In Amazon Go, no one thinks I'm stealing | Hacker News Reader

In Amazon Go, no one thinks I'm stealing

cnet.com

167 pointscrunchiebones127 comments

This has echoes for me of the Twitter thread and subsequent NYT article from last week about how Sears' approach to home sales was a boon to black people in the Jim Crow-era US.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/20/us/sears-jim-crow-racism-...

Tossing in my own anecdotal experience: I worked in Loss Prevention (plain clothes security) for a major midwest retail chain, within 10 miles of a major metropolitan city for several years. We absolutely profiled customers. The catch is that we profiled teenagers of the Caucasian persuasion. Why? Because they were the folks most likely to try and lift goods. Folks wearing unnecessarily baggy clothing (think more than three layers, wildly oversized), obviously tweaking individuals, and people constantly changing direction or looking behind them were obvious targets - but far in the minority of people that were followed or apprehended. For me personally, the people who could be considered a minority made up maybe 10% of my total apprehensions.

It'll be different everywhere but not every retail store, and not every retail employee, fits the narrative of the article.

Of course, if you'd swapped out the word "Caucasian" for "African American" your post would be downvoted and you'd be called a racist. But because we're DEFINITELY not racist mentioning you targeted white people is totally fine in 2018.

As long as this is andrew_'s personal experience, I don't see why I'd call him a racist regardless of the race he profiled the most. He even goes on to explain that there's a good reason for targeting white teenagers: they were the most likely to steal something, so they weren't targeted because they're white, they were targeted because they proved to be the highest risk.

Now if andrew_ had started generalizing, like you are doing, then I could see him getting called a racist and getting downvoted.

Racial profiling is being criticized despite being effective.

There is an argument to be made that you shouldn't be treated differently based on the color of your skin. In fact it is e.g. in the German constitution.

http://m.spiegel.de/international/germany/racial-profiling-g...

> Racial profiling is being criticized despite being effective.

You got anything to back up this blanket statement?

How and why do you have to back it up?

It’s just a type of argument that is actually quite common with its basic idea being that just because something is effective, doesn’t mean it’s right or just to do.

Transferred to racial profiling the argument is this: Even if racial profiling is effective, employing it is still ethically indefensible and plain wrong.

Put another way: Even if we agree on a goal (e.g. catching more criminals) that doesn’t mean that any effective way to achieve or improve that is then suddenly appropriate.

The German constitutional court does make this argument explicitly (even though I’m not sure any police officers actually respect that – but at least those affected can now somewhat defend themselves).

> How and why do you have to back it up?

With arguments, and to support your point of view.

Maybe I wasn't clear. I wanted some real evidence that racial profiling is effective (as well as how effective it is), I wasn't looking to get into an argument about the morality of the issue.

Here's an article explaining the counterproductiveness of "watch lists", but that doesn't map directly to the shoplifting scenario. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/racial-profiling-...

My main message is that racial profiling is unethical whether or not it is effective.

Especially in the case I cited, it is obvious that racial profiling works better than random sampling (or based only on other features). People out of an ethnic minority will always have different rates of citizenships compared to the general population. So if you pick someone from a minority group that are less likely to be citizens, your chances are higher to pick someone who doesn't have the citizenship compared to the general population of citizens.

While the principle is quite simple, I don't have any empirical knowledge and can only refer you to Google Scholar if you desire more insights ;)

What usually happens with profiling is that catch rate is out of proportion with the base rate.

For example, if blue people are twice as likely to do bad things as red people, you end up catching more than twice as many blue people when you profile based on blueness. And that's unfair discrimination. It's unfair on all the honest blue people made to feel like criminals.

And of course it's self-perpetuating. The lopsided catch rates justify profiling in the minds of people doing the catching.

In the real world, I dont know the underlying actual differences in offending rates, but I do know that correlation with life circumstances would probably be much higher than skin colour.

>As long as this is andrew_'s personal experience, I don't see why I'd call him a racist regardless of the race he profiled the most. He even goes on to explain that there's a good reason for targeting white teenagers: they were the most likely to steal something, so they weren't targeted because they're white, they were targeted because they proved to be the highest risk.

Let's say that Arab men between the age of 20 and 35 were most likely to steal something when they entered the store. (Not anecdotally: let's say the location computed the demographics of thieves going back 20 years, and found a consistent trend. Let's assume it's an objective fact.) Would it be okay to target them because they proved to be the highest risk?

