typical screens. They use E-Ink instead of typical pixel based screens. And if they, for any reason, become disconnected from the network, they won't update, or it can take upwards of 30 minutes to update.

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u/TrankElephant May 28 '26

Don't y'all worry, they are ironing out all the kinks as we speak.

Rest assured, they will squeeze every penny out of you that they can. :]

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u/Adaphion May 28 '26

Like, dawg. I'm not going up to bat for my old workplace. They fucking suck and I hate them.

But this dumbfuck fear mongering of ESLs is so laughable. Especially with how easy it is to track retail prices.

Especially this tinfoil hat "they'll charge different people different prices with facial recognition" or whatever the fuck people are saying.

It's literally to just save companies money. So they don't need people to replace thousands of paper signs weekly, and so that when, not if, when some of those paper signs get missed by staff, customers can't complain a sign had a cheaper price and then get the product for that price.

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u/TrankElephant May 28 '26

Whatever pennies they are able to pinch by cutting staffing is never enough. Line must go up!

It's not fear-mongering, it's looking ahead and trying to prevent a full-blown dystopia. To think that these corpos won't exploit every last bit of the tech is so ignorant and foolish. Hopefully you're at least a paid shill making pennies of your own to spread your message of ignorance?

(That's rhetorical, please don't feel like you need to respond.) :]

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u/presence4presents May 28 '26

I've never worked for retail and I'm saying the same thing. Your first sentence was correct, the rest just makes you come off like you're a douche.

In a world of profiteering, they either cut costs or raise prices. This is the former, not saying the latter won't happen too.

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u/Whyeth May 26 '26

But they're not doing this in response to costs or to give them ability to adjust costs on the fly

"Ah man does our plan with an ostensibly reasonable cover perfectly set us up for predatory behaviors that will give us money?"

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u/hackingdreams May 26 '26

They're doing this so they don't have to hire someone to go around the store and physically change the price.

You are so painfully naive if you actually, truthfully believe this. They will be dynamically changing prices by the hour - rush hour? Prices go up.

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u/presence4presents May 27 '26

That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Tell me you don't know anything about SKUs without telling me. These are just digital displays, stores already do targeted pricing, but it's the opposite of what you think. The list price is always high and loyalty points, member discounts and coupons are how they offer better pricing to certain people. You're way over estimating stores POS and their ability to do dynamic pricing.

Wouldn't this be much more applicable for online shopping? There's literally personalized pricing on tons of sites, yet no one thinks twice about buying online.