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Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts

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Re: Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts

#351

Post by jonbiggums22 »

dahcryn wrote: post #230
saubeidl wrote: post #138

I am of the firm opinion that if big corps want to outsource their labor to me, the customer, then it is my right to treat myself to a few free items here and there as compensation for the work being done. If you don't want that to happen, give cashiers their jobs back, you greedy bastards.

your compensation is speed, you get to go home faster. Is that not enough?

Why am I waiting in line to check myself out? That is what drives me nuts. "But they take up space" you say. There's lots of wasted space with the 8 standard checkout lines that are unmanned every time I come in the store.

Re: Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts

#352

Post by jaffa2 »

rovr138 wrote: post #185
stephen_g wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed at supermarkets here that of the dozens of times those 'you haven't scanned something' warnings have come up, only one time the item hadn't actually scanned when I thought it had. Every other time has been a false positive for me. They're pretty dodgy, the workers always seem pretty frustrated with it as they go around clearing them for people (sometimes a handful of people waiting, falsely accused by th…

The worst part for me is when they prevent you from scanning the same item twice. Yes, I want 2 boxes of cereal. I just find it easier to go to a cashier.

you have to put the item on the scale before it lets yo uscan the next item. So you can scan the same item twice if you scan it once, put the other item on the scale, and scan the item again.

Re: Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts

#353

Post by ryandrake »

rob74 wrote: post #297
bee_rider wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus, like everybody in retail, LP’s measured performance indicator is how busy they look when management is around. The best way to do that without getting in a fight is to annoy people who don’t actually have anything to hide.

That can be seen at many levels of society. ICE also prefers to round up harmless immigrants that show up for court hearings, work in fields, wait at bus stations or deliver their children to day care rather than the "dangerous criminals" that they keep on boasting about. And since every illegal immigrant is already a criminal in their view anyway, why bother?

Also: Local cops spend their time going after speeders and parking violators who they know won't be dangerous and they can safely farm for revenue, instead of looking for violent crime.

Re: Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts

#354

Post by ebiester »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #325
bevhill wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peak COVID never ended. It's more important now than ever to stay vaccinated, maintain social distance, and mask up.

COVID is down from its peak, as I understand. It's just very much not gone, and by no means less nasty. We had the opportunity to wipe it out with a short, synchronised global lockdown, and we squandered it, and now it's like plague.

We never had that chance because you cannot coordinate 8 million people, much less 8 billion. And nobody was going to shut down all the coordination points of society such as grocery stores, pharmacies, and hospitals.

The CDC knew this at the time. The "flatten the curve" message was "slow things down enough until we know more and can avoid our hospitals from being overwhelmed and more people dying."

Re: Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts

#355

Post by aaronbaugher »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #290
9cb14c1ec0 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And there-in lies the problem of modern society. There are no social consequences. The decline of religion and family with no suitable replacement has left most people without a peer group to exert these social consequences.

Lots of people in the US are religious. This generally doesn’t seem to dramatically lower crime on a statistical basis (with all kinds of caveats.)

Yeah, a whole lot of Americans who still click the "religious" box on a poll are just going on habit and family tradition, or they go to a church that's become part social club and part community charity center. (Nothing wrong with charity, of course, but you don't have to be religious to be charitable.) It doesn't mean what it meant a few generations ago, when, probably coincidentally, there was less crime.

Re: Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts

#356

Post by respondo2134 »

dml2135 wrote: post #339
neilv wrote: post #76

I'm pretty sick of misguided/enthusiastic Loss Prevention people, and these digital systems amplify their hijinks. The most conspicuous one recently was at one upscale grocery chain within the last year. There was what I took to be a dedicated LP person who seemed to be lurking behind the self-checkouts, to watch me specifically, and I stood there until he went away. Then, as I was checking out, this employee came up…

Getting rid of checkout clerks, forcing customers to use self-checkout, and then surveilling and policing said customers to make sure that the unpaid labor they are now performing is done flawlessly is just so dystopic. IMO, if you want to have self-checkout, you need to accept a higher rate of loss. That's the tradeoff for replacing your employees with robots and forcing labor onto the consumer. You can't have your…

self-checkout at a grocery store is so maddening. There are enough edge cases (discounted items, multiples, lack of barcodes, special deals) to make it painful if you have anything more than a few staples. And I'm sure it's also part of the disgusting push to barcode & box produce which is a negative for everyone but the suppliers & stores.