I think the answer is no, and I think the answer is no also in the case of white teenagers. Sometimes doing what is most effective or efficient isn't the right thing or the fair thing.

You are merely repeatin a baseless assumption. Unless you have a good sample, you have no idea who steals more. And an admittedly biased sample is a bad sample.

>so they weren't targeted because they're white, they were targeted because they proved to be the highest risk.

Which is precisely why blacks are "profiled" or "targetted" even by computers. And yet the media tells us this is because "AI is racist" and because of the "legacy of colonialism" and absurd nonsense like that.

That’s a jump that is a problem.

The issue is that the pattern matching reinforces the problem based on race when race is not the cause. There are lots of historical reasons someone could be be a bad credit risk for example, but it isn’t because they’re black or some other race.

You want the algorithm to account for cause not correlated patterns that reinforce racial divisions and then perpetuate the inequality.

You simply want race to not be the cause. But all available evidence says it is. When people try to "fix" the evil racist computers by restricting the algorithm from using race, it simply finds proxies for race like "number of liquor stores per capita".

That’s because race is correlated with everything since racial divisions have a long history and share a lot of circumstances.

It’s not because of the color of someone’s skin. It’s not even clear where racial lines are drawn and previously distinct “races” have disappeared into the general “Caucasian” label depending on time period.

Your comments are why it’s a problem - people are unable to understand the difference and overfit to patterns in the data. Our learning shares a similar problem to ML.

When you don’t correct for this it hurts people of that race and helps to perpetuate the imbalance - reinenforcing the historical data and increasing inequality.

Reading the OP I got the impression he was talking more about profiling by age than race. Teenagers shoplift, it’s a pretty common thing for bored suburban kids. I’m assuming he was in a predominantly white area so white teens were the most likely offenders. But of course I’m extrapolating a bit here, maybe I’m totally off base here and coloring with my own suburban youth experience.

I'm annoyed by some of the same things as you, but you shouldn't pretend there's not an important difference here. Racially profiling against a disadvantaged minority group with a history of appalling treatment at the hands of the majority is one thing; doing the same to members of a group with none of those characteristics is another. It's pretty obvious why one might be significantly more hurtful, offensive, controversial, etc. than the other -- and it has little to do with the (dumb, offensive) 'fuck white men' stuff you seem to be reacting to.

So what you are saying is that profiling against a group with a history of appalling treatment at the hands of the majority is one thing, but doing the same with a different profiling is wrong, because clothing is clearly a choice but skin color is clearly not; despite being white boys raised among hundreds of people with the same clothing preference we should expect such young men to go against their surroundings and pick any other forms of clothing in order to be worthy of not being pre-judged right?

No, they're not saying that. Although there's a bit of merit to the idea, and it's part of the justification for choice of groups protected by anti-discrimination laws.

Here's two more arguments:

- When such profiling is actually a contradiction of the traditional, racist stereotypes, it is far easier to believe that it's actually the result of learned experience, and therefore part of an honest attempt to be effective.

- It's far less of a burden to be confronted by "unusual" stereotyping. For practical reasons, because, say, one employer not hiring you because they don't like redheads is far less of a threat to your career than a significant number thinking your gender or skin color disqualify. And, more importantly, it will cause less psychological harm. To illustrate: I'm 6 feet tall; Once, for reasons I still don't understand, someone tried to insult me as being short. Such incongruities are more likely to cause bewilderment than anger or sadness.

Were they seriously making fun of you for being short? It sounds more like a joke wherein they say/do something blatantly untrue. How absurd, to taunt an above-average-in-height man for being short.

Yeah, in a sociological level I totally understand how being discriminated for being black is more serious than being discriminated for something unlikely like being a redhead, but a major thing at play here is machine learning, should the engineers add code to the system in order for it to skip looking skins colors? What if skipping skin color is not enough and the machine "bypasses" such restrictions by detecting the shape of the nose (e.g. black people have slightly different noses than white people); at the end of the day what the machine is doing is just statistics and if you poke too many holes on it -for moral reasons or else- you may as well don't use statistics at all.

Yes, it's legitimate to discriminate on behavior, including dress code.

As long as it's clearly stated and not applied selectively.

And why all the downvotes?

Just because profiling someone based on their skin color or gender is less bad for some groups than for others doesn’t in any way make it less wrong to do. I understand the argument for focusing more on profiling minorities, but profiling white people for being poor isn’t exactly something to aspire to.

