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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

What "free stuff" is OP getting from Target and CVS in exchange for the data they are collecting and sharing? Nothing. We're already not getting free stuff and people still aren't fed up.

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Admittedly, Target gives 5% off to RedCard members. So I should know going in that they’re going to want more than my “loyalty”.

I suppose that’s the loyalty pact customers are agreeing to. They agree to continue patronizing a business after that business flies behind their back to tell everyone what, when, and where they’re doing in their store.

However, if they’re not tracking you with a loyalty card, they’re still tracking you with your normal CC (Walmart has some messed up integrations with third parties around media purchases). Cash, privacy masks, sporadic gate changes, faraday bags, and gloves may be the only way to get around tracking at the moment ;-)

The free stuff is the website that shows the ad, at least that's what they want you to believe.

But ... it's not really free since the ad will just make products more expensive, since now you also pay for the adtech that's involved (besides paying with your personal data).

If what you describe were economic reality, ads wouldn’t be a thing. The reality is that ads allow a vendor to reach significantly more customers, paying for the ads.

You can see this with the rise of ultra specialty online stores we’ve seen in the last decade thank to targeted advertising.

I don't see the logical connection between my comment and yours.

Yes, ads make people buy more stuff.

Is that a good thing? My comment doesn't say anything about that.

But anyway, my guess is no, because it leads to overconsumption, and exhaustion of natural resources.

Also:

> 96% of US users opted out of IDFA sharing

Meaning that users really do not want to be tracked.

I was replying to this.

> will just make products more expensive, since now you also pay for the adtech that's involved

That’s not generally how the economics of advertising works. If it were, advertising wouldn’t be very successful/important.

People don’t like the idea of being tracked, but my experience is that they like the results.. Especially all the extreme specialty niche products that simply wouldn’t exist without targeted ads.

That's a huge assumption on your end, that people like the results of ads more than they do not want to be tracked.

Target and CVS are not "advertising companies". And if you'd like you can pay cash, no? The indirection (ad company to retailer) is intentional.

Given companies are doing subject tracking with in-store cameras and can use facial recognition to tell who you are, cash isn't going to be sufficient. They'll be able to build a pretty compelling shopping profile and can tie associate your cash purchases to your profile. Sure, it's not 100% fool-proof, but it doesn't need to be to be a massive privacy invasion. I suppose you could wear a mask, but that's generally frowned upon in stores.

The industry is still struggling to track who's clicking on ads properly in all cases...we're very far from this idea of tracking cash purchases & building a profile with facial recognition. This sounds like science fiction. Are there any companies actually doing anything like this?

Closest thing I know is companies who sell "foot traffic" data, of who walks in front of your store. But that's done with phones pinging wifi networks passively as you walk, not anything as fancy as facial recognition.

Example: https://grapeseedmedia.com/blog/foot-traffic-data/

K-Mart apparently tracks with facial recognition.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-13/bunnings-kmart-invest...

I think the problems with click fraud are orthogonal. They're a different domain with different characteristics and different solutions.

Facial recognition has been deployed to combat shoplifting [1][2]. Amazon Go is a store built around not needing to check out at a register at all. Microsoft offers Azure Kinect [3] as a way for retailers to track people moving through a store. There's no shortage of companies purporting to use AI to analyze in-store video in real-time to analyze customer behavior [4][5]. There was a video shared on this site a few weeks back showing a coffee shop tracking both customers and baristas [6] (more discussion there, including some skepticism).

I'm speculating that if they can track you in the store and build a profile on you that they'll be able to track your cash purchases. I don't think it's a terribly large leap to tie into their point of sale terminals but I don't know if any retailer is currently doing that or even planning to do that.

[1] -- https://youtu.be/g5Xf9Y6-RS4?si=De7EZTyVD66BQPeG

[2] -- https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/28/technology/facial- recognition-shoplifters-britain.html

[3] -- https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/kinect-dk/

[4] -- https://viso.ai/features/

[5] -- https://twitter.com/jowyang/status/1214657642313871360

[6] -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37186806

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