this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2025
23 points (100.0% liked)

Casual Conversation

925 readers
37 users here now

Share a story, ask a question, or start a conversation about (almost) anything you desire. Maybe you'll make some friends in the process.

RULES

  1. Be respectful: no harassment, hate speech, bigotry, and/or trolling.
  2. Encourage conversation in your OP. This means including heavily implicative subject matter when you can and also engaging in your thread when possible.
  3. Avoid controversial topics (e.g. politics or societal debates).
  4. Stay calm: Don’t post angry or to vent or complain. We are a place where everyone can forget about their everyday or not so everyday worries for a moment. Venting, complaining, or posting from a place of anger or resentment doesn't fit the atmosphere we try to foster at all. Feel free to post those on !goodoffmychest@lemmy.world
  5. Keep it clean and SFW
  6. No solicitation such as ads, promotional content, spam, surveys etc.

Casual conversation communities:

Related discussion-focused communities

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
BoozeOrWater@piefed.social
BoozeOrWater@lemm.ee
23
Purchases being private (self.casualconversation)
submitted 3 days ago by tal to c/casualconversation@piefed.social
5 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I just went to get a sandwich. The ordering is (optionally) done via kiosk. This time, the kiosk started suggesting items for me based on what I'd purchased before. I was initially puzzled as to how it could recognize me prior to any identifying information being input, then realized that there was a small camera embedded in the kiosk, and that it must have done facial recognition.

Identifying customers isn't new; I understand that facial recognition has been used by grocery stores for loss prevention, to help flag people likely to steal things. But I wasn't aware that it'd reached the point of sticking all purchases into a database, regardless of the usual methods to obtain a unique identifier, like loyalty cards or obtaining a phone number.

Assuming that this becomes the norm, short of wearing a mask

which is a pain, and runs into anti-masking laws in some areas

I don't see how one can realistically avoid having all of one's purchasing being placed into a store's database for data-mining. That kind of bugs me

I'd like to be able to do stuff like purchase a sandwich without having the store profile me.

Thoughts? Ways to counter it? Okay with this/not okay?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] perishthethought@piefed.social 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Oh! Last week, I walked into a mom & pop hibachi place. It had been three weeks since my last visit. Before I got to the counter, the lady said, "hi, welcome back". Still freaked out by that.

[–] RebekahWSD@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

I legit do not like this when it happens. My husband is visually distinctive because of a disability so people remember him and are always so like, chatty sometimes and I just want to buy sandwiches in vague anonymity. Yep I do like turkey sandwiches please stop commenting on my purchases!