If you care to actually read the post he’s not saying he was targeting white people because of race. He is saying they target people due to suspicious behavior and then gives you a lay down of the race of those targeted.

It’s not an account of someone being racist against Caucasian a and everyone being fine with that.

Maybe not the specific narrative of the article, but surely whatever the profiling looks like the narrative of "In Amazon Go, you're not profiled based on your looks" fits.

Either you don't profile at all, or you profile with something that correlates with looks, which will seem like profiling on looks.

Sure, but my point is that interpreting the narrative of the article to only apply to black people, and not other types of profiling in shops, is pretty unfair.

Was the eldery a significant group? This is anecdotal but I've consistently heard from cops and even a couple of police chiefs that theft is pretty common in that demographic.

Oddly enough apprehensions in the 70+ age group most often revolved around produce. Typically the story we got was that they were bored or just felt like doing something "exciting" rather than anything to do with cost. Those apprehensions were typically under $5 USD so it was the proverbial slap on the wrist.

This reminds me somewhat of a non-profit retail store in San Francisco where I volunteered to pay off a pile of parking tickets. The store itself sold local artisanal housewares to help support a number of local AIDS/HIV-related charities.

What really made a lasting impression on me was their loss-prevention training me was that not everybody is strong enough to carry an item, a bag, or push a cart while shopping. When seeing somebody place an item in their pocket/purse/bag we would offer to carry it for them or hold it at the front-desk.

This enabled a compassionate the benefit of the doubt to a clientele base who were often too frail from HIV-related illnesses to hold the item in their hands and offered a gracious, de-escalated escape route for would-be thieves.

Is simply sticking something in your pocket enough reason for them to kick off? In the UK at least I've been shoving stuff in hoodie pockets if I can't carry it all in my hands. You might occasionally get funny looks but no one has said anything to me, or the other people I know that do it.

In England and Wales you haven't completed the offence until you walk out the store. (And even then you need to have dishonestly appropriated the item, not just forgotten it's in a pocket).

So you might have a guard following you around but they shouldn't be doing much more until you leave.

As far as I know, that’s the case in the US as well.

i would think this it's same in any country with laws, except it's walking past cashiers

Absolutely, in America we tend to assume everybody is out to rob / harm everybody else and are always on guard.

Especially if you're young, just having your hands in your pockets will get a store clerk following you around. My parents even taught me as a child to never put your hands in your pockets when in a store.

This is terribly sad.

I'll note that like many of the comments on HN and elsewhere that comment on what something is like in the US that the true answer depends on where you are within the US. With the issue it is going to vary tremendously based on which store you are in. I believe in my state at least you also have to leave the store before any law is broken, although such laws are set at the state level and so there may be exceptions.

I think the law is probably reasonable in most cases.

What's terribly sad is that shopkeepers will assume someone is stealing for having their hands in their pocket.

Interesting choice of garments actually. Wearing a hoodie in America, especially if you're a young black male, gets you instantly profiled as a criminal. Whether or not the law says you're legal until you leave the store, if a clerk called the police on you, you'd be arrested in that scenario / under those conditions.

Profiling sucks.

In this case though, I'd say you're simply trading one injustice for another.

You go from the ephemeral experience of having a few underpaid lackeys mistrust you, to having an eternal database of everything you buy owned by a third party.

Then again, it's getting pretty ridiculous everywhere. The local supermarkets around me - they've gradually stripped real checkout operators away and replaced them with self service booths that each have LCD's beaming a picture of my own face at myself whilst I shop, with a scary "you're being watched!" banner across the bottom.

It really bothers me that everyday 'essential' things seem to be full of pain points like this for no discernible reason. We have private companies launching rockets, supercomputers in our pockets, and so on and so forth, and yet the "human experience" seems to be constantly degrading. What can we do about this?

Not only that but you also raise the requirements for grocery / department store shopping. In principle all you need to shop at most stores is cash and being able to get to the physical location of the store. With Amazon Go you need a smartphone with a data plan, an amazon account, and a bank account. Even in America not everyone has all of those, or even any one of those. I personally spent a few years as an adult without a bank account. These requirements amount to a "you must be this rich to use this store" sign, and there are easily tens of millions of Americans who are not rich enough to use these stores even if they do have the money to buy some of the goods inside.

While fiscal underserving remains a problem there are $20 burner phones which are smartphones. Gift cards and prepaids can be used as well by those without. An extra obstacle certainly but one that can be overcome surprisingly easily.