>> IMO, if you want to have self-checkout, you need to accept a higher rate of loss

I agree this is the logical conclusion, but obviously they're not going to accept it when you can throw a fraction of the labour savings to hire some cheap security theatre that reminds the honest people big brother is watching.

Re: Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts

#357

Post by flerchin »

flir wrote: post #307
hopelite wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you are looking at it from a totally wrong perspective anyways, just like most people do. The homeless encampments are full of people with mental illness challenges and/or in one or another way related to drugs. It is why I cannot stand drug use apologists and drug dealer/traffickers defenders that at the same time lament poverty and homelessness. The poverty is not the cause, it is the symptom of the system’s r…

What makes you think the arrow of causality doesn't go homelessness->drugs?

The ones I know personally ruined their lives with drugs, and ended up on the street. It's an intertwined issue, but the direction of causality is pretty clear when, eg, one brother is poor, but employed and in a shitty apartment, and the other is a human pit of misery and the primary fork was a proclivity for illicit drugs in his teens.

Re: Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts

#358

Post by respondo2134 »

benchly wrote: post #139
neilv wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less relevant, but reminds me of my all-time favorite grocery store LP encounter, near MIT. The chain was running this big promotion with lots of tear-open prize tickets that are either coupons or game board pieces, so I had been visiting often, to buy ramen noodles (one ticket per package!) and I had a small stack of coupons in my wallet. I was checking my coupons for this visit in the middle of a center aisle, and…

Appreciate the story, but what's the hangup about naming these companies? It's not really a secret that retail LP generally abuses their role across the board and allows prejudace to run rampant in its ranks, giving that it is almost entirely comprised of people from backgrounds that lack any higher education and recieved a few months training at best to do what they do. Heck, step in any active American mall and you…

My observations (Canada, bigger city): The LP people you see (ie in "uniform") are often visible minorities, often women. They're positioned to remind you "we're watching!" not pursue any action. At best they'll call emergency services (a health event as common as theft). The covert LP people seem to be big, white, young males - the same type you see at popular gyms. They're still easy to spot because you see a young dude putting the oddest selection of products in their basket (always a basket) as the follow a "suspicious" person around. Their game seems to typically be stop the known thieves, recover stuff and kick them out of the store. Physical confrontations are limited because of liability and only rarely do they call the cops. I'd expect the experience is different in the US or other environments.

Re: Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts

#359

Post by slipperydippery »

frosted-flakes wrote: post #34
beaviskhan wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't use them when it's an option - but Home Depot in particular often has zero actual cashiers. They've always got a couple people standing around in self checkout to assist when the system (inevitably?) doesn't work properly, though...

HD has really good self checkouts though. They don't require any interaction with the touch screen except hitting "Done", nor do they have over-sensitive anti-theft scale systems. It's just a wireless barcode scanner on a table with a receipt printer and a payment terminal. The screen shows everything you've scanned with pictures! and legible product descriptions, which makes it really easy to make sure you scanned e…

They do indeed often have zero ordinary cashiers.

... except at the "PRO" checkouts. Which are actually just ordinary check-out lanes. Anybody can go through them. The signs mean nothing whatsoever.

I never go through their self-checkouts unless I've only got one or two pre-packaged items. I usually park on the "PRO" side, enter through those doors, check out on that side, and leave through those doors.

Re: Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts

#360

Post by closewith »

cooper_ganglia wrote: post #302
closewith wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Put the criminals in prison. Do it often enough, and shoplifting ceases to be a problem of plague-like proportions. Big fan of accountability and immediate personal consequences and enforcing the law. This just doesn't work. A high-trust society cannot be built by force. > I am fatigued of the suicidal and deleterious empathy of those in charge who refuse to take second-order effects into account. The irony here is…

A high-trust society cannot be built any way other than force! Once you've removed the dredges of society (by force), all of the good, law-abiding citizens have better lives.

What you're describing is a police state and has never resulted in a high-trust society.
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