Walmart and Target are watching you. I saw the "lab" for myself

slate.com

3 points·pavel_lishin··4 comments

They've been rolling a lot of these theft prevention measures back here, because people aren't going to wait 5 minutes for someone (if they come at all) to unlock the toothpaste case.

>It is the future of retail

If this is what they are trying to make the future of retail, it wouldn't surprise me a bit if it really turns out to be the death of physical stores.

Utterly breathless, in the "OMG these loss prevention people are amazing!" sort of way. Awful to read, truly awful. No discussion of privacy, of whether this kind of stuff is overly invasive, nothing. The closest it got was noting that the "studies" the corporations refer to are highly suspect. Overall, this is just corpo-friendly garbage.

That tone you detect is deliberately over-the-top: it’s breathless as a satirical technique. The author entirely agrees with your concerns; they’re mocking the corps and the researchers, or rather, letting them mock themselves by pretending complete credulity.

The article even concludes with advice on how best to shoplift, given what’s been learned!

For me I would have preferred a slower, more thoughtful and researched approach - but make no mistake, this writer ain’t “corpo-friendly” in the least.

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