How do you purchase the cheap smart phone and activate the gift card when you can't get in the shop in the first place?

Dude, Amazon owns Whole Foods. The "you have to have money to use this store" market already exists.

There is a difference between "you have to have money to use this store" to "you have to have money plus these bells and whistles to use this store".

You can be poor and use whole foods once in a while. You can use cash at whole foods. You don't need a modern cell phone, a data plan, and a credit card on file to use whole foods. I'm pretty sure you can use food stamps at whole foods. You don't need a proper bank account. And so on.

Weirdly, you don't really need these things to shop at amazon either. All you need is a pre-paid card, a gift card, and a bit of internet access (at the library). You an use someone else's address to ship things to if necessary.

A homeless person could walk into Whole Foods and buy something with cash. And there are many items at Whole Foods which are not outrageously expensive. There's a very distinct difference between a store which has expensive items and a store which has a minimum level of affluence to even use. A poor person could conceivably "splurge" on an expensive item at an expensive store, but that is only possible if they have access.

The world is already like that, has been and always will be. Different stores, hotels, bars, and restaurants have different price points depending on the target clientele. People in society want that price discrimination, from the school districts they buy their houses in, to the restaurants they eat at, to the places they go for vacation.

The newness comes from how good we can get at stratifying society, based on databases that never forget and precise calculations about worth and future potential. Also, with a widening income/wealth gap and trend towards urban living, you need something more than physical space to separate the classes.

This looks like a strawman. I didn't see anyone claim that all shopping experiences everywhere should be replaced with this. Amazon Go definitely requires you to have a bunch of things many people don't have access to, and can amount to a "you must be rich to use this store" sign.

But that doesn't change any of what the article described.

> an eternal database of everything you buy owned by a third party.

Lots of people pay by credit card, or use store cards to get discounts. I wonder if it might be worth volunteering that information without any convenience/price reward if it means the shop might somehow act to serve me better as a customer.

I also think self-checkouts are net less degrading than human checkouts. Bag your own groceries. Be trusted enough to say whether those were organic tomatoes and pay the extra few cents. Lower prices and shorter lines are great too.

> I wonder if it might be worth volunteering that information without any convenience/price reward if it means the shop might somehow act to serve me better as a customer.

If they'd serve you better that automatically means they'd serve everyone else worse who didn't want to give up that information.

You'll love the Social Credit System in China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System

This is not a world I want to live in.

> they'd serve everyone else worse

That doesn't follow. It could be positive-sum.

Just from the checkout (without customer identifiers) they can find correlations. "People who buy salsa tend to buy corn chips. Let's put them near each other in the store."

With identifiers they might be able to do more things of that sort. "A few customers shop in two different locations -- over here for fresh produce, but over there for baked goods. Wonder why?"

> You'll love the Social Credit System in China

Be civil.

I want to know what the bibles get stocked next to...

next to guns, ammo, gas masks, canned food, toilet paper ...

Why do you assume that the experience is ephemeral? It sounds like you're trying to downplay the experience of black people being profiled in stores.

I think that for people that have to deal with this kind of discrimination day in day out for most of their lives, regardless of how much you believe they're exaggerating, trading that for Amazon's database of their purchases is a sweet deal.

Please don't do this.

I'm legitimately confused. What should I not do?

> It sounds like you're trying to downplay the experience of black people being profiled in stores.

The very first two words of my comment run completely counter to that.

The rest of your comment goes even further into strawman territory. I don't believe any exaggeration is occuring at all. Profiling is real and sucks.

edit: To clarify, I agree with the basic sentiment that the trade might be worth it for some! It is for the author...

That point would have been just as valid have without putting words in my mouth.

Thanks for explaining.

My point about exaggeration was about describing racial profiling and corporate data collection as comparable injustices.

I think if you'd tell a victim of lifelong racial profiling that they're really just trading one injustice for another because now Amazon has a database of what you buy, they'd laugh. I'd say the two injustices are not even in the same league.

Profiling is extremely useful for business and extremely harmful for long-term societies, as soon as we accept this fact and decide a long-term society is what we want, then we can agree short-term profits can go fuck themselves as far as ethical behavior goes and decide that if you can't be ethical you may as well go bankrupt and agree that's totally Ok regardless of how many jobs are lost -one billion or a couple-

This is an interesting topic;

The automation removed a lot of the human interaction, creating a better experience for the customer.

In the short term.

However, by removing a lot of humans from the shopping interactions, it allows the removed humans to never learn from their mistakes, to stay isolated in their own views.

Will this actually make racism better or worse in the long run, as there isn't automation to "fix" these social problems of ours, at least in the US.

>However, by removing a lot of humans from the shopping interactions, it allows the removed humans to never learn from their mistakes, to stay isolated in their own views.

Relying on shopping interactions to teach these humans places a huge burden on the people they make these mistakes on. Sometimes I'm not looking to be a teachable moment, sometimes I just want to get my shopping done (or get a cab etc).

Sure, not every moment in life is a teachable or eureka moment. But the more chances people have to interact, the more chances to gain a better understanding of each other.

Without even the opportunity to interact, that divide and chance to learn is zero.

Maybe the 1 out of 100 times, you go to the supermarket, and are feeling good, and feel like just saying hi and do some small talk to the cashier... while it may not change the world instantly, incremental progress is better than lack of it.

I agree with the benefits of what you describe in the last paragraph. But for these opportunities for people to learn by realizing that their unfair profiling of customers based on the color of their skin is wrong... at what point do you consider the cost of the profilee in enduring these teachable moments again and again and again through their life?

I think we're a lot better off than we were in prior centuries, as far as racism goes. There's still a long way to go, though.

Automation can make racism worse, I think. I look at the intense polarization that seems to be springing out of the Facebook and YouTube recommendation algorithms and I'm filled with dismay. Perhaps a lot of the fringe extremists have been around for a long time but these websites give them tools to connect with and win new recruits.

I think it's better in the short term, and the long term. Those removed humans have plenty of other opportunities to address their prejudices, and profiling innocent shoppers based on their skin color isn't actually necessary.

>Those removed humans have plenty of other opportunities to address their prejudices

Where do they have the opportunity to address their prejudices? How can they understand if they never have the chance to talk to the other side, or have the other side be able to engage them?

With the automation, the semi-forced interaction is gone. Humans are "lazy" by default and those situations won't happen.

> How can they understand if they never have the chance to talk to the other side

Are you saying that profiling people in stores is literally the only chance people have to talk to "the other side"?

How about they use any other available opportunity for human interaction in any other situation in their lives to address their prejudices?

What are other opportunities where people are semi-forced to interact (that don't normally interact with each other)? How do the other opportunities make the profiler no longer profiling when the situation is out of a store?

I am not saying profiling people in stores is the only chance, as the profiling is already a base assumption. I'm saying the automation is taking away more semi-forced interaction point. My premise is that it's bad, as people can only really understand each other when they interact. And most people don't actively interact. The supermarket/shopping place is one place that generally is forced interaction.

Have you considered the cost of the profilee in these cases? What if they don't want to be the subject of a teachable moment for some prejudiced person? Would you tell them that they are wrong?

I wonder how long it will take before they employ regression algorithms to screen those entering the shop and deny those deemed "not safe".

They would probably be like the police crime prevention algorithms in that they would inherently be biased towards the same prejudices as the humans in such jobs. Profile a specific group of people and that group will be arrested more than those not in that group and the algorithms will pick that up.

Amazon only lets you in if they have your credit card on file - so they know your purchase history and can guess at your credit limits. It really doesn’t matter who you are, where you’re from or what you look like.

Yes, for now. I know I'm rather pessimistic, but I don't think it will stop there.

The credit card part is probably a dream scenario for banks though, to only let people into shops that have an active credit line and not accept cash.

And then you have the problem of bias towards groups of people in the credit scoring regressions.

It's already here. People in Xinjiang need to scan their ID to enter a supermarket.

Yeah, but we all expect that sort of thing of China. The concern is mostly over it coming to the US. (I was going to say "and the UK and other places", but honestly, I would kind of expect this of the UK, too.)

Why would it be needed? If someone enters with a credit card on file you can charge anything broken or taken out.

I just realized that Amazon Go stores are (designed to be) theft-resistant, anyone want to sneak something under their shirt, well, doesn't matter, the cameras still saw it and will still charge them.

It would make a funny gag, I imagine the store employees would still approach you if you did the above, because they also won't have overriden their if X then Y programming.

When some friends and I visited the Amazon Go store in Seattle, we tried multiple different ways to fool the cameras, such as putting the bag over the item on the shelf, or picking it up from the shelf, placing it back on the wrong aisle, and then another person picking it up. We mentioned it openly to the employees. Employees in the store couldn't care less, they were just busy restocking and making the aisles look organized. There must have been human review of our movements on camera though, because my friends who didn't mess around got their receipts immediately when they left the shop whereas mine took half an hour to arrive.

You need to scan an amazon app generated QR code to enter. Your credit card is chargeable once you enter, it's impossible to steal.

Well, it's not impossible. People have done it.

When I was a teenager, I dressed like a metal fan.

Anytime I get in any shop, I had my own guard following me thinking I didn't noticed him or her.

So I started playing "How many times can we make the whole shop again and again" with them. I hade spare times back then !

But seriously, it was not something likable, and I guess when it happens not because you choosed a look, but because you're born with one tone of skin, it might be a nightmare.

Amazon Go's model is "Extreme Loss Prevention" - have no checkers, monitor all customers, and just charge their account for what they "shoplifted".

Amazon Go stores are classist and ageist in a different way than traditional retail, because they effectively ban customers who don't have an Amazon account, or don't have a bank account backing the Amazon account, or don't have a smartphone. My parents couldn't shop there because they don't want to use smartphones.

Supposedly, the machine-vision and algorithms aren't quite there yet, and the stores depend on a very large human element behind the cameras.

Cool thing is instead of getting profiled by humans, she can get profiled by Rekognition.

I wonder if minorities shop online more often due to wanting to avoid racial profiling.

They certainly used the Sears catalog more when it was the Amazon of its time.

I’m a white Scandinavian male, well dressed and always looking like I belong in any higher class setting, but I would love this concept as well.

I have anxiety and even though it’s not really hindering me in any way, I still double check my damn bag before I enter a store and I always make sure to get a receipt to be able to prove I paid, even though I’ve never even been looked over by store security.

Normal people wouldn’t notice, but grocery stores are designed to think some of their visitors are thieves, and if Amazon Go took that away from the experience I’d honestly never shop anywhere else.

i have exactly opposite way of thinking, they should prove i stole something, not me worrying about carrying receipts during multiple shops visits

Just a bit off topic. Is it possible to steal in Amazon Go?

Someone will figure out a way.

Yes. Of course it is. I think they are not stupid either and very well know that it will happen. The first on the market has to do the experiments to get it right.

When you get the receipt back, you can request an item be cancelled because you "didn't take it". They will pretty much accept it, no questions asked.

One journalist tried and failed but I think two experts people working in concert might have a better chance. It would probably relate to tricking Amazon that you put an item back.

I'm not sure if discriminating against super market employees is the right way to fight discrimination.

The good things I can see with a machine super market:

- It can be open 24/7 without exploiting its employees

- It can be almost fully stocked all the time

- They don't have an excuse to "coicidentally misplace" a $1.50 label at a product that in the end costs $2.99 (every shop does this in the area where I live)

That isn't discrimination against supermarket employees. Discrimination against them would be housing that refuses to rent to them. There is no obligation to hire them except the consequences of not hiring them.

If the shop is open 24/7 someone still needs to stock it, clean it and keep an eye on it. It doesn’t suddenly require no staff just because there are no tills.

two cans of wine? can someone enlighten fellow European? is it really wine in metal can? sounds even worse than putting ketchup on pizza

Instead, Amazon will be profiling and denying access to highly technical engineers who are most likely to be able to subvert their system. ;-) Perhaps to just pull back the curtain to the magic.

I feel horrible for what she went through as a child, and still goes through. But. For this article, if felt she was over-analyzing and extrapolating a bit much.

This one felt borderline unnecessary and hyperbolic:

"No one cared what I was doing. Is this what it feels like to shop when you're not black? "

That's where I stopped reading. The answer is "no."

I would say the answer is "yes." Or at least that's how I feel when I shop, and I'm not black.

People should stop talking for others when they are unelected or not nominated.

Just because she feels that way, doesn't mean every black person does. Maybe many do, but I don't think it is productive to speak for other people's experience.

Of course when speaking for oneself, then it is fine to say anything.

I'm a white person and I'm pretty sure people don't treat me worse for my skin colour when shopping. Is that a controversial statement?

No - I didn't say it was.

That seems like a great way to ignore basically any complaint, by dismissing it as a lone outlier.

All other things being equal, it should be pretty clear that a given black person is more qualified to speak about the black experience than a given white person is to refute them. If you have reason to believe that this particular writer is unreliable or not representative, then by all means share them.

all black people have the same experiences?

heyooo

I didn't say the writer is unreliable or wrong, and didn't meant to seem dismissive.

> it should be pretty clear that a given black person is more qualified to speak about the black experience than a given white person is to refute them

I think people are only qualified to speak about their own feelings and experience, just not for other people unless those people requested that.

Your opinion on what people are qualified to speak about is irrelevant, according to your own logic.

No, its not irrelevant, but it is just my opinion. I'm not saying it is more than my opinion.

> People should stop talking for others

Other people should do that you say?

Yep, that's what they said. You can read it right there in the comment.

Are you trying to imply something?

I hope you're not trying to imply hypocrisy, because saying what someone should do is not speaking for them.

Yeah that's fair. It was a weak argument.

I didn't mean to say the argument is wrong or anything. I just think its dangerous to get into things like:

"As a hacker news poster, we all feel that ..."

Not even targeting this article in particular, it isn't bad at all from that perspective, just a trend I have been seeing and thinking about.

Yeah I get what you mean. I was just making a bad argument delivered in an unnecessarily snarky way. All good.

I’m white and I don’t feel that way. So obviously it isn’t being “white” or not that determines whether you feel that way while shopping.

And I feel incredibly similarly to her when I walk into Starbucks and pickup my prepaid drink. I imagine I would feel just like her shopping at Amazon Go as well.

I’m not denying there are differences in how you are treated depending on your race. In fact, as a father of black children it is my responsibility to make them aware of the extra level of care they need to engage, during shopping for example.

But the feelings she shares are not unique to being black.

I don't dispute any of this. I think people may have lost the thread a little bit. The author's statement was

> No one cared what I was doing. Is this what it feels like to shop when you're not black?

The author does imply that all black people are eyed with suspicion when shopping, which is impossible to say but almost surely not true.

However the answer to the question can still be "yes" without giving in to the implication.

Are you black, jtbayly? If not, are there other reasons why the people in the (presumably white) majority (unjustly) profile you and pay wary attention to you? (If I may ask, of course.)

I don't understand this sentiment. The author describes her lived experience shopping as a black woman throughout her life. She also points to recent publicized examples of black people being subject to poor treatment while engaging in normal activities. If you had lived your entire life being weary of store clerks, having inculcated that lesson in childhood, why wouldn't her observation be both genuine and important?

I empathized with her experience described in the first half of the article fully.

But then she started making connection to Amazon Go by saying:

"The idea of walking into a store, taking an item or several off the shelves and strolling right back out again boggled my mind. It ran counter to everything I had learned about being black and shopping."

I think the idea would run counter to everybody regardless of race.

"I was afraid someone would pop out from behind a display of Amazon-branded merch and scream, "Get your hands off that!"

I also didn't find above statement particularly credible or representative of average person. The article just felt a tad forced, and I stand by this observation despite all the down votes.

> I also didn't find above statement particularly credible or representative of average person

What data do you have to back up your determination of credibility here?

Is it based on surveys and discussions with minority populations who have similar shared experiences to the author or is it based largely on a comparison to your own personal lived experience?

> She also points to recent publicized examples of black people being subject to poor treatment while engaging in normal activities.

The one about Oprah in Zurich is absolute bullshit. When you take in account that the boutique in question is one of Zurich's most luxurious (not for nothing they have $38k purses on sale) you can imagine the type of treatment any customer gets from the salespeople, who are used to see incredibly rich customers from any part of the world pop in for their shopping. If anything, the episode highlights exactly the hyper-sensitivity of some people (given that Oprah didn't just lie to publicise her then upcoming movie on the theme of racism, "The Butler").

Wow, just wow. You have no idea what it is like, if she says it feels like she is always been watched and suspected of stealing then finds shopping at Go to be a refreshing break from that, what exactly is "hyperbolic" about that and how would you know if it is hyperbolic or not anyway??

If it sounds ridiculous to you, it's because it is. The fact that you find it absurd only really underlines the point being made there, and that point is that "doing things while black" is a lifetime of uncomfortable, unnecessary, and subtly discriminatory experiences that you learn to expect and prepare for.

I assume if you're on HN that you have at least one well-paid black coworker in tech. Ask them how often they get uncomfortable, questioning looks while walking around their own neighborhood and you'll see exactly how hyperbolic that statement is.